How to Calculate the Macros of a Recipe using MyFitnessPal

Need help calculating the macros of your very own recipes? It can seem tedious, and even overwhelming at first, but we assure you it’s actually quite simple. And the great news is you only have to do it once and it’s saved forever! Today we will guide you, step by step through how to calculate the macros of your very own recipes using MyFitnessPal.

How to make a recipe in MFP

Follow the directions below for when you’re making something in bulk or a one-pot meal with multiple ingredients:​​​​​​​

1. Starting on the MFP home screen, click “More” in the bottom right corner:

2. Next click on “Meals, Recipes & Foods”

3. Click on the blue box at the bottom “Create a Recipe”

4. From the next screen that pops up, click on the second option “Enter Ingredients Manually”

5. On the next screen we will name our recipe & enter the number of servings. We need to wait to find out how much the recipe weighs AFTER it’s cooked, so for now just enter “1” and we will update this later. Then click on the arrow in the upper right corner (circled blue in the picture below)

6. Now we weigh whatever dish we are using for cooking. For my recipe, I am using my Instant Pot, so the weight of my empty stainless steel pot is 825 g. Weigh the empty pot & write it down somewhere you can find later. TIP: Coach Krista has a cheat sheet of bowls & dish weights that she keeps taped to the inside of one of her kitchen cabinets so she doesn’t have to weigh her pots and pans every time she makes a new recipe.

7. Now we weigh and add our recipe’s ingredients BEFORE we cook them. 

8. To enter the ingredients, click on the black box “Add Ingredients” and the following screen will pop up. You can search for the item in the search bar OR scan the UPC code 

9. Once you find each ingredient, verify that the nutritional information is correct. Below is the entry I’m using for chicken breast:

10. To make it easier to input the chicken, I adjusted the serving size of the chicken since I am going to be using 28 oz chicken:

11. I then add in the rest of my ingredients. When I am finished, I click on the top right arrow: 

12. Click “Save”:

13. Now we cook our recipe! Once it’s done cooking, we can now go back into MFP and adjust our recipe to the correct number of servings. We always suggest adding the servings based on how many grams of food the recipe made. 

14.  Take the stainless steel pot out of the IP and weigh the pot — food and all — on your scale. Since we initially measured our IP pot in grams, weigh the pot + cooked food in grams as well. 

15. Now some math: subtract the weight of your cooked food + pot MINUS the weight of the pot. For this recipe, my recipe and pot weighed 1,879 grams. My IP pot weighs 825 grams, so that leaves me with 1,054 grams of Salsa Chicken. 

16. Now we log back into MFP and click on the “Edit Recipe” button:

17. After clicking “Edit Recipe”, the “Add Ingredient” screen will pop up. Click the arrow in the top right corner; on the next screen we will edit the servings to the total amount of Salsa Chicken that was made, 1054 grams:

18. Click “Save” again, and your entry is ready! Now when you are ready to add it to your diary, you can adjust the servings to how many grams you plan on eating; the picture below shows how you’d enter in 150 grams of Salsa Chicken:

When you roast veggies with added oil, it’s a great idea to make your own custom recipe so you can account for the added oil. Follow below to see the recipe I made for roasted broccoli:

1. Follow steps 1 through 12 above.  In the picture below you can see how the 2 ingredients are broccoli & olive oil 

2. Just as we did with the Salsa Chicken, I then cook the broccoli and go back and update the serving size (how many grams of cooked broccoli I am left with) and update the MFP entry: 

This is a great option to do for foods you cook often; I have entries for roasted broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, sweet potatoes, jasmine rice and pasta.

Making a recipe in MFP by importing a recipe from the web function:

You can use this feature if you want to change several ingredients in a recipe. For the example below, I will import SFM No Bean Turkey Chili and swap out ground turkey for ground beef:

1. Follow steps #1 – 3 from the above “How to Make a Recipe in MFP” directions.
2. Click on “Add from the Web”

3. This screen below will pop up next. The arrow is pointing to the spot where we will add the website’s URL address.

4.  I will then briefly close down MFP and find my recipe URL from my web browser. I will copy it and then re-open MFP and add it into the MFP search bar (circled below). Once you add the recipe URL in, click “Go”

5. The recipe will pop up in the MFP screen; click on the “Import Recipe” button

6. The next screen shows the ingredients imported from the website. Click on the arrow at the top right side (circled below):

7.  On the next screen, MFP matches the ingredients into their recipe builder. This is where I like to double check to make sure all the entries seem legit and make sense. 

8.  Now for this example, I am going to swap out ground turkey (which is in the original recipe) for ground beef. I first need to delete the ground turkey; click on the ground turkey entry and swipe left. That will pop up a “Delete” button for you to remove from the recipe. 

9. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and press the “Add Ingredient”: 

10. Find your ground beef entry (shown circled in picture below). Once it’s added to the list of ingredients, click on the arrow in the upper righthand corner (circled in picture below): 

11. Now you can rename your recipe & change the serving size, just as we discussed in the first part of this blog. Click the blue “Save” button, and your custom recipe will be saved in MFP for you to use! 

Prefer watching a video to learn how to make a recipe? 

Watch & follow along to Coach Krista make a recipe here and here.

Follow along with Coach Krista on Tik Tok –  

Log your Recipe Part 1  &

Log your Recipe Part 2​​​​​​​

Want to enjoy delicious home cooked meals without the stress of calculating the macros? We’ve got you there too! Check out of macro cookbooks below (available in digital and hard copy) and enjoy some great meals that already have the macro calculations figured out for you. Bonus: all of these recipes are pre logged in MyFitnessPal too! Just search the food database for Stay Fit Mom, followed by the recipe name.