How many calories in steak?
 

I've looked all over the internet, and I can't figure out how many calories 2-3 cups of thinly sliced steak is. Can someone help? I'm trying to count calories. Sorry I don't know the type of cut the steak was.

Steak cuts vary so tremendously in calories, it's almost impossible to estimate calories without knowing the cut and the approximate weight of the steak.

Volume measurements are tough because the calories would depends on how thinly the steak was cut, as that would change how much would fit into a cup. It also depends on whether you're estimating a loosely or tightly packed cup.

Even the cooking method and whether the meat was cooked to rare or well-done and whether or not the steak was marinated (and if so, what was in the marinade), all can affect calorie count. Although the cut of steak and the weight of the steak would have the most impact on the calories.

Literally, the calorie count could come to anywhere from 350 - 2000 calories.

(It's not a typo, I really did say three hundred and fifty to two thousand calories).

A food scale really is tremendously helpful, because then you don't have to deal with the issue of how tightly the food would be packed into a measuring cup.

And you don't have to spend a ton of money, sometimes you can even find food scales in dollar stores. They're not as accurate as a higher quality scales of course, but they're still a lot better than eyeballing.

I like to weigh food because I know that it's impossible for any food to have more than 9 calories per gram (or 250 calories per ounce), so I always know the upper limit.

And if it doesn't feel greasy or doesn't leave a translucent stain on a piece of printer paper I also know that it probably doesn't have more than 4 to 5 calories per gram (because fat leaves a grease stain that pure protein and carbs generally don't. Collagen/gelatin from meat with bones can be a little tricky because it does feel like fat in the mouth, but it's not that often that you're dealing with whole joints of meat anyway).

One of the reasons I switched to an exchange plan was because of the difficulty in counting meat calories. In exchange plans meats are fairly simple - one ounce usually is one protein. If it's medium fat (you can taste and see fat, but it doesn't taste greasy) for every ounce of meat, you also count one fat exchange as well, and if it feels/tastes greasy you count one more fat. If there's more fat than meat (like bacon) then you count 1 ounce of fat as 3-4 fat exchanges.

I know that doesn't help you. I just got carried away in explaining.

Thank you. I was going to get a scale eventually. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. The meat was super tender, very thin, a little greasy, not fatty, and was not cooked in oil. Only spices were added.

Personally, I'd estimate it as 500 or 600 and move on. Even if it's way off, one error isn't a big deal in the scheme of things (although little errors can add up fast).

It takes 3500 calories to affect your weight loss by one pound. So even if you're wrong it means you will have lost at most a half pound or so less than you would have if you'd been more acurate.