How to count calories

[Moominmama0]

How do you count calories in a dish that you have made? For example a curry. I always make meals from scratch.

Also something like a sourdough bread? How do you work out a slice , which would vary slightly. Would I have to swap to commercial brown bread just so the calories are in front of me?

I downloaded the NHS calorie counting app but it doesn't have everything on there. Thank you in advance.

I tried to make 'educated guesses' - so if I'm making a curry with 6 portions, I'll add in 1/6th of each ingredient on myfitnesspal. It's a faff but worth it (and it saves your portions for next time) Same with bread. I'd find it really to count every single calorie.

Well if you download an app like Nutracheck you can build meals and calculate the calories by inputting all the ingredients and weights. Once you’ve done it once you can edit it every time you make it ( assuming you might freestyle a little bit with ingredients ) or you can use those calories as a general guide ( assuming the ingredients are largely similar ). For bread you will need to weigh the slice and then choose the nearest type
of bread. Nutracheck will have a sourdough as an option.

I can help! I had to figure all this out recently.

I have a very cheap digital scales that lives on the kitchen island lately.

When making something like a salad for example, I weigh each ingredient then feck it aside in a bowl. I take note of the weight.

I then look up on www.nutritionix.com

• or similar and work out the calories going into the pot overall.

You then know the overall "calories count" of the whole dish. Then divide and conquer.

For bread, for example I eat a lot of sourdough poppyseed from Lidl. I googled their bakery sheet, found my exact bread. Calories will be listed per 100g.

I slice my bread, weigh it (takes seconds) and know the calories.

Even for butter, I put the knife on scales and set to zero. Swipe butter on to knife, and know the exact amount of calories.

Ira helped enormously - I can tell before weighing what my bread is in calories, I'd never laden a slice of bread with butter now I know the calories. It's made me very aware.

Anyway, I'm seven weeks doing this and I find it very easy now.

I am often putting thr amounts into my phone so it's stored, then quickly work out the calories of my salad (lots of small ingredients)

People will have all sorts of ways, you get quick with it very easily.

Good luck!

The nutracheck app is fab. You can create meals, add all measurements, calories per portion etc, scan barcodes of anything you buy. It’s really helpful.

Same a previous poster - I weigh the ingredients I put into it as I go along. It's not too hard - just use a bowl or plate on little Salter scales and keep resetting to 0 - jot down on paper or iphone notes and add together later, then work out an approx portion.
For things like a jar of thai curry paste you can scan the label and work out how much you've used.

I tend to use the food part of my Fitbit app - I find it by far the easiest to use/ track, and I've previously tried Noom and myFitnessPal.

Bread - I weigh it, and use g rather than 'slice' and usually use what I consider an 'equivalent' commercial loaf.

You don't go crazy.

A slice of bread is a slice of bread is a slice of bread. They are all about 100-150kcals unless they are exceptionally thick slices. So stick in 125kcals and move on. That's my method, anyway.

If I make a dish I tend to count the total big ticket ingredients like the meat and cheese and carbs. Then I add about 200-300kcals to cover veggies and oils. Then I divide by number of portions.

Calories are not really accurate anyway. The number on the packets can be up to 10% out and your body may not be able to take in all the calories from a food. So it's all an approximation. Measure roughly, check results and adjust accordingly.

Sometimes I 'make' the sandwich on the scales (on a plate) and log as I go along:

• slice of bread - log weight (then reset to 0)
• apply butter - log weight (then reset to 0)
• add cheese/ham/ salad etc etc

I use My Fitness Pal. You can add your own recipes.

So if I‘m making a curry, I will add the calories for a tin of chopped chopped tomatoes, chickpeas, weigh out all the veg etc.

Then I will weigh the curry into equal portions.

On MFP app you can say how many portions you have made and it calculates it for you.

You just have to be careful that the individual calories are correct, as even scanning the barcode doesn’t always bring up the correct data.

I added all the ingredients into My Fitness Pal then told MFP how many portions I got from it.
It then gave me the calories per portion.

(obviously, I weighed everything)

You work it out the first time and then guesstimate from there. So cut your normal slice, weigh it and work it out then just put that in each time. Don’t go down the route of eating worse food just because it has the calories on the packet. Calorie counting is not an exact art, it is a way of getting a rough idea.

You used to be able to create recipes and store them on MFP, and also import recipes from the internet. It would then work out the calories per portion. I think it may now only be a premium feature which is annoying.

Weigh the ingredients, add them raw to Nutracheck as a meal, confirming how many portions it makes. Add a portion of that meal to to your daily intake.

I create recipes on Nutracheck and they are all saved when I eat one of my regulars. I batch cook so it's very easy to decide a recipe into how many portions it is and add it again when you have a "Blue Peter meal" - Here's one I made earlier

I use the chronometer app.
Create recipes. Dh makes bread, enter all ingredients by weight, weigh the loaf once baked and divide to find the calories/gm.
then you slice and weigh your piece. It’s fussy but after a while many of your recipes are simply on file.