Tracking food raw vs cooked

I often see my clients make the mistake of tracking cooked food as raw. However, because the weight of your food changes when you cook it, the macros will be different, too.

For example, here are rough macros for:

6oz raw chicken breast = 53g Pro, 0g Carbs, 8g Fat

6oz cooked chicken breast = 70g Pro, 0g Carb, 10g Fat

(This is because 6oz cooked starts out as ~8oz raw.)

Fruits, veggies and most meats in your App will give you macros for the RAW form. For example, if it just says “broccoli,” it means raw broccoli. If it just says “chicken breast,” it means raw chicken breast. If you are using these App entries but weighing COOKED, you are not tracking correctly (the macros will be different). If you want to track items cooked, you just have to type “cooked” next to that food to pull up those options. (There will likely be a few options to pick from, and it may be hard to choose one that applies exactly to how you prepared your food. If you are new to tracking, just chose the entry that seems to match what you’re eating the most.)

Also as an FYI – when you’re looking at nutrition labels, those macros are for the form the food is in in the package (raw meat, dry pasta or rice, frozen meals or produce, etc).

So back to the question: Is it better to track your foods raw or cooked?

The answer depends on what you’re going to stick with during this process.

If you’re meal prepping or cooking larger portions ahead of time, then tracking cooked will be easier. However, raw will always be more accurate.

Tracking your foods raw will be more accurate because cooking changes the weight of foods in so many ways. Some foods increase in weight with cooking (like pasta or rice), others decrease in weight (most meats). Even the same food week to week can change. Maybe you cook your rice with more water one week, or add more salt to your chicken another week – these things can change the accuracy of the macros if you’re weighing foods after they’re cooked. Even if it’s the same food, grilling, steaming, boiling, and baking can all yield different weights. 

However, it’s completely okay to weigh your food after it’s cooked, and that is going to be easier and quicker in most situations. Just make sure the entry in your app says cooked (or steamed, broiled, baked, grilled, etc), too!

Want the best of both worlds? Here’s how to cook ahead of time AND track raw weights. Just do a little math!

Example:

1. Let’s say each day you want to add the macros for 6oz of raw chicken to your daily totals to help hit your protein goal. You’ll need 6 x 7 = 42 oz of RAW chicken.

2. Now that you have the total ounces needed, weigh it out and cook all of it.

3. After cooking, weigh all of the cooked chicken to find a new total weight. It will likely be less than 42 oz as chicken loses water weight during cooking. (Separately track any oil, sauce or seasoning used.)

4. Now divide that total weight by 7. This is your new weight for each portion size. However, still track it in your app as 6oz RAW chicken because you have now accounted for the weight change from cooking.

You can also use the “Recipe” feature in whichever App you choose to track with.

To keep this section short, I again want to recommend jumping onto YouTube and searching for things like “Entering foods into Cronometer” or “How to make Recipes on MyFitnessPal” to help you navigate all of those features.