Food diary help needed

Are you asking about how to count carbs or how to keep concise notes of your carb counting?

I personally keep a spreadsheet of portion size, calories, carbs, protein, and fat.

In terms of carb counting, I subtract fiber and only count 50% of the carbs from sugar alcohol.

Hopefully this helps

Get hold of a copy or the app for Carbs & Cals. It's brilliant and shows you in pictures everything you could possibly eat and drink and the carb, cals, protein,fat and fibre content.

I hope this answers your question.

It's going to take a while to work out the carbs in that little lot, but you should get close with the help of Carbs & Cals.

I've heard good reports about this website:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/mynd/myrecipes/welcome?returnto=/mynd/myrecipes

RYU said:

Okay I've managed to work it out and I'm quite chuffed with myself that I did so

I used this site http://www.fatsecret.co.uk/ to get the information for each amount and then just increased it until I had the right amounts.

The entire batch looks scary figure wise until you divide it into individual servings. I'll put the figures below;

The entire batch.

Carbs 77.66g - Kcals 6693 - Fat 498.22 - Sugar 35.67 - Protein 460.69 - Fibre 22.2

Which really does sound horrifying until you break it down

individual servings

Carbs 3.98 - Kcals 334.65 - Fat 24.91 - Sugar 1.78 - Protein 23.03 - Fibre 1.11

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Nice one! And each portion is beautifully low carb.

I

RYU said:

My problems more along the lines of this. My GF cooks something she calls a breakfast muffin but she makes it in large batches which consist of:

14 eggs
3 red peppers
6 sausages
6 slices of bacon
1 chicken breast
300g of mushrooms
200g edam cheese
240g mild cheddar
240g red leicester
10 spring onions
200g freshly cured ham (not formed with water)
300ml single cream

All of which makes roughly twenty servings, and I have no idea how to work out that nutrition information.

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@RYU They sound nice - do they freeze ok and can I have the recipe please ie how long she cooks them for etc??

And please, don't worry about asking questions - it can be reallly helpful to others.

One thing not mentioned here usually is that although I find Carbs & Cals very useful, when I first started reading it I realised the introduction is based on the healthy eating NHS diet, so I ignored that bit, and then I had to ignore the first 71 pages of food. Next there are just 7 pages with comforting low carbs (cheese, Gromit!) before we plunge into puddings. Etc.
So it's all a bit of a shock at first, but well worth persevering and eventually the parts of the book that suit you will be well-thumbed and fall open conveniently. Or you could simply take the book to pieces and keep to hand the pages you use most.

I was a bit disappointed with Carbs & Cals. The only thing for which it's useful is showing newly diagnosed what they should not eat.

RYU said:

I've decided to start keeping a food diary and was filling it in and I just realised I have no idea how to work out the carbs etc if it was made from all fresh ingredients.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

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There's an app called Cook & Count that you might find useful:

http://apps.nhs.uk/app/cook-and-count-carbs/

I must admit i was a bit underwhelmed by Carb and Cals too.

It must be fabulous for type 1s to calc their insulin, but for me, at the level i need to low carb, i agree with @carol43 , it basically just shows me everything i can't eat.

I agree it's an enormous help for T1s on insulin, but now that I'm on low carb and no insulin, I find it useful as I'm still learning how to put low carb meals together.

Hi, Ryu's other half here. Here's the recipe for the breakfast muffin tray bake. When I was done, this made twenty portions.

To reheat from frozen, each portion needs 5-7 minutes in a 800w microwave. From chilled about a minute will do.

Breakfast Bake

Ingredients:

14 eggs
3 red peppers
6 sausages
6 slices of bacon
1 chicken breast
300g of mushrooms
200g edam cheese
240g mild cheddar
240g red leicester
10 spring onions (I only used the green parts. The white ends I used for a different meal.)
200g freshly cured ham (not formed with water)
300ml single cream

Method:

1 - Dice the peppers, spring onions, bacon, sausages, ham, and mushrooms. Place each in a separate container.

2 - Grate all the cheese into one container.

3 - Cook the chicken however you like. Dice and place in another container.

4 - Crack all the eggs into a large container. Add in the cream. Season to preferences. Stir well with a fork or whisk.

5 - Cook the sausages, bacon, and mushrooms. Place in a container until cool.

6 - Once all the ingredients are cool, mix up everything except the eggs in one large container, and then place the dry mixture into a large baking tray. Spread evenly.

7 - Pour the eggs over the dry ingredients. Stir gently to make sure the eggs reach the bottom of the pan. Leave to sit for a few minutes.

8 - Place the baking tray in a pre-heated oven at approx 175-180F (78-82C) for 35-40 minutes.

9 - Poke with fork to test if the centre is cooked. If cooked, allow to cool before slicing and removing portions if you are planning to freeze them, otherwise eat, refrigerate, or have fun.

Notes -

A - I cooked everything in a non-stick pan without any kind of oil. For seasoning I added salt, white and black pepper, paprika, and garlic powder.

B - I don't know how long these will keep in the freezer, as the other half eats them too fast for them to spoil. From researching online, most agree that eggs cooked in this manner (or similar) will have a freezer life of between 3-6 months. I would go with the 3 month mark just to be safe, but honestly, having a single batch last a month in this house would be a miracle.

C - The chicken I used here was leftover from a previous meal, which was baked in the oven. In the future I'm going to try grilling, frying, and baking the chicken in other ways, to see if it tastes any better.

Hope this helped.

Thanks for the recipe - I'll try it soon and see how I get on