I've signed up to fitday and calorie count programs, but it seems soooo hard to find calorie counts for self prepared meals. For example, lets say I want to make a beef stew...how in the world would I calculate the calories for that?

How do you all do your calculations? Do you eat the same foods every day? I'm going to be following a low fat/low cal cookbook so I plan to make foods with lots of variety...will this even be possible to track realisticly? Don't want to spend hours on the net looking up values/calories...there must be a quicker way? HELPPPPP!

Thanks

*EDIT* Also, is there a site that I can just enter in all the ingredients and their measurements and the calories, protein, fat, sodium, etc. are automatically calculated? If not, how do you all do that? I need to monitor my sodium intake as well...grrrhhh..so frustrating

I am prettya new too. You can go online and put in "recipe converter" and you should get some hits for a calculator that takes all the ingredients spits out the calories per serving.
Good luck!

if you are making something you'll eat often, use a recipe calculator. can't remember a specific website. there's several though.

as you use fit day for a few days, there will be some foods repeated. most of us eat similar breakfast, lunch ideas over the weeks. your recently eaten foods are saved. can also use that personalized button. make sure to measure. weighing is even more accurate.

it was annoying when they have a million ways to eat carrots, but no raw whole carrots.

and i recamend morningstar veggie burgers. lots of good stuff, i think one of them was only 90 cal.

i made this all the time:
veggie burger-90
steamed spinach-15?
flat out wrap-120
mustard/salsa
all for around 300 cal

Thanks!!! I actually find a really good site for EVERYTHING! I even tried entering one of my favorite grilled chicken recipes...it's so simple and the chicken tastes like McDonald's Grilled chix...without all the xtra calories from the sugar Mickey Dees adds..lol!

For anyone who's as confused as me...you may want to check it out. http://caloriecount.about.com

I love this site as I can enter my own recipes and get a per serving nutritional profile...that's AWESOME!!! It was nice to be able to put my recipe in and modify it as necessary to conform with my macro requirements...

Thanks again

I use sparkpeople and they have a "food groupings" section where you can put recipes and get the per serving count for stuff.

it's very realistic to track a variety of foods. You could either go through your cookbook and write down the cals for each recipe in advance, or for other foods just enter them in whatever system you are using at the beginning of the day.

Well I know you already found somehwere but on sparkpeople there is a place to do recipes and figure out how much of everything is in it.
Or you can just take the calories from everything you are putting in the meal and calculate it yourself!

hmmmmm..My sister raves about Sparkpeople...I'll check it out! Thanks again

Also, I'm looking for a really good cookbook with international cuisines that is low calorie and fat. Anyone have any suggestions? I just bought a crockpot and a recipe book for that...but I love foods (especially jamaican and indian) from all over the world. Hard to come by something that has both low calories and good and international...haha.

I calculate everything myself! I get a spiral bound notebook 3 subject so I wont run out of room anytime soon and start writing in there calorie counts for various recipes. For example: last night I had a tuna salad sandwich for dinner.

I wrote Tuna Salad on the top of the paper. Then I wrote down the ingredients with their calorie counts off to the right side. I then tallied everything together to get the total count.

Example:
# prob not accurate
Tuna- 100 calories
1ts light mayo 10 calories
7 dill chips- 5
1ts mustard-0
1 hard boiled egg-70

total= 185

I find this works best for me because its easy and I just write down the counts and such as I go along. I also measure things as I dump them into the pan. For example if I were making chili I would measure out the beans etc before dumping them into the pan. But I only do this once for each recipe because I buy the same brand each time.

Having said this I am old fashioned! I write my calorie count, workouts food etc down on paper always have. I don't enjoy the net at all. I have a body bugg and even then I just put in my total calories for the day in one lump. I like good ole paper and pen!

i have an international weight watchers cook book. they go thru each country and continent with a lighter version of that food. i'm pretty sure it had all the cal counts and info.
i'm sure to find it somewhere soon. i'm moving, everything not tacked down is going in a box! lol.

When I make a soup or stew or casserole or something like that, I weigh out the ingredients for same and write it down. Then, I check what the recipe says for how many servings or if that isn't available, I decide what a reasonable filling portion would be, and then when my recipe is cooked, I divide it into portions, usually into ZipLoc containers. Once you know how many portions the recipe makes, then you can do the math on the calories.

It helps that the software I use has a recipe section, though it could be better.

Since it is just me and hubby, I find that it's easier to have everything portioned out, rather than serving out of the pot. We eat our portion and if we are still hungry, we can have more veggies.

For me, if it's something I won't be eating often, I just go to my favorite calorie counting site and do a search for it and try to find similar items. For example, I made potato soup and I didn't want to enter it all into a calculator so I searched and decided it couldn't be any worse than Panera's potato soup I found listed, so I just entered that. It's not exact, but I go by the motto "when in doubt, overestimate" so I do fine that way. If you're one to underestimate, you might want to just do the recipe calculator thing.

I use DietPower to enter all my calories. For recipes I use often, DPs "create a recipe" works great. I also like the site mentioned above caloriecount.about for calculating calorie count for my recipes. And the allrecipes.com site has nearly every recipe you have ever made with the nutrition info included. For those meals that I may not use regularly or for a meal I may have had as a guest, I also just get as close as I can using generic lists from my software program or caloriecount and I also estimate on the high side. I think in order to be successful I need to be able to enjoy my family recipes and not be restricted to individual foods eaten separately because the calorie count is easy. Thank goodness the technology is there to do this quickly.

Thanks for all your helpful suggestions! I'm finally ready to get started on my calorie counting journey. This is especially SCARY for me as I'm just coming off of 14 weeks with Bistro MD (frozen meal delivery program) and didnt' have to worry about cooking healthy for myself.

I've bought about 6 really good cookbooks and have outlined the next 7 days meal plan. I'll be shopping for missing ingredients today and reorganizing my kitchen to get ready for all this gourmet cookin!

Thanks again

I either:

list each individual item (if it is something simple- say a stew with meat, potatoes, and veggies). If I used 1 lb chicken, 4 potatoes, and 2 cups of veggies and it made 4 servings, I will enter 1/4 lb chicken, 1 potato, and 1/2 cup veggies (don't forget to add in any sauces or oils).

But, if it is something more complex, I will go to a recipe converter and let it figure out the nutrients for me. Most calorie counting programs allow you to enter custom foods, so I add it there.

Or, if I don't have the time for those methods, I will find a similar prepared food. If I make a bowl of chili, I will just find chili and use that. Not exact and I wouldn't recommend to do that often, but it works in a bind.