Calorie counting for home cooking

[Deepintheforest]

Hi all
Wondering if anybody has had any success calorie counting when everything is cooked from scratch. I am not in the UK and convenience food is not a thing here. Either is calorie content on foods e.g I have no idea how many calories the meat I buy contains. I have tried building recipes on my fitness pal but its an annoying process and I question how accurate it is. e.g if I make pasta do I really just add up the flour, egg and oil calories for the pasta and the number of tomatoes i've used for the sauce etc.
Wondering if there is a simpler way of doing things? perhaps a different app less geared to just finding branded products. I guess it doesn't need to be 100% accurate as I am also doing 16:8 and reducing my portion sizes but it would be nice to have some idea of the calorie content of meals

Cronometer.com is way superior to MFP and gives all the info for free as well.
When selecting a food, say a tomato, you have the option to pick a size (small, medium, ...) or just to put the grams. So if you have a digital kitchen scale it is very easy.
The enormous advantage of cronometer is the nutritional info for minerals, vitamins, and the different types of proteins.

I just log the separate ingredients into the recipe on MFP and that's it for me.

The meat, for example, I just find some average. So 100g of 5%mince has typically between 120 and 150 so I find middle generic one on MFP with around 135.

@Deepintheforest

Hi all Wondering if anybody has had any success calorie counting when everything is cooked from scratch. I am not in the UK and convenience food is not a thing here. Either is calorie content on foods e.g I have no idea how many calories the meat I buy contains. I have tried building recipes on my fitness pal but its an annoying process and I question how accurate it is. e.g if I make pasta do I really just add up the flour, egg and oil calories for the pasta and the number of tomatoes i've used for the sauce etc. Wondering if there is a simpler way of doing things? perhaps a different app less geared to just finding branded products. I guess it doesn't need to be 100% accurate as I am also doing 16:8 and reducing my portion sizes but it would be nice to have some idea of the calorie content of meals

This is why I can't face using mfp . I did actually set up a lot of my favourite recipes in it when I used it a couple of years ago but it took hours and hours and made me reluctant to try new recipes which I do most weeks. It was easy to enter packaged food via a scanner but the home recipes but was a nightmare and most of my food fits this.

I wasn't really as concerned with the level of accuracy. I think a rough idea is fine but the amount of work involved in looking up calorie content for specific ingredients and the amounts and entering them was a real pain and has put me off starting to use it again

I've lost 30lbs using mfp and cooking from scratch. Yes it can be a ball ache setting up recipes, (never takes me hours though! Just do it as you go?) but once you've done that leg work, it's quick and easy from then on.

Firstly, log each ingredient by weight, not number. One carrot can be drastically different than another, one tablespoon of flour is drastically different from another etc. so if you want to be accurate, log by weight.

Second tip is once you've prepared your main meal (e.g. soup) then weigh the whole thing and enter the number of grams it is as the serving size for the recipe. Then, when you take your portion, just stick your bowl on the scales, zero it and add your food. When you log your meal, enter that number as your portion/ serving size and you should have the most accurate estimate we can get.

I use the lose it app but similar to MFP, and tbh I cook most meals from scratch, I just weigh as I go. Takes seconds and then chuck it in the pan.

Thanks all I'll check out the alternatives suggested. I just find it such a pain having to weigh everything I use I find myself not bothering half the time

I do use the create recipe function in MFP for things I cook frequently and don't find it too bad, but also if it's something new or not a regular thing, I use the search function and approximate - if you type in 'spaghetti bolognese' for example you'll get a range of different options based on ready meals or restaurant versions of the same thing, I usually go an option at the higher end of the scale which probably means I am logging slightly more calories overall and potentially more fat/salt etc in commercially produced meals than I would put in my homemade food, but I don't tend to track my macros that closely and I'd rather over estimate than under. Plus I figure it all balances out with the small things like a bite of DH's biscuit or one of the DC's chips off their plate or whatever that I don't always strictly log...