I want to just stick a couple pounds of chicken in the slow cooker with other food, but I'm not sure how to weigh it so I can count my calories accurately. Any ideas?
Posted Sep 6, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC
I'm confused OP, why can't you just weigh before (raw) and after cooking (to divide into servings)? What does the cooking method have to do with it?
From what I've read for chicken you're supposed to weigh it after it's cooked because the weight changes. Is that not true?
Depends on whether you are entering the weights into your tracker as raw or as cooked. I usually go with raw because I feel it's more accurate (like overcooking will dry the chicken out and result in a lower weight since some of the moisture is lost).
I would:
weigh the ingredients before its cooked
Weigh it before by putting a bowl on the scales and zeroing the scales with the bowl, then put the chicken in
Weigh the ingredients when they go in the pot, calculate nutrition, weigh the final cooked dish and divide in to servings.
Just make sure you're calculating the chicken by raw calories rather than cooked.
adding to this when I log my recipe on MFP I will put the total end weight as my number of servings, then weigh out my desired serving every time. I only ever divide a recipe into equal servings for things like muffins, cookies, baked oatmeal.. anything that I'll be eating on my own or that already basically entails equal portions.