You know how to count calories for individual foods like oatmeal and peanut butter but how do you calculate calories in homemade food? 

Let’s say you have a recipe like lasagna or chicken casserole.

Are you really supposed to enter in each individual ingredient and serving size…

EVERY.

SINGLE.

TIME?! 

Fortunately for you, there’s an easier way, which is what I’ll be showing you in this post.

We’re going to talk through how to calculate calories in homemade food and then log those recipes in MyFitnessPal.

How to count calories from food correctly

Before we dive into specifics about counting calories in recipes and homemade food, I do just want to say one thing first.  

I know I linked to this in article the intro but it’s so important I want you to have that link again:

How to Count Calories (a Detailed Guide)

Reading through that is the first step if you’ve never counted calories before or want a quick refresher. 

You need to get the fundamentals down on counting calories before even thinking about how to calculate calories in homemade food.

So please please please don’t skip that step 

In that article I go over:

• How to read nutrition labels
• Weighing out your food correctly
• Using MyFitnessPal to log everything so you can track your nutrition

So basically…You’ll come away knowing how to count calories the right way, which will make maintaining your calorie deficit and achieving permanent weight loss much, much, MUCH easier.  

The very last thing you want to do is find yourself in a situation where you’re not losing weight but have no idea why. 

But if that’s where you are right now–counting calories but still struggling to lose weight–I have some good news and bad news for you…

Bad news first.

You’re not counting calories correctly.

Good news.

The mistakes you’re probably making are easily fixable and once you do correct them, you’ll start seeing more consistent weight loss.

Here are 5 of the more common ones:

• Not using a food scale: The most accurate way to count calories is to weigh out your food in grams (keyword: GRAMS). Cups, measuring spoons, or maybe even worse, trying to eyeball or estimate your portion sizes, won’t get the job done. 
• Not logging all the quick snacks, extra bites, nibbles, and sips you take throughout the day: Yes, every time you walk by your coworker’s desk and grab a handful of M&M’s, those count as calories. If it goes in your mouth (get your mind out of the gutter 😂), you need to account for it.
• Not tracking cooking oils or liquid calories: This includes your daily Starbucks coffee in the morning and alcohol (which contains 7 calories per gram). 
• Measuring meats cooked as opposed to raw: You should be weighing foods out like chicken, beef, etc prior to cooking it. This also goes for foods like pasta and rice (weigh out dry). 
• Neglecting to count calories on the weekend: The weekends aren’t a free-for-all cheat day hall pass to just eat whatever. Calories still count, even if you want to pretend that they don’t.  

We cool with all that?

Sweeeeet.

Now let’s walk through how to calculate calories in homemade food and log it in MyFitnessPal.

How to count calories in a recipe

This example comes from a staple meal in my diet.

It’s a burrito recipe I got from “stealth_health_life” on Instagram.

Make sure to give him a follow if you aren’t already! 

You won’t regret it.

This dude has A TON of macro-friendly, high-protein recipes you’ll definitely want to add to your diet for easier fat loss.  

First step on how to calculate calories in homemade food–go into MyFitnessPal and click the “More” icon with the three little dots above it in the bottom right-hand corner.

I’ve circled in red what I’m talking about in the screenshot below:

Then, click on the option where it says something like “My Meals, Recipes & Food.”

Click “Create a Recipe” at the bottom then select the option to “Enter Ingredients Manually.”

Give a name to your recipe and enter the number of servings it has. 

For our example, this burrito recipe serves 6, so you would enter a 6 here. 

Or let’s say you’re making a lasagna recipe that serves 4, you would put a 4 here.

Go through and manually enter all your ingredients using the search bar. 

Once you have all your ingredients done, your screen should look something like this:

Click to the next screen.

You’ll be brought to a screen that has your recipe title, how many servings your recipe has, and all the nutrition information.

You can then simply save your recipe by clicking the “Save” button.

Now, let’s say you want to log this recipe for dinner.

From your diary screen in MyFitnessPal, scroll down to dinner, click “Add Food,” then “My Recipes” under the search bar, and find the homemade food you want.

If you click into the meal, you can adjust the number of servings if necessary (I.e. let’s say instead of one burrito, you decide to have 2, then you would just enter a 2 for the number of servings).

But there you have it, that’s really all there is to it regarding how to calculate calories in homemade food.  

Now it’s your turn!

Make a trip to the grocery store, get all your ingredients, and practice using MyFitnessPal to enter in recipes.  

 

Counting calories in homemade food FAQs

What happens when you can’t weigh out your food 

Having a food scale with you at all times is unrealistic (not to mention a little weird 😂). 

Let’s say you’re eating at a friend’s house. 

Unless you ask them for the exact recipe, which you probably don’t want to do, you won’t be able to calculate calories in homemade food. 

What happens then?

First thing…

Don’t just throw your hands in the air and say screw it because you can’t be perfect. 

You don’t have to be perfect with this 24/7, 365. 

You just have to be consistent. 

Second thing…

Simply follow the “one plate’ rule. 

You divide your plate up so that you have ½ veggies, ¼  protein, and ¼ carbs. 

 

When counting calories, should your food be raw or cooked?

Weighing your food out raw is the most accurate way to count calories.

Meats are a big example of this.

Let’s say you want to count the calories in chicken breast. 

Well, cooking that chicken breast strips it of its water content. 

So even though you’re only actually eating, let’s say, 4 grams of chicken breast cooked, it’s higher than that in its raw form (as it contains more water).

 

How do you calculate calories in foods without labels?

This can be the case with fruits, veggies, etc but sometimes, there might not always be a nutrition label letting you know how many calories a particular food has.

Again, you can’t always be perfect but you have to make do with what you have.

Here’s how you make do…

Let’s say you’re eating an apple. 

Search for that in MyFitnessPal and choose the best option you can find (Sometimes there will be a description in there like medium-sized apple, large apple, and so on). 

For the option you choose, try to find one with a green checkmark next to it if possible.

A green checkmark in MyFitnessPal indicates the information has been verified.

Then, if you’re not having the whole thing, just weigh out your food in grams to be as accurate as possible with counting your calories. 

 

How do you calculate calories in restaurant food?

If you’re eating in the comfort of your own home, it’s easy to calculate calories in homemade food. 

But eating out at restaurants is another story.

First off, don’t look at eating out as this big no-no you should avoid for fear it’ll screw up your metabolism and prevent you from losing weight, or anything like that.  

You can definitely still fit eating out into your diet and see tremendous weight loss progress. 

THIS GUIDE will show you how.

But in terms of counting calories, a lot of restaurants will have nutritional information in MyFitnessPal.

If you were to search for Burger King, for example, you can go directly to their menu and log the food items you want:

If you can’t find any viable options in MyFitnessPal, some restaurants will post their nutritional information online. 

You can simply google something like: *insert restaurant of your choice* nutrition facts.

I actually just did this the other day.

My family and I were having Mission Barbecue and I found a PDF online with all their nutrition information:

Once you get the calorie amount, you can just use the Quick-Add feature to log the number of calories it is in MyFitnessPal.

If all else fails and you can’t find a match for the food you want, just find a comparable food from a similar restaurant and log that.