Eyes opened, weigh your food!

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DaniCanadian
DaniCanadian Posts: 261 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
holy crap, my portions were way off just using spoon/ cup measurements! I've had a kitchen scale for a year and cracked it open today finally and I repeat...holy crap! No wonder my weight loss was so much slower than mfp indicated. Weighing everything from now on until I retrain my brain about proper portion sizes!
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  • queenliz99
    queenliz99 Posts: 15,317 Member
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    Boom!! There you go!!
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,943 Member
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    DaniCanadian wrote: »
    holy crap, my portions were way off just using spoon/ cup measurements! I've had a kitchen scale for a year and cracked it open today finally and I repeat...holy crap! No wonder my weight loss was so much slower than mfp indicated. Weighing everything from now on until I retrain my brain about proper portion sizes!
    Good going!

    I've been in maintenance for over a year now and I continue to weigh my food. Gosh darn it, my eyes and measuring cups still lie! :D
  • DaniCanadian
    DaniCanadian Posts: 261 Member
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    I'll definitely keep the scale around if I still need it when I finally get to maintence! It's not as huge of an inconvienience as I thought it would be. I so wish I had opened that scale last year though :-)
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
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    I've taken to weighing my food IN the cups so I have an idea for how much the serving "really" is. I'm hoping I'll be able to eyeball portions once I'm back to maintaining - I was pretty good at it before but I don't have the eye I need for being in a deficit. It can be an unpleasant surprise, that's for sure!

    ~Lyssa
  • DaniCanadian
    DaniCanadian Posts: 261 Member
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    That's my plan too! I weighed out some cheese salsa that's a fav for me and the spouse and up till now I was tsping the measurement. I've been portioning at least 2 and a half times more than what I thought I was! I have a slight urge to go weigh everything I eat during the day just to see how off I am!
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
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    I weigh most things now - I'm not too tall and close to my goal weight so I need to be as accurate as possible. It's been interesting to see the real portion sizes, that's for sure! I wasn't off by too much, but even just a little on everything can screw up my calories for the day.

    ~Lyssa
  • atypicalsmith
    atypicalsmith Posts: 2,742 Member
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    Just got mine today; so excited! I will start using it tomorrow!
  • DaniCanadian
    DaniCanadian Posts: 261 Member
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    atypicalsmith wrote: »
    Just got mine today; so excited! I will start using it tomorrow!

    Awesome! I can almost guarantee you will be shocked
  • amf0324
    amf0324 Posts: 46 Member
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    Yaaaaaayyyy food scales.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
    edited March 2015
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    gotobedhungry wrote: »
    I need this explained to me. How can measuring cups/spoons be wrong?? If you're using them correctly and leveling it off with a knife, how can this be?

    Take something like grated cheese. One cup may be what you scoop out, or you can almost triple that by packing it down. Fact is, solid foods can be manipulated in volume quite easily, so a 'cup' may be very different for one person as compares to another. Weight, however, is weight.

    Think of a cup of broccoli. How much is in the cup entirely depends on how small you've cut it, how much you've packed it down etc. This is true for all solids, really. A cup measure is sufficient for powdered foods for baking and the like, but even then the volume can be manipulated.
  • cosmo_momo
    cosmo_momo Posts: 173 Member
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    I had this revelation too when I bought my food scale :)
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    DaniCanadian wrote: »
    That's my plan too! I weighed out some cheese salsa that's a fav for me and the spouse and up till now I was tsping the measurement. I've been portioning at least 2 and a half times more than what I thought I was! I have a slight urge to go weigh everything I eat during the day just to see how off I am!

    That! Do that!
  • blankiefinder
    blankiefinder Posts: 3,599 Member
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    gotobedhungry wrote: »
    I need this explained to me. How can measuring cups/spoons be wrong?? If you're using them correctly and leveling it off with a knife, how can this be?

    It depends on the item, but volume is not a good indicator of the number of grams in a serving, which is what determines the calories. Take a cup of cereal. At the beginning of the box you get nice big pieces, and a serving half fills your bowl. At the end of the box, you hit the little bits, which settle into the cup better with less wasted space, it will have more grams than the cup from the start of the box. Same with brown sugar, etc.
  • FitOldMomma
    FitOldMomma Posts: 790 Member
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    Sometimes you actually have a bigger serving if you weigh your food.
    I ate potato chips today-I've not had any in quite awhile. Anyway, the serving size was 28 grams or about 24 chips. I weighed them and I had 32 potato chips to enjoy. ;)
    Same thing with fancy salted peanuts...it said 3 T, when I weighed them I measured them out again and it was 4 T.
  • JoRumbles
    JoRumbles Posts: 262 Member
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    Can I ask a question? Do people weigh EVERYTHING? For example- for lunch I am having an apple- do you weigh that? With or without the core? A pitta bread- it says 151cals on the packet but I can see they are all very slightly different sizes. Would you weight that?
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    JoRumbles wrote: »
    Can I ask a question? Do people weigh EVERYTHING? For example- for lunch I am having an apple- do you weigh that? With or without the core? A pitta bread- it says 151cals on the packet but I can see they are all very slightly different sizes. Would you weight that?

    At the start I'd grab an apple, cut off the bit I'd eat and weigh it so I got a hang of what is a medium / large apple - now I just grab and eat one and log it by size

    I don't weigh bread out the packet because I generally feel it all balances out

    I will weigh almost everything else - the only other exceptions being .. light cheese triangles, pre-made whole meals like Innocent Vegetable pots and Watercress, Rocket and other salad leaves

    But I weigh tomatoes, cucumber and most veg and other stuff

    and tend to weigh oil rather than use spoons
  • DemoraFairy
    DemoraFairy Posts: 1,806 Member
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    JoRumbles wrote: »
    Can I ask a question? Do people weigh EVERYTHING? For example- for lunch I am having an apple- do you weigh that? With or without the core? A pitta bread- it says 151cals on the packet but I can see they are all very slightly different sizes. Would you weight that?

    I used to weigh apples (without the core... unless you eat the core :P) but since every apple was within 1g of every other apple I just log the same listing every time now. I don't tend to weigh things like pitta bread and just go by the number on the packet, but I only tend to buy very processed things which are all exactly the same shape and size every time, because I'm awful like that. If they were noticeably different I'd probably weigh them.
  • judiness101
    judiness101 Posts: 119 Member
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    I just bought one as well and I also started to log everything accurately instead of doing some random clean eating challenges. I was eye opening!

    I lost 10 pounds since mid-January 6 in six weeks without serious counting and 4 in 11 days with counting! Can't believe I wasted all this time. Here's my graph to illustrate it to you

    10429859_10155246194305580_4953796815177965671_n.jpg?oh=f79aedb49cc2a7cdc9aad33bfefea99d&oe=55812407
  • Jgasmic
    Jgasmic Posts: 219 Member
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    Amazon says my food scale will be arriving tomorrow and I am equal parts excited and terrified. I can recall only picking out the larger avocados at the grocery store because I knew I logged them around 300 calories and wanted to make it worth it. I may have tricked my mind, but I certainly didn't trick my body!
  • DaniCanadian
    DaniCanadian Posts: 261 Member
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    That's amazing Judi! I'm wanting to have a second baby mid to late summer this year and I want to lose the last 10 lbs before I hit a 'healthy' weight category. I have a feeling that goal can definitely be accomplished now :-)

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