Hi Everyone, I hope you don't mind me jumping right on in. I'm not new to 3FC but I am new to calorie counting... so I thought I would join you all. I'm Traci, 36 years old, mom to 4 girls (18, 15, 11 and 11months) and grandma to a little 6month old girl.

To make my long story short, my highest known weight was 278, I'm sure I was above that even but at the time I didn't own a scale. I did Atkins for a while, lost 70ish pounds only to realize I could never live that life style in the long run and ended gaining it all back. When starting my 2008 weight loss journey I weighed in at 239 and thought I would take the calorie counting approach.

I do have a question for you all right off the bat. Say I'm making spaghetti. I know all the ingrediants I put in to it. I can add everything up and find out the calories etc for the entire pot, but how do I figure out the size for the serving? Say I want to make 1cup of sauce the serving size, but then how do I know how many cups are in the entire pot to divide the values by.. do I have to measure out the pot of sauce with a measuring cup or is there an easier way all together that I just don't know about Geesh I hope that made sense.

Anyway, I look forward to getting to know you all!

I had this problem tonight when I made some chicken soup. I knew how much I put in and then had to measure the whole pot of soup into another bowl so I would know how many servings were there. I hear there is a site where you can put your recipe in and it calculates it but I couldn't find it. I thought it was the daily plate but I looked there...I dunno... Anyways, welcome!

Right now I'm using Fitday PC. With that I can add the individual ingrediants as well and it's very handy for finding out the "total" values, I'm just having a hard time finding the individual serving size since I don't know the total ounces or cups of the entire pot. Like you I had to take my 1 cup measuring cup and measure it out into a different container

My fiance made this unnecessarily complicated Excel spreadsheet for our calorie counting, so I just tell him what I ate and let him handle it, haha. Of course, I WAS the one who introduced him to it!

Also- I'm new, too, and we have the same wedding goal weight!

Hi Traci and Welcome!

I would take one of two approaches on the sauce. If it is a big pot, then I would just keep track of the ingredients going in and estimate how many cups the final pot is. Don't forget that this does not need to be an exact science.

Other time, I will pour out the ingredients into a serving bowl and weigh it on my food scale.

For either approach, I strongly recommend that you get yourself a good food scale.

Best of luck

Lori

When I make a new recipe I add it to Fitday as a custom food. Say I make a pot of spaghetti sauce - I figure out how maany total servings it is and divide by that to figure out how many calories my serving was. Next time, I have it in my custom foods to choose from. I would prolly do the pasta separate just because it's easier for me that way. A lot of times I save the serving size in the custom food name so I remember later. i.e Spaghetti sauce (1 cup)

today i made whole wheat spaghetti with a bottled sauce. i read the labels and it's got good stuff none of that crazy stuff you can't pronounce i also paid close attention to serving size, which i hadn't done before. woah! i thought the serving size was a lot less than what it is, but in fact, it's just right! duh! i guess the food people do know a thing or too i did find it difficult to figure out 2 oz of spaghetti but i divided the servings and gave it the good ole college try at guessing. i'm happily full.

sorry for ranting, i had to share with someone though

I do the pouring it into bowls, weighing in on my digital scale then write it down on the bottom of the recipes for future reference. I put the servings in grams, and oz, and sometimes I write down the bowl I used so I can just grab that bowl next time. It's a bit of work, but only for the first time.

Ranting is ALWAYS allowed, rakuette. Chances are - there a buncha other people going thru the exact same feelings.

Thanks for the great advice. At least I know I was on the right track. I hadn't thought about weighing it on the scale though... I'll try that approach tonight for our Chili.