The Advantage of Weighing Food

ljashley1952

I have a great food scale that is digitally operated which is helping me stay much more accurate when I log my intake. I started using it because I had a bit of a meltdown when I logged in the ingredients in my sandwich (homemade light wheat bread, a thin slice of deli ham, 1/2 T mayo, 3/4 oz cheese, tomato and lettuce). My lunch came out at 497 calories! Uhmm...NO! Not even close! A Burger King Bacon Double Cheese Burger is 498 calories! So after a good deal of research and weighing stuff it came out at 320, which I can live with. Turns out the bread I was coming in at 290 for 2 slices! I bake my own bread using a recipe for light, whole wheat bread from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It totally is not 149 a slice! If you bake your own bread you have to pay close attention to the size of the loaf and the thickness of the slices. So now I weigh the two slices and figure out the ounces and then calculate oz to grams and log that. I have notes on what a thick slice, a normal one and a thin slice will be, just so I don't have to do it every time.

dopeysmelly

I make my own bread and re-weigh the loaf every month or so (weather affects how it turns out), or when I make tweaks..

ljashley1952

I've noticed that on any given day, the dough will be different (wetter or dryer). I don't use a lot of pre-packaged foods, so I end up having to weigh and calculate most of my food. The great thing about this program is that it makes you responsible for everything. If you are miscalculating and underestimating things you won't lose like you expect to.

Anonymous_Tipster

celestlyn wrote: »

So now I weigh the two slices and figure out the ounces and then calculate oz to grams and log that. I have notes on what a thick slice, a normal one and a thin slice will be, just so I don't have to do it every time.

Hey celestlyn,

Another common practice I have seen with things like bread, soups, stews, and just dishes in general is to create a recipe. You can weigh out your ingredients and then your bread recipe will be totaled for you.

Recipes are nice, but then how about the varying weights of my slices?
The best part is if you're accurately creating your slices you might not have to weigh anything at all. For servings determine for instance how many 'normal' slices you expect the loaf to produce. Let's say your bread recipe produces 12 normal slices so it produces 12 servings. Now a serving of your bread recipe is a slice!

When logging you can think of your thick / thin slices are ratios of your normal slice.
Thick could be 1.5x normal
Thin could be .75x normal

A normal sandwhich (2 slices) : 2 servings of Recipe
A thick sandwhich (2 slices): 3 servings of Recipe
A thin sandwhich (2 slices): 1.5 servings of Recipe

That way no matter the weather or air your calculations are maintained.

This works really well when making larger dishes as well. If you know what the calorie content of a pot of stew is and you know how many servings (or how many you want/expect) to get, then you can estimate / log with ease. All the same food, just different serving sizes of it.

ljashley1952

Excellent suggestions! I was talking to a friend and she suggested weighing my flour, which is really the only thing in my bread that has calories. The Tbsp of yeast would be negligible broken down by the slice. I've been breaking down the calorie count when I need to, to 0.5, 0.75, 1.25 servings.

Creating the recipe will be a good idea because I only have to do it once and figure my cals per serving one time. I do a lot of cooking from scratch rather than pre-packaged food. It takes longer, but I have it down to a routine now. I soak pinto, black, red and white beans over night and cook them when I have time. Then I bag them up and freeze so I always have beans ready when I need them.

When I make soup, I make a huge pot and freeze part of it for nights when I need a super-quick meal. I think the next time I make soup I'll weight and calculate each of the ingredients and then scoop it into cups and find out what each cup is caloriewise.

Good ideas! Thanks.

eldamiano

"My lunch came out at 497 calories"

And this is supposed to be crazily high or something?

ljashley1952

No, not really. However it did seem disproportionately high for what I put in it and I just calculated wrong on the bread. I will say that if I'm limited to 1350 for the day, I really don't want to be eating 500 calorie sandwiches for lunch. I'm just trying to get a good balance in what I eat and get enough exercise to be losing on a slow but steady basis.

SLLRunner

celestlyn wrote: »

I I bake my own bread using a recipe for light, whole wheat bread from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It totally is not 149 a slice! If you bake your own bread you have to pay close attention to the size of the loaf and the thickness of the slices. So now I weigh the two slices and figure out the ounces and then calculate oz to grams and log that. I have notes on what a thick slice, a normal one and a thin slice will be, just so I don't have to do it every time.

I also bake my own bread, and I know exactly what you are talking about. I weigh all ingredients that go in for total for the loaf, portion 12 slices, and then I weigh the loaf after baking. All those ingredients portioned into 12 slices tells me how many grams/ounces are in each slice, so I can log appropriately.

For me, buying a digital scale was the best thing I ever did.