[Cookie_Monster]

I just finished preparing Chicken Cordon Bleu to bake later on for dinner and I'm really frustrated trying to enter in the chicken breast into FitDay. I've run into this problem before and just made my best guess...but now I want to get to the bottom of it...So experienced calorie counters please help.

I weighed my raw chicken breast (boneless, skinless) before I started fixin it up and it was 3 oz. So in FitDay under chicken breast, which option should I choose? There is a huge difference in 3 oz. raw and 3 oz. cooked...and I can't weigh it after baking because all the stuff in it now. So how do I enter it? Does the chicken actually get lighter after cooking? So my 3 oz. raw breast would weigh less after baking it, thus accounting for the difference in calories between 3 oz. raw and a 3 oz. cooked chicken breast?

Am I making any sense??

[baffled111]

Fitday doesn't have an option for raw chicken breast? It seems as though it must. If it doesn't however, you should enter it manually from one of the other nutritional data websites, like calorieking or the USDA nutritional database. Chicken breasts are one of those things that one rather eats alot of, so it's worth being able to enter in the raw weight.

[Cookie_Monster]

Yes it does have an option for raw chicken breast...so I guess it was a silly question. I guess it just confused me because 3 oz. raw is far fewer calories than 3 oz. cooked. I guess chicken loses weight in the oven...which makes sense (I am in no way insinuating that anyone should get in the oven!).

[jtammy]

Hi Cookie Monster, Yes chicken will weigh less after it's cooked, so just use the 3 ounces RAW. Sometimes I enter mine raw weight, sometimes cooked. It all depends on when I weigh it. In your case, you wouldn't want to weigh it now because some of the weight would be from the ham/cheese/stuffing.

[Azure]

The reason that your chicken breast weighs less after baking is because of water loss, for the most part. When it's done cooking, it's denser. Ever made a hamburger patty, and it was nice and plump and big, then you cooked it and suddenly it's a small saucer? Same deal--fat and water drained out.

So, when you've got a 3 ounce COOKED piece of chicken, it was probably 4 ounces raw (I'm throwing out general numbers). So your 3 ounces RAW is going to cook down to be maybe 2 ounces cooked. That's where the calorie discrepancy you're seeing comes from.

I hope that helped?

[MaryL]

Azure, is right all meats lose water weight,4oz raw will be about 3oz cooked