Whenever I cook foods with multiple ingredients I have trouble estimating the calorie counts...

When I first started on this journey, I was sticking with single foods.. salmon and and vegetable, chicken breast and a vegetable, but now I am trying to widen my repetoire while still staying healthy.

But the problem is, I'm not sure if I'm estimating my calories right. I pull the calories off of fitday, but that seem very inexact for home recipes.

For example, the chicken noodle soup I ate last night:

3 quarts chicken stock
mushrooms, scallions, fresh garlic and fresh dill sauteed in PAM
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, diced
2 cups egg noodles uncooked.
1 cup white wine.
(Yes, it was delicious...)

I served it by the bowlful (about one cup) and I had two servings...I also served three other people and had about half leftover...

Fitday gives 175 calories per cup for chunky style chicken soup... but I have no idea exactly how to calculate it...

For those who are very experienced at this, how do you figure it out?

Figure each ingredient , total it up and divide by the number of servings and you will get the calorie amount. If this a recipe you use often, keep your measurements and you will have to do it once.

Ok, that makes sense... but how do I figure out the number of servings...?

Do I actually wait until it's done and then pour it out and measure how many servings it made? Do you pour the hot soup into a measuring cup?

Or, do you figure how many cups in 3 quarts of liquid... which seems inexact, because some of the liquid boils away...

Thanks

This is what I'm struggling with too!

i struggle with this too. its easier with weight watchers cos so many things are free, but theres still the trouble of figuring out servings!

my only advice is look for recipes that have the nutritional content and serving sizes already figured out.

try this website (I don't know if the link will work)
http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp
you can enter in what you put in - divide by the number of servings (I always estimate as in "I will probably eat this soup 4 times and then its gone") and it will give you the nutrition facts for it

Whenever I cook something at home I always divide it into 1 serving portions as soon as it's done (so I won't end up overeating). I divide the total calories in the recipe (calculated from each individual ingredient) by how many servings I got out of it.

All of the above whichever is easier for you. I would measure out by the measuring cup..

When we made chili I figured out the total calories for the entire pot. I then weighed it all in a big bowl after it got finished, then weighed individual servings out of the big bowl to get their calorie count. I had an idea of what I wanted per serving that lined up pretty well. I went ahead and portioned out the entire pot into single serve, weighed, containers.

ok. thanks everybody...! This helps.

I love the Recipe Calculator on sparkpeople. It already has calorie counts for most ingredients so you just enter amounts and it totals it for you.

I use a calorie tracking program that I can add homemade recipes which makes it easier to track the calories in homemade stuff. With that being said, an easy way to do this without a specific program. I use the same sized Dutch oven for all my soups. I know that I can get 9 2-cup servings from my Dutch oven, so I could the calories by cup. Figure up the total calories for the entire batch, then divide by 18. This way, I can quickly figure up my total calories if I eat a different amount, I just must measure it out using a cup measuring cup. If you don't have an actual recipe, just make sure you measure and write down everything while you put your dish together, then you can add things up while it's cooking or at some later time.

agree with the above and when you are done, measeure out how many cups, then divide. you may end up eating 2 cups but then you have a constant measurement for a consistant amount that you can refer too when you have some.

BTW I use calorie king for any item I don't have a calorie count for.

I use sparkpeople and you can do 'good groupings' on there.

today I put homemade pumpkin manicotti in there.

I figured for each serving there would be .1.33 servings of manicotti shell, it would take about 1 cup to fill a shell, and about a .5 cup pasta sauce.

I add them all together and ti tells me the nutritional info for the enire meal.

I love this, thanks for sharing, Shannon