How to calorie count while cooking for the family

[RolaColaLola]

Hello, I’m the biggest I’ve ever been and have made multiple failed attempts at weight loss over the past 2-3 years.

It predominantly fails at dinner time when I’m cooking for the whole family and find it hard to keep track of calories per portion when I’m not necessarily serving equal sized portions. Ditto when taking leftovers to work.

How do those of you who calorie count keep track of your cals when you’re cooking for the whole family and portioning out different sized portions?

(I had amazing weight loss years ago, pre-kids, by calorie counting but it was so much easier just serving husband and me so could eg halve, quarter the total amount t)

If you’re following a recipe, many cookbooks provide a calorie breakdown per serving. For example, if a recipe makes four servings, it will often include the calorie count for each portion.

In our household, we found it particularly useful to complement this by using apps like MyFitnessPal. You can input all the ingredients into the app and calculate the calorie count per plate, which is especially helpful for adjusting portion sizes or tracking more accurately. by using apps like MyFitnessPal. You can input all the ingredients into the app and calculate the calorie count per plate, which is especially helpful for adjusting portion sizes or tracking more accurately.

I have seen a woman on Instagram explain that she will I put the whole recipe into MFP for example, then divide the whole recipe by 10.

Sometimes she has smaller portions so has 1 portion (or like what you might give your kids) but really a standard adult portion is recorded as two on MFP.

That's what I do. So if I was doing spaghetti Bol, I would put the recipe in MyFitnessPal and put the servings in based on the size I would eat. Then log that. And then log the pasta separately. You won't get it 100% exact but it'll be close.

Yes I do similar to the Instagram lady. At the moment, my DC eat about half an "adult" portion of e.g. Bolognese sauce. So I make a batch that does 6 "kids" portions (freeze most) and 2 adults portions. Input the ingredients into mfp as if it's to serve 5 then have one "portion" if it's standard. Sometimes I'll do half a portion and pinch one of the kids packs for lunch!
I'll be honest though I don't weigh out each portion. I know roughly 2 spoons is a kids size, 4 is an adults and my typical recipe divides up nicely to suit (for Bolognese and chilli anyway).

Yes you track the whole dish, then portion up

500g mince tin of tomatoes 1 onion etc makes 4 portions and I had a quarter portion plus veg for example

I log the whole meal, then weigh the end result so I can find the cals of my own weighed portion. MFP and other calorie counters have a built in function for this. If you add the weight of the total dish, it will calculate all the cals etc for a specified weight

As in, each portion doesn't have to weigh the same