What's your method for tracking macros during meal prep?

[razorboomarang95]

When you cook a batch of food to last several days, how do you keep macro tracking accurate?

Take meat, for instance: it sheds water as it cooks, while rice takes on weight, so what you weigh after cooking can differ quite a bit from the raw amount. Do you work out the totals from the raw ingredients and then divide into portions, or do you weigh the finished batch and split it from there?

I'd like to know which approach you find easiest to keep up with.

 

[endlrls]

razorboomarang95 said:

When you cook a batch of food to last several days, how do you keep macro tracking accurate?

Take meat, for instance: it sheds water as it cooks, while rice takes on weight, so what you weigh after cooking can differ quite a bit from the raw amount. Do you work out the totals from the raw ingredients and then divide into portions, or do you weigh the finished batch and split it from there?

I'd like to know which approach you find easiest to keep up with.

Basically all of that... I've seen far too many "big on a budget" and "Size for 70" bodybuilding clips, and they're really useful for this.

I use Oura to log my activity and let it sync into MyFitnessPal... then, as you said, account for cooked weight versus raw and repeat...

I'm not going to log an uncooked burger as 440 calories when it then sheds nearly 2 oz of water weight and fat.. that makes no sense...

Plus, eating the way a bodybuilder does, with the same foods and macros, gives you a rough sense of how much of each thing is in a given food... but the food scale in my kitchen is what I rely on..

YMMV!

 

[momentousdunbird]

I do log my intake, though I've never bothered to subtract the fat I drain off afterward. My aim is to keep tracking simple enough that it never turns into a hassle.

If tracking is new to you, here are the 2 tips I'd give:

1. Buy a kitchen scale and leave it in or near your kitchen, ready to grab whenever you need it. Don't turn it into a chore where you have to hunt it down and pull it out. Mine lives in almost the same spot every time, tucked out of the way but still easy to reach.

2. Keep one or two go-to plates or bowls to put your food on. For instance, I have a bowl I usually use, and when I eat cereal I set that bowl on the scale, switch it on, and the bowl's weight is tared automatically (is that how you spell it?) so the reading begins at 0 grams. I also have a smaller, flat plate that doesn't block the scale's display, and I put things like chicken breast on that.

Usually, when I cook meat, I weigh only the cooked amount. That way any extra liquid or whatever I cook off and drain has a chance to run away. For me, weighing both before and after is too much trouble, so it's a trade off I'm fine with personally.

Last thing: don't get discouraged if this is your first attempt. I've been in plenty of tried-and-failed-to-stick-with-it situations, and one time it finally stuck. It gets easier the more you do it. It becomes second nature and takes no time at all. That's especially true if you eat the same things often, since you save your recipes and can quickly edit or add to them, so finding foods you like to eat regularly and sticking with those helps.

Personally I use macrofactor and have no complaints. It offers a coached program that adjusts weekly after your check in, tweaking your target calories / macros to keep you on track for your target weight / goals. One thing I like about it is the batch cooking issue you mentioned, though I'm sure all the apps cover it. You enter all the ingredients in your batch, then add the total weight and how many servings you split it into. So it gives you your serving size, and even when I don't divide it into exactly those same portions because of my meal prep containers, I just weigh the serving. So even though the serving size for a meal might be 590g, my split might be 650 when I eat it the first time, then the rest of my containers are around 540, so it takes that into account; serving size is more of a convenience thing. I mostly stick to just weighing things in grams and use that most of the time

 

[Troposphere]

momentousdunbird said:

I do log my intake, though I've never bothered to subtract the fat I drain off afterward. My aim is to keep tracking simple enough that it never turns into a hassle.

If tracking is new to you, here are the 2 tips I'd give:

1. Buy a kitchen scale and leave it in or near your kitchen, ready to grab whenever you need it. Don't turn it into a chore where you have to hunt it down and pull it out. Mine lives in almost the same spot every time, tucked out of the way but still easy to reach.

2. Keep one or two go-to plates or bowls to put your food on. For instance, I have a bowl I usually use, and when I eat cereal I set that bowl on the scale, switch it on, and the bowl's weight is tared automatically (is that how you spell it?) so the reading begins at 0 grams. I also have a smaller, flat plate that doesn't block the scale's display, and I put things like chicken breast on that.

Usually, when I cook meat, I weigh only the cooked amount. That way any extra liquid or whatever I cook off and drain has a chance to run away. For me, weighing both before and after is too much trouble, so it's a trade off I'm fine with personally.

Last thing: don't get discouraged if this is your first attempt. I've been in plenty of tried-and-failed-to-stick-with-it situations, and one time it finally stuck. It gets easier the more you do it. It becomes second nature and takes no time at all. That's especially true if you eat the same things often, since you save your recipes and can quickly edit or add to them, so finding foods you like to eat regularly and sticking with those helps.

Personally I use macrofactor and have no complaints. It offers a coached program that adjusts weekly after your check in, tweaking your target calories / macros to keep you on track for your target weight / goals. One thing I like about it is the batch cooking issue you mentioned, though I'm sure all the apps cover it. You enter all the ingredients in your batch, then add the total weight and how many servings you split it into. So it gives you your serving size, and even when I don't divide it into exactly those same portions because of my meal prep containers, I just weigh the serving. So even though the serving size for a meal might be 590g, my split might be 650 when I eat it the first time, then the rest of my containers are around 540, so it takes that into account; serving size is more of a convenience thing. I mostly stick to just weighing things in grams and use that most of the time

That's basically the approach I took. I'd feed the recipe to Google Gemini, and then at mealtime I'd weigh out my portion and let it work out the calories and macros.

From what you're describing, macrofactor seems to offer the same thing. Being able to do this was a total game changer for me. Previously I'd prep every ingredient on its own, weigh it while assembling the meal, and then log each one in a calorie counter. That was incredibly tedious.

It's far simpler to stay on plan when you can cook a big batch of food and then just weigh out one serving.

 

[Shittersfull]

You're overcomplicating it and making it harder than necessary. Being slightly off is fine, as long as you stay consistent. I prep for the whole week. I use the weight listed on the chicken breast package when I buy it. I cook all of them and eat all of them over the week. Total weight ÷7= average weight of chicken breast for the week.

 

[Skidude]

I don’t do formal meal prep, but I’d cook a big batch and spread it across 3-4 meals (sort of pseudo meal prep).

My approach was simple averaging: if the whole thing came to 1200 calories and made 4 meals, I’d log 300 per meal and aim to stay near that.

On top of that, I set my target a few hundred calories below what I actually wanted, so sloppy measurements wouldn’t throw things off.