Eyes opened, weigh your food!

DaniCanadian

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!

queenliz99

Boom!! There you go!!

SLLRunner

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!

DaniCanadian

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

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

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

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

Just got mine today; so excited! I will start using it tomorrow!

DaniCanadian

atypicalsmith wrote: »

Just got mine today; so excited! I will start using it tomorrow!

Awesome! I can almost guarantee you will be shocked

amf0324

Yaaaaaayyyy food scales.

Alatariel75

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

I had this revelation too when I bought my food scale

Sued0nim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jgasmic

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

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 :-)

LeanButNotMean44

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?

I was shocked when I weighed out my oats. I had been using a 1/2c measurement and its associated calorie count. But when I weighed the measuring cup (used the tare function) and then put my oats in (and leveled it out), it was WAY more than 40g (which is 1/2c).

This morning for the first time, I weighed out 2TBSP of peanut butter. I put the measuring spoon on the scale, used the tare, and then put the peanut butter in the spoon. A heaping TBSP was actually 32g (2TBSP).

When it came down to the oats and PB measurements, using a measuring cup/spoon was not close to accurate.

evileen99

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?

Food can also settle/break into smaller pieces during shipping. My oats say a serving is150 calories-- 40 gm or 1/2 cup. If I weigh out 40 grams and put it in a half cup measure, it is more than 1/4 inch below the top. If I weigh out a level 1/2 cup of oats, it's almost 200 calories. That's how it can be.

AmazonMayan

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?

Along with food settling, breaking, being smaller, larger, etc., there is also no true weight/measurement standard that measuring cups and spoons HAVE to be. I have 2 sets of each and with one set of cups, the 1 cup measurement is very accurate almost all the time, the other is wayyyyy off, and it goes on with the different cups and spoons. 1 of my tablespoons is perfect and the other is actually under, etc....

I saw an episode of I think Test Kitchen(?) that did a test of cups and spoons and most were wrong.....

abbeyjones1994

I am exactly the same way! I fought the urge to weigh for so long because I lost the majority of my weight without having to. But, I asked for a food scale for Christmas to weigh things like fruits and veggies, meat, etc., with no intention of weighing things like oatmeal, pretzels, etc. However, as I got down to the last 10 lbs., I was stalling big time, so I decided to give weighing those other things a shot. It has made a huge difference. I'm now down to only 2 lbs. left to goal, and I've even cut my exercise a little bit to make the inevitable change to maintenance more sustainable, so this is definitely mostly coming from intake.

And as someone said above, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I get more bang for my calorie buck by weighing some foods. Not a bad situation to find yourself in.

SingRunTing

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?

Here's a video to explain. The guy is a little annoying, but the video is valid. He actually shows how two different 1/2 cup measuring cups give you different amounts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpHykP6e_Uk

Erfw7471

My food scale is the best weight-management tool I own. I'm now maintaining and continue to use my scales every single day.

Need2Exerc1se

I've recently started trying to get a high amount of fiber, so I started weighing certain foods. Most have weighed less than the package or USDA database says for the volume. I thought perhaps my scale was off, because I see these types of posts on here so often, so I checked it on another and got the same result.

Since, I've started weighing a lot more stuff. The only thing that has been higher than I thought was meat. 3 oz of meat is less than I thought. Except for fish. Fish was pretty spot on.

brynnsmom

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 always weigh out fruits and vegetables, the edible part only after I've cut it up. Pretty eye opening to see what I was logging as a medium apple could be close to 300 grams - granted it's an apple, but that can still be a big difference in calories.

spoonyspork

My most eye-opening thing after getting a scale was that I was eating way LESS pasta than I thought! Weighed out the first time after cooked, just going with what I'd normally scoop out for my portion. I was shocked to see I seemed to be eating 3x more than a serving of cooked pasta. Next time I weighed it out dry first, and after cooking it was like 2x more than my usual portion.

I'd actually been pretty accurate with eye-balling things otherwise, though 'pretty accurate' can still end up with WAY more calories with more calorie-dense stuff!

guinevere96

My food scale was the best decision I ever made. Meats were always easy for me, my dad is a butcher and could eyeball any meat almost as accurately as a food scale lol, but fruits and veggies were always so hard to log because I was never sure EXACTLY HOW MUCH I was getting. Anything homemade was difficult. Its so easy to be sure now, and im sure my logs are much more accurate now.