For example: I’m currently breastfeeding, and I know that my body requires extra calories because of that to be able to produce enough/ quality milk. My husband makes me chicken salad from scratch, but I’m curious how to figure out a calorie amount to ensure it’s actually enough for a meal. Would I go by weight of the ingredients and then add them up? Or is it more scientific than that? EDIT: thank you all so much for the quick responses! I really appreciate it!!!
Have your husband weigh/calculate the quantity of each ingredient he adds to the salad. If he is making it in bulk, take the total of each ingredient and divide it by the serving size. Then you can input all of this information into MyFitnessPal/Cronometer or similar.
MyFitnessPal (paid version) allows you to upload a recipe that it will break down for you. If you want to stick to the free version, you can look up “chicken salad” and it will show a number of entries. That can give you a good idea of the average values.
Weigh all the ingredients and add them in a recipe on MyFitnessPal. Them weigh the total portion and put this as number of servings. Weigh the portion you are going to eat and add this amount in servings from the recipe.
I weigh whatever pot/pan I’m cooking the dish in, and then weigh it afterwards with the entire dish in it. In food tracking apps you can add the weights of food into a collective recipe, which will give you the total nutritional info of the recipe.
For example, if I’m cooking some yellow rice, I’ll add the nutrition for 1 cup of brown rice, 200g of frozen green peas, 100g of shallots, and a tablespoon of olive oil. I’ll weigh the pot I’m cooking it in, and weigh it again after I finish cooking with the rice in it.