When weaning a child from a feeding tube, most nutritionists and doctors will want them to hit a calorie goal or calorie range.  For example, our daughter was on a feeding schedule that 960 calories by g tube every day over 18 hours.  So we knew that in order to fully wean her off of her feeding tube, she would need to hit a calorie range of 900-1000 calories a day.

I always thought I was relatively good at math, and then I started trying to count calories for my child! LOL.  Apparently my understanding of fractions and decimals had not been used in a while.  I found it relatively easy to calculate calories in items that were a whole package, a cup, or 1/2 a cup…..but when it got to be smaller than that, it was definitely more difficult.

So we are going to go over some examples of food, and how to best calculate sometimes tiny amounts of it!

First, here are a few charts that will come in super handy in figuring out calorie intake.  The first table is all about teaspoons (tsp) and tablespoons (tbsp).

2 tbsp =	1/8 cup
4 tbsp =	1/4 cup
3 tsp =	1 tbsp

This next chart is common conversions for a cup measure.

1 cup	1 cup
3/4 cup =	.75 cup
2/3 cup =	.66 cup
1/2 cup =	.5 cup
1/3 cup =	.33 cup
1/4 cup =	.25 cup
1/8 cup =	.125 cup

This chart will come in super handy for measuring small amounts of liquid or dry goods like cereal.

1 oz =

1/8 cup =

2 tbsp

Equipment needed to count calories

• either a paper log, spreadsheet, or calorie tracker app
• 1 set of teaspoons & tablespoons
• measuring cup set

My favorite calorie tracker app is available on android Google Store for free!  It is called “Track- Calorie Counter” by Nutritionix.  This was the only app that allowed me to put in a calorie goal of 1,000 and also allowed me to enter my own “food” items.  So I was able to set up a custom food for “Tube Feeding Pediasure” with a calorie count of 30 calories per 1 oz.  The ability to now track her tube feeds as well as what she ate and drank by mouth was such a game changer for our weaning.

I had started out with a small notebook, but I would lose track of it or just forget to enter the information.  So having a simple app on my phone that is always  with me was just the easiest choice for us!

The measuring spoons set and the measuring cup set were also super cheap and easy to find at my local dollar store.  I actually had these before hand but was missing a few, so I bought a new set so I had all the spoons and cups.

Example 1: Baby Puffs

This was one of our first foods after baby food.  Notice that a serving size is 60 puffs.  My daughter was not eating anywhere near 60 puffs in one sitting.  When she first started she may only eat 5 puffs.  How do you calculate the calories for 5 puffs?

So we know that 60 puffs equals 25 calories. When we are dealing with such small amounts, the easiest way to track things like this is to find out how many calories are in each puff.  So we take 25 calories and divide it by 60, and that equals .410 calores per puff.  That is a really hard to calculate, so I used .5 calorie per puff.

So if she ate 5 puffs that was 2.5 calories!

Example 2: Baby Rice Rusks

Rice Rusks was another of our first dissolvable foods. Now if you look at the nutritional facts, you really have to pay attention to the serving size.  The serving size says 2 packs, and each pack has 2 rusks in it.  So really the serving size is 4 whole rice rusks.

So we know that 4 whole rice rusks equals 30 calories.  At the beginning, my daughter may only eat half of one rusk. How do you calculate the calories in half of 1 rusk?

We take 30 calories and divide by 4 rusks, that equals 7.5 calories per whole rusk.  So half of one rush is 3.75 calories. (I would just round to 4 calories to make it easier)

Example 3: Baby Cheese Puffs (Lil Crunchies)

Another easy dissolvable food that we ate! Looking at the serving size we know that 16 puffs equals 35 calories, but what if she only ate 5 puffs? How many calories did she have?

We take the 35 calories and divide it by 16 puffs, that equals 2.1875 calories per puff. ( I would round this to 2 calories per puff) 

Example 4: Cheerios

The first 3 foods were very targeted towards babies so their nutritional information was aimed at small servings, but what about when you start to get into food that anyone can eat? This was when some nutritional labels started getting real confusing!

This seems like one of those trick math problems, but really cheerios is trying very unsuccessfully to be helpful.  So now we get into using our measuring cups. When we first started eating cheerios, my daughter might eat 1 tablespoon.  How in the world do we figure that out?

We start with their basic measurement which is 1.5 cups equals 140 calories. Now the easiest way to break that down is to make it into 1 cup.  So we take 140 calories and divide it by 1.5 cups, and get 93.333 calories per cup. We will round that to be 93 calories per cup of cheerios.

Now here is where the chart # 3 comes in super handy! The easiest way for me to figure this out, is to take 93 calories and divide by 8oz (there is 8oz in a cup).  This makes 1 oz of cheerios equal to 11.625 calories. (we will round this to 12 calories)  There are 2 tablespoons in every 1 oz, so 1 tablespoon of cheerios is 6 calories!

Example 5: Pirate Booty Snacks

So just as I was starting to get good at calculating calories, our surgeon recommended we try pirate booty snacks.  I was all excited to try something new until I saw the nutritional information. 

Now normally 1 oz would equal 2 tablespoons, but in this case they are going by weight and not volume.  I did not have a kitchen scale handy so I had to figure out a way to estimate calories.  So I decided to search out other brand names and generics for this same type of food.  I found a Great Value (Walmart brand) of white cheddar puff corn that was extremely similar to the Pirate Booty.  Now the Pirate Booty bag was 4oz and the Great Value Brand was 5 oz, but when you look at serving size, they were both servings of 1 oz.

Ohhh look, Great Value tells you that 1 oz is approximately 43 puffs!  That means if we take 160 calories and divide it by 43, we get 3.72 calories per piece of puff corn. (I would round this to 4 calories)

Thankfully almost every food available has an alternate brand or generic available, so it may take a little digging, but you can definitely find an alternative to buying a kitchen scale.

Counting Small Calories

Hopefully this overview and the few examples, were enough to show you easy ways to count calories in small portions.  As your child eats more volume, it should get easier to calculate, but sometimes you will need to break down the portion sizes in a way to find out calories.

Another example that I didn’t mention is individual packages of snacks.  For instance, my daughter fell in love with Tailfins Crackers (generic of Goldfish found at the dollar store).  Each individual bag of crackers was 100 calories and had a handful of crackers in each bag.  So the easiest way to count calories smaller than a whole bag was to just dump out the bag and count the number of crackers.  In this case it was 40 crackers in the bag.

Now here is where the Nutrionix calorie app became a huge helper in figuring out calorie math. I simply entered a custom food for Tailfins crackers and specified that 40 crackers equals 100 calories.  The app then would allow me to enter any number of crackers I wanted, and it would tell me how many calories!  I only had to make the custom food once, and now it is saved in the app.  So now every time, my daughter eats Tailfins, I just put in the total number of crackers she eats, and the app figures out the math for me!

The app also has a cool feature where you can copy meals from previous days onto today’s calorie tracker.  My other favorite feature is the recipe or single food feature.  So if I make my daughter a smoothie out of baby food, heavy cream, and yogurt, I can enter all the ingredients in their measurements and then save this as a recipe!  I can name it Blueberry Banana Smoothie and later on if I make the same recipe it is saved in my custom foods section.

For a free app, I honestly have yet to find a downside to it!  There are no crazy apps or constantly trying to get you to buy a paid version.  It truly is just an amazing app that is completely free.  This has become one of the best finds I have made in our Child Led Feeding Tube Weaning journey!