So one of my main health goals right now (which I hope will contribute greatly to my weight loss) is to phase processed food out of my life. Now, that is cutting out a lot of what I've eaten most of my life. Even when I`ve been eating "sensibly" I would eat some frozen lunches, stir fries, canned veggies, etc. Quick easy meals.
Okay, so cooking meals from scratch with fresh produce is already super time consuming (esp. since I'm so new at it) but to top it all off, I am having a much more difficult time tracking my calories. I miss the little numbers on the side of the boxes!!
Obviously it's easy enough to count an apple, a banana and a cup of oatmeal, but some meals aren't so easy. Take tonight's dinner for example: stirfry.
I am trying to track things on FitDay and I'm just logging and logging forever! 4 button mushrooms, one small onion, some green pepper, some carrot, some broccoli, some garlic, etc, etc. Not only is this crazy time consuming, but I'm almost 100% sure it's not going to be accurate in the end anyway. Should I measure by the tablespoon? Not use so many vegetables? Go crazy?
Seriously though, at what point do you just throw up your hands and say "probably about 200 calories of vegetables and a chicken breast?"
I do not like fitday. That said...I use calorie count dot com to enter my recipes and get serving size, calorie count AND sodium count. It's extremely easy. All you have to do is enter your ingredients, and enter how many servings you want to get out of it and VIOLA! (You should have a food scale or measuring cups to know how much your using.)
I find this easier than eating the pre-packaged, canned junk. I just made 3 different entries all in one day (Shepherd's Pie, Indian Makhani Chicken and Jamaican Curry Chicken)...they made 22 meals!!! I don't have to cook for another 3 weeks and I know EXACTLY how many calories each meal has.
Soooo...now I don't have to count everyday (with the exception of breakfast and snack). Makes things really simple. You do have to do the work initially of entering in your recipes though, but it's totally worth it...especially if you decide to make the same dish over again...your recipe can be saved!
I have some standards on Fitday in my Food Explorer. I enter all the ingredients once and can then pull it up for my Daily Menu. I have a couple of Stir fries in there and recipes like 3-beans salad and Mother's Meatloaf or my standard breakfast of Fibre 1, berries and sf yogurt.
Haha, yes, exactly! I want to be honest with my counting without going overboard!
What's really crazy is that I never thought to count olive oil before you mentioned it. I guess I didn't think of it as a food, exactly? Pretty important considering how high cal. it is. Much more important than each and every slice of every slice of vegetable. Thanks!
Ooops, when I posted that last response only seagirl had responded.
I like the idea of having saved meals. I've also been thinking about making big batches and saving them, so maybe I should look into switching sites. I was tracking things manually (in a daily planner) but I liked the idea of spreadsheets I could look back on. I'm still not sure if fitday is going to work out for me in the long term.
Most of my time here I did WW because the same thing, salad 0 pts . But always love the idea of CC . I was thinking on not count the veggies
But I like to track my fiber . So I star CC 1 week ago
( I know, I know again CC) but not I am not driving my self crazy , I just log 1 slice tomato instea before 13g tomato, I use to weight everything
Now I still weight but no the small things like pepper, onions , garlic, or even lettuce , I just log like 1/2 or a piece.
That little change have made the different for me.
I put in the whole recipe as a custom food in FitdayPC and the first time I make it I measure how many cups it makes. Then the next time I make it I can just go "1 cup Crockpot Turkey Pasta" and I know what that was -- the veggie turkey tomato sauce stuff on noodles.
Ish, I feel your pain! I also find logging "raw ingredients" time consuming and not always accurate. Lots of good advice here though.
Where my problem usually arises is making a recipe for the family, not just me. Then I also need to estimate how many servings there are, and what my portion was. Not that easy with all foods, especially if I'm not following an exact recipe. So I try to overestimate slightly for any high calorie items like meat or olive oil, and not worry too much about the veggies. When DH does the cooking, as he does much of the time, then I'm even more lost - and that's often when I fall off the CC wagon.
It's good to come here though for all the encouragement and reinforcement about the importance of accuracy and measurement! Is there a mantra for that?
I do one of two things: Either I pick out a few items I think represent the calorie profile of the meal - for example, oil, chicken, broccoli and then increase broccoli to represent all the veggies - or I find a pre-programmed meal that is similar and just use that for an estimate.
also, don't feel like it has to be all fresh and perfect all the time. i love to get those frozen bags of veggies. all mixed and ready for stir fry, they just don't have the sauce or rice. it's just veggies. plus buying fresh all the time, gets expensive. it is winter after all. not much is in season.
I use an electronic food scale. On the side of my fridge, I have a magnetic white board. I cut up the food, give it a weigh and toss it in the pan and jot down the weight on the board. It takes only seconds. After the meal, I enter the info in my nutritional program and if it is something I know I will make again, I enter it as a saved meal. Even if I change the amounts of the individual ingredients, I can use the saved meal again and just adjust the amounts, add or subtract ingredients.
These things get so much easier to enter over time and the ease depends on how you build up the software database with the foods and meals you like to eat. I have mine programed to auto copy my everyday foods like coffee, tea, soda pop, my standard breakfast, lunch and dinner and the end of the day, I go in a adjust, add or delete to accurately reflect what I consumed for the day. I have made numerous "combined foods" that I eat, so I don't have to select the individual ingredients, such as coffee with cream, eggs cooked in butter, or even the typical side salad I eat at dinner time complete with dressing. My program also creates recipes, so I can use the name of the recipe (and the serving amount) and not have to count the individual ingredients all the time. This works great for my curries and sauces.
Most electronic scales have a tare, which means you can put a bowl or plate on the scale, hit a button to remove the weight of the container, add a food, mark that weight down, tare it out, add the next ingredient...and so on. Great when preparing a salad or making combined meals.
Last edited by martinimouse; 02-09-2011 at 09:57 AM.
Probably the Only Benefit of Processed Food
