Happy new year to the BBM crew
In an effort to make sustainable lifestyle changes around cooking and eating, I’ve resolved to become a better cook. However, I’m running into the challenge of figuring out macro nutrients within cookbook recipes. Do you have any tips for going about doing this?
thanks for your time,
Tim
Happy new year, TIm. What kind of problems are you running into? The most exact way to do this is to calculate a full recipe and then divide that by the number of servings. And if you use MyFitnessPal, you can do this will the recipe function. Or you can find a recipe close to what you’re making that is already in the database and call it close.
Hi Leah, my main issue I guess is not knowing how to calculate a full recipe. I was thinking I would just weigh everything out and then divide that number by whatever the serving size the recipe gives like you say (if I understand that correctly … ie: “feeds 4”), but everything weighs different after you cook it, so I wasn’t sure
Got it! So if you weigh and log everything raw, that is great. You would then divide those totals by the number of servings you divide the final product into. And yes, if it says something like “feeds 4”, then they assume you divide it into 4. However if you are doing your own calculations, you can divide it how you want. Doing this all PRIOR to cooking is the better choice, yes.
Oh cool, ok. So then would I need to weigh the total dish again after I cooked it and then divide, since cooking changes the weight?
Like if I made shakshuka, I would divide the tomatoes and peppers when they were raw, but then when they cooked, they would be a different weight and my raw measurements would be off
You’d only be weighing the final product in order to divide it into equal portions. That’s it. 
Ohhh I see. I’d just divide and record the portion I eat using the numbers from when everything was raw. Brilliant
Can’t wait to try this, thanks so much for your help!