How to Count the Calories of Dinners or Lunches

Counting calories is of utmost importance when you want to lose weigh, but you might find it difficult to calculate the exact number of calories in each ingredient. While every food ingredient comes with nutritional facts, the number of calories listed is per serving. If you're not using the exact serving amount, calculating calories can seem difficult.

Things You'll Need

• Measuring cup
• Scale

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Instructions

• 1

  When eating out, look on the menu or ask a manager. Some restaurants list the calories in a dinner or lunch meal, while at others you may have to ask the manager or server.

• 2

  If you're cooking, examine the nutrition label of each piece of food or ingredient you plan to use. Nutrition labels are often on the back of the packaging. Look at the "calories" and "serving size." The "calorie" number is per serving.

• 3

  Weigh and measure everything you add to your meal. Write down each measurement.

• 4

  Calculate the number of calories you will consume. For example, if you added even serving sizes of each ingredient, then you would take the number of calories in each serving size and add them up. If you added uneven serving sizes, you would take the number of calories in one serving size and divide it by the serving size. For example, if there are 200 calories per 28 grams in a certain ingredient, you would take 200 divided by 28 to find that there are 7.14 calories per gram. Take that number times the number of grams you used to find the total number of calories for that ingredient.