When you have no fricken clue how many calories are in something??? Like my mom made homemade beef and barley soup but she didn't follow a complete recipe, she made it slightly her own. And the night before she made a garlic chicken in a kind of soupy sauce over spaghetti.

I try to keep reasonable portion sizes and not go back for seconds but I can't tell at the end of the day if I'm way over, just right, or way under my caloric goal.

How do you gauge calories in homemade food that you had no part in preparing?

Honestly, i try hard not to eat it, if I didnt make it, or I don't know the portions of things that are in it. I know that sounds hard, and there will be times when its nearly impossible, but as someone who is fairly new at this, I just don't trust my judgement. EX, last week I was trying to calculate calories in a dish I didn't prepare, but knew what was in it, when I actually calculated at home later, i was WAY under my estimation by about 300 calories... right then in there, I decided for now, I will not be eating foods I did not prepare myself.

I ask about ingredients and then guess.

Depends on how often it happens. If it's just once in a while, I'll just pull up the generic equivalents on line, and kind of pick a mid-point. Example: My friend made a pan of lasagna. So I cut myself a (very) small piece, went online, looked at everything from microwave meal (non-diet) calories, to restaurant and home-made. Estimated that my small piece was 400. Since I'm not eating it every day, even if I'm off a few hundred it's not going to be doing too bad. That and I try to guess high rather than low. =0)

I would eat the same amount that would be in like a lean cuisine and then I over estimate. You never know how much oil,etc might of been used in a recipe and there is a ton of calories in that.

Well, sometimes it is a bit of guesswork, and sometimes it is easier to breakdown the components--sometimes harder.

Lets take the chicken dish. First off, track the pasta, as that is easy. If you were lucky enough to portion that out with a measuring cup, even better. Next, the obvious ingredient is the chicken. How much was that--can you estimate a piece visually---did she leave the pieces whole or cut them up? If cut up, can you visualize a cup's worth? As to the sauce, if it is red, go with marinara sauce to count your calories--most likely the portion was less than a cup. If it is a creamy sauce, go with that. It probably had some fat added, so perhaps a teaspoon for that. Generally, you will get into the ballpark.

The beef/barley soup is a little trickier. The stock is negligible, the veg is most likely on the low side (carrots? celery? onion?) <---those are the holy trinity of soups. The barley--you count it as itself, how much do you think was in the serving---1/2 cup? 1 cup? And the beef, so long as it is recognizable, how much was in the serving? 1/2 cup? 1 cup?

Sometimes it isn't as easy as making a recipe and dividing by "X" servings to get the calories in each serving. I think for the soup, I'd go with a can of Progresso which for those with meat and veg is generally 100 to 140 calories in a 1/2 can or 1 cup. In the winter, I like to eat an entire can of Progresso for lunch and at between 200 and 280 calories per serving, its a wonderful "meal".

Currently, I'm not so worried about what I consume for dinner because I'm very very good during the day for B&L and snacks. I'm averaging 500 calories between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., which gives me a lot of leeway for my dinner meal.

I think even if you get a ballpark feel for the dinner calories, you'll be okay. Of course deciphering the calories is much easier when its a generic plate (protein/veg/starch), but you could also go to a calorie count site and key in what the dish is and see what the hits are. For instance, "beef stew" would definitely return hits at "X" calories per portion size, and you can go with that. Its not as accurate, sure, but its a good ballpark.

I do the same. I plan to do some type of calorie counting forever (unless I miraculously wake up with a different brain that allows me to accurately eyeball portion sizes). As such, I do not believe it is realistic to only eat foods for which we have exact calorie counts. This summer, I went out to eat at a fine dining restaurant at least one night a week and out to breakfast 2-3 times a week. None of these were chain restaurants, but I still lost weight just estimating those calories. Tonight, my husband and I will get take-out from a local seafood restaurant. I plan to get the fried combination seafood platter. I'll use the Red Lobster fried combo platter as my calorie count, even though I think the RL dish is more calories than the platter that I'm getting (based on what I've seen included on the RL platter). That's okay, though: I would rather overestimate than underestimate.


Another thing I do is try to figure out the individual ingredients in a dish, input into my calorie counting app an estimation of how much of each ingredient I had, and add to that a tablespoon or more of oil (depending on how fatty you think the dish is). When I do not prepare my own food, I always assume that whoever did used more fat than I would and I count it accordingly.

Thanks guys. I do try to often find equivalents online to get a more accurate ballpark as well estimating the calories/portion of certain items. I too also try to stick to lighter meals and snacks on days that I know my mom will cook. I feel like it would be too rude of me to turn up my nose at what my mom worked hard to cook because I don't know the calorie count.

Maybe I'll try to cook a meal or two a week so that I can rest assured that it fits my diet as well as letting my mom off the hook.

As for the chicken pasta dish my my mom made, it was weird. Incredibly delicious but strange. It was more of soup that was poured over the pasta. Like the chicken, veggies and garlic were simmered in chicken stock. It was probably a lot healthier than I gave it credit because the base was chicken stock as opposed to something fattier like white sauce.

Could you hang around while your mother cooks, and/or have a chat with her about how much oil etc. she uses when cooking? Come to that, would she be willing to jot down what she put into the meal for you? How often is she cooking for you anyway, are you still living with her?

Cooking a meal or two a week sounds like a good idea. It usually is when you're following a different diet from the rest of the family. I've only been dieting for seven months, but I've been vegetarian since I was 11 and vegan since I was 19, and when I visited my parents after leaving home, I would cook quite often and also get involved with the meal preparation even if I wasn't making the entire meal by myself.