50 days in.... only lost 1lb.

missiontofitness

camerondavies2 wrote: »

Removing the OP because it was incredibly rude. -Missiontofitness

"This reply was already approved by a moderator on December 16, 2014 4:33PM".
I hope this was a mistake. OP, please do not let comments like this bring you down.

Sued0nim

FredDoyle wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

JaneiR36 wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

rabbitjb wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

If you want to use a food scale, by all means do. I expect it helps some people be more honest with themselves, but there are enough inaccuracies in food calories and exercise calories that weighing your food won't make your calorie counts any more accurate. You can accomplish the same thing by just reducing your calorie goal, to make up for your errors in calorie estimation.

I truly don't understand this

of course it's all about estimates, but don't you put in the most accurate measure in the areas you can? ie in weighing out your portion sizes so that based on the average calories of that foodstuff it is as close to accurate as it can be

Dropping your calorie goal and not weighing can surely not help in the same way as your portion sizes may still be way out in meeting a lower goal

No, that's not right. Look at it this way: suppose you are measuring a wood block to fill a hole. The measuring tape the hole was measured with is accurate to ±1/16". Is there really anything to be gained by using a more accurate measuring device to measure the block with an accuracy of ±1/64" ? Of course not, because no matter how accurately you measure, it may still be too large or small by as much as 1/16". The same is true for calorie counts. No matter how accurately you measure one of the two calorie counts, you will have to adjust for the inaccuracy of the other. Whatever the inaccuracy of the estimates are, dropping one's calorie goal isn't likely to change that, so in one's attempt to eat at the lower calorie level will result in eating less calories, even though the inaccuracy of the the measurements prevent us from knowing exactly how much. That reduction in calories will result in weight loss.

Suppose you've been assigned a task that'll last weeks or even months to use multiple wood blocks to fill a fairly deep hole. The blocks are random in shape, size and weight. You have about eight standard wood block measures. The wood block must fit completely within these measures and that's how you know what size the block is. If it doesn't fit in the block, you estimate its size based on that of similar blocks you're really quite familiar with.

But The hole is not filling up as expected, you're falling behind and there are too many blocks left on the pile at the end of each shift. Do you:

a) keep shoving as many blocks down the hole, reduce your daily target, hope to catch up, or

b) get a tape measure. Find out that the blocks you couldn't measure using your original method were being estimated incorrectly. Some were 2" longer than you thought. A pesky few used VERY often were 8" shy of their expected length! Goody! Problem diagnosed and solved! Hole now fills up as expected, case closed

Oh wait, that was supposed to be you telling me which one you'd pick...

You're missing the point. Imagine two people are patching a roof. One is on the roof measuring the hole and the other is on the ground cutting boards. Obviously, they are using two different tape measures, which is similar to what we are doing when we count calories in food and count calories burned. A kitchen scale cannot tell us how many calories we burned. It doesn't matter how precisely the guy on the ground measures to the figures the guy on the roof gives him, his precise cuts will be as imprecise as the figures he has been given. The solution for the carpenters would be to cut a board that is about the right size and then shave off part of it if it is too big.

You can use a kitchen scale if you like, but no matter how accurately you measure the calories in food, if your calories burned estimates are ±100 calories, then your calorie deficit could be off by ±100 calories. Whether a piece of meat is 311 calories or 323 calories is irrelevant at that point.

Why do you keep saying this? You are compounding errors.
There is an error in estimating intake, and one for output.
Measuring with a scale reduces the intake error to its lowest possible amount. You are eliminating one of the two errors. (To be simple)
It has nothing to do with output or exercise.
You also don't sound like you know much about building, but I digress...

*like*

MelodyandBarbells

Dave198lbs wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

JaneiR36 wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

rabbitjb wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

If you want to use a food scale, by all means do. I expect it helps some people be more honest with themselves, but there are enough inaccuracies in food calories and exercise calories that weighing your food won't make your calorie counts any more accurate. You can accomplish the same thing by just reducing your calorie goal, to make up for your errors in calorie estimation.

I truly don't understand this

of course it's all about estimates, but don't you put in the most accurate measure in the areas you can? ie in weighing out your portion sizes so that based on the average calories of that foodstuff it is as close to accurate as it can be

Dropping your calorie goal and not weighing can surely not help in the same way as your portion sizes may still be way out in meeting a lower goal

No, that's not right. Look at it this way: suppose you are measuring a wood block to fill a hole. The measuring tape the hole was measured with is accurate to ±1/16". Is there really anything to be gained by using a more accurate measuring device to measure the block with an accuracy of ±1/64" ? Of course not, because no matter how accurately you measure, it may still be too large or small by as much as 1/16". The same is true for calorie counts. No matter how accurately you measure one of the two calorie counts, you will have to adjust for the inaccuracy of the other. Whatever the inaccuracy of the estimates are, dropping one's calorie goal isn't likely to change that, so in one's attempt to eat at the lower calorie level will result in eating less calories, even though the inaccuracy of the the measurements prevent us from knowing exactly how much. That reduction in calories will result in weight loss.

Suppose you've been assigned a task that'll last weeks or even months to use multiple wood blocks to fill a fairly deep hole. The blocks are random in shape, size and weight. You have about eight standard wood block measures. The wood block must fit completely within these measures and that's how you know what size the block is. If it doesn't fit in the block, you estimate its size based on that of similar blocks you're really quite familiar with.

But The hole is not filling up as expected, you're falling behind and there are too many blocks left on the pile at the end of each shift. Do you:

a) keep shoving as many blocks down the hole, reduce your daily target, hope to catch up, or

b) get a tape measure. Find out that the blocks you couldn't measure using your original method were being estimated incorrectly. Some were 2" longer than you thought. A pesky few used VERY often were 8" shy of their expected length! Goody! Problem diagnosed and solved! Hole now fills up as expected, case closed

Oh wait, that was supposed to be you telling me which one you'd pick...

You're missing the point. Imagine two people are patching a roof. One is on the roof measuring the hole and the other is on the ground cutting boards. Obviously, they are using two different tape measures, which is similar to what we are doing when we count calories in food and count calories burned. A kitchen scale cannot tell us how many calories we burned. It doesn't matter how precisely the guy on the ground measures to the figures the guy on the roof gives him, his precise cuts will be as imprecise as the figures he has been given. The solution for the carpenters would be to cut a board that is about the right size and then shave off part of it if it is too big.

You can use a kitchen scale if you like, but no matter how accurately you measure the calories in food, if your calories burned estimates are ±100 calories, then your calorie deficit could be off by ±100 calories. Whether a piece of meat is 311 calories or 323 calories is irrelevant at that point.

you are assuming that weighing and estimating are only going to give a 12 calorie variance. 12 calories is deminimis but the variance between weighing and visually estimating can be much more than 12 calories.

Exactly. When your starting calorie target for 1/2 lb per week loss is 1560 calories, trust me, there is no way in HELL you would prefer to resolve an issue where you erroneously thought the calorie count of a 250 calorie item was infinitesimal by adjusting your goal down by an arbitrary 300 cals. I'd rather nix the item especially if it's one I didn't care that much about to begin with at all, or at the quantities I was consuming (true story)

The only way the initial analogy holds is if we're talking about a scale with a 1g accuracy vs. 0.1g accuracy...