Hi all,
So I have tettered back and forth about counting calories and I really think I'm ready to give it a try, focusing on clean proteins, veggies, fruits, and juice bascially, with some limited carbs thrown in for good measure. Anyway, I had what might be a basic question. I have a meal that I prepare for myself that consists of yellow peppers, orange peppers, red peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic, chicken broth, and chicken. I know each component has it's own calorie count (example 1 large yellow pepper is 50 calories). I was wondering, how would I calculate 1 serving of this meal? Should I total every ingredient and divide it by the number of servings regardless of how much, say, chicken pieces I get in that serving? I may be getting too technical here, but I am just trying to the best I can as I need to lose at least 50 pounds and am unable to exercise because of back issues. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks everyone!

-Michelle

We always just add up the whole meal and then divide into what seems like a physically and calorically reasonable number of servings. We try to make sure that each serving has the same amount of each ingredient but, really, that's very difficult and I think we'd drive ourselves crazy trying to figure it out to an exact amount. I don't worry about it too much. Obviously, you can't pick out all of the chicken and leave the peppers and call it a serving but it doesn't have to be absolute in my book.

That's what I thought, I just wanted to get an experienced opinion. Thank you!

You're welcome!

This is especially true if you're the only one eating the dish. After all, you'll eat it as leftovers and then it's sure to balance out! My boyfriend is allergic to poultry, so this is always the case with chicken dishes at our house.

Yep. I use Mastercook to input my recipes and get nutritional values. I just type in the recipe, indicate how many servings it makes, and then the program gives me the nutrients.

Obviously, as you said, you can't pick out all the chicken and call that a 'serving' ... ... but I think it's close enough for regular eating habits to work.

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I'll sometimes eyeball the servings and then weigh them on my food scale to see if they're about even.

This won't work for chicken, but if there's a particularly caloric component of a recipe that doesn't need to be cooked in I'll sometimes add it separately to my serving after carefully measuring it - e.g. cheese on an omelet or chili or something, beans or olives on a mixed salad, etc. The added bonus is that the non-dieters in the household can use as much as they want.

I use my scale and weigh each thing individually, then mix them up again on the plate. My scale has a "tare" button so I can put everything on the same plate as I go along. So I would weigh the amount of chicken I want, then the amount of peppers, then the amount of tomatoes and so forth. But I don't cook any any sauce, juices, etc when I'm doing this so not sure how I would work out the chicken broth.