I made a veggie and beef casserole last night but how do I know how many calories? I made it with canned mixed veggies, I added a 1/2 pound of ground beef and biscuits over the top. I had 1 cup of the mixed veggies with ground beef and 1 biscuit. I have lots of lefts overs and want to know how to count the calories in it?

Ingredients
3 cans of mixed veggies
1/2 pound of ground beef
1 tablespoon of finely chopped onions
3 beef bullions(sp?)
2 tablespoons of milk
2 tablespoons of margarine
and the biscuits over the top.

Any ideas? Thanks

When I cook, I weigh and measure the whole dish, and then try to create same size portions. So then I divide the total by the number of portions! So, this time you may only be able to estimate.

Lots of online programs help with this, such as Daily Plate, and, I think, fitday. Though I'm sure others can chime in.

Thank You Heather! I was just going through the threads on this board and saw your siggy

So you lost over 100 pounds by counting calories? I'm trying this and I really hope it works, I really hate myself right now and its coming between me and my husband since I hate when he touches me. I'm trying to stick to 1600 calories a day right now which is what I found online. Your posts and your pictures have really inspired me

Dawn -- Yep! Calorie counting works for me. It's very flexible and keeps me accountable. I actually started by just bringing lunches and snacks to work and focusing on portions. I had to baby-step it.

1600 calories isn't a bad place to start. Write down everything and track your weight loss and you'll find out how you do. These numbers are all estimates and each of us has to figure out what works for us.

Yes, you can do it at fitday. Let me see if I can explain how I've done it.

To make a custom food ... I'd go a couple of days into the future ... Jan 3rd or 4th would do. Say this recipe makes about 5 cups of food ... call it 5 servings and add all the ingredients. When you enter it, it will be in your database forever. Tomorrow if you have another cup, it'll be in your list for chosing.

In this case, I think I'd leave the biscuits seperate. They're easy enough to find and you may just want to make the same casserole without them someday

calorie-count.com has a great service called Recipe Analyzer. You plug in your foods with the weights and the serving size and it tallies it and divides it up.

Good luck with the calorie counting Dawn. It's what's worked for me as well.

Be careful with calorie-count.com: I find it to be VERY inaccurate (and usually very high). I use it to get a quick sense of whether a recipe is worth trying, but when I put my recipes in on DailyPlate using the actual brands of ingredients that I used, it's usually 300-400 calories lower per serving than calorie-count's estimate.

Wow Scenestealer - that's a big difference. I never noticed that, but will have to check it out. I'm glad at least if it's off, that it's higher in calories, not lower. I always like to tack on extra calories anyway, give myself a little leeway.

But really? 300-400 calories?

It depends on the recipe, but yes. Calorie-count uses generic versions of a lot of stuff, whereas I typically buy lower-fat/lower-sodium/higher-fiber/generally healthier stuff, which makes a huge difference. As a small example, a lot of my recipes use chicken broth, which Calorie-Count says is 44 calories and 2967 mg sodium (ridiculous!) per serving. I use Herb Ox Chicken Broth which is 10 calories and 5 mg sodium. Another example: a 4 oz pork chop on DailyPlate is 152 calories, whereas it is 363 calories on Calorie-Count. Huge difference! And I tend to trust DailyPlate more because I can match everything up to the actual brand/package and make sure it's the same, whereas it's a pain to do that on Calorie-Count because you can't specify brands.

Thank you all so much for the information!