Biggest eye opener from weighing food

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  • exstromn
    exstromn Posts: 176 Member
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    According to recommended portions listed on packaging or recommended in general:

    1. cereal - because a portion in reality is maybe a sixth of what I was really eating
    2. meat in general - I was eating four times as much steak as I should have been. However, shrimp and fish were a pleasant surprise.
    3. pasta - I was eating about 3 times as much as a normal portion
    4. cheese - I truthfully don't even know how much I was eating it was so much so I try not to go over 2 ounces at a time (control issue for me)
  • Hearts_2015
    Hearts_2015 Posts: 12,031 Member
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    runnrchic wrote: »
    Wow, and I thought I was a stickler for weighing food. I've never weighed an egg. I call them all large. I do enough dishes!

    Whew! OMG... huge relief... I too call them all large even if they look small. So glad you posted... I was on a food freak out for a while there. ;)

    Thanks for sharing, my stress level is dropping back down. :#
  • Hearts_2015
    Hearts_2015 Posts: 12,031 Member
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    slaite1 wrote: »
    I measure most things, but not all to be honest. But, I live alone and most food I buy is for me. So, I don't weigh my bread or other items that are easy to portion. If one piece is a little big and one is a little small it will even out once I eat the whole loaf. I've also never measured a packaged food with one serving and probably won't unless it looks huge.

    I think having balance in life is as important as having accuracy in my measuring. I weigh 90% of what I eat and don't worry if I'm off by a tiny bit (chicken might be 3.1 or 2.9 oz instead of 3). The point is im not accidentally eating 6 oz instead of 3. Or 4T of peanut butter instead of 1T.

    Actually, I've been doing a crap job of sticking to my deficit lately so measuring is the least of my problems

    :D
  • nesian_twin
    nesian_twin Posts: 198
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    obsession
  • lostinwebspace
    lostinwebspace Posts: 99 Member
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    Peanut butter. Definitely peanut butter. I used to have...I dunno...five to ten tablespoons a day when I got home, depending on my hunger. Now that I know how many calories are packed in a tbsp, I stay away unless I'm behind.
  • Hearts_2015
    Hearts_2015 Posts: 12,031 Member
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    nesian_twin wrote: »
    obsession

    I was certainly beginning to get that way tonight... I need to take a break from this thread. It might be incredibly helpful for some and that's good. For me I think I'll stick with what's working and pay more attention to getting my macros to the level I need, rather than make weighing my food a full time job.
  • courtneymedwell2014
    courtneymedwell2014 Posts: 27 Member
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    It is so crazy. When I get take out I always find out what the correct portion size is of the food I am having and find I get 5 meals out of one takeaway Indian curry and if I practice mindful eating I usually find it is enough for me. It is crazy how massive serving sizes are when you eat out and what you get used to eating/seeing on your plate.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    nesian_twin wrote: »
    obsession

    I don't know . . . I'd rather know what I'm eating than try to guess what is going wrong if I don't see results. Everyone makes their choices, but I know I get more "obsessive" when I feel like I'm guessing. Weighing it once takes it off my mind and that feels freeing to me.
  • nicsflyingcircus
    nicsflyingcircus Posts: 2,561 Member
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    runnrchic wrote: »
    Wow, and I thought I was a stickler for weighing food. I've never weighed an egg. I call them all large. I do enough dishes!

    I only weigh them occasionally out of curiosity and only when scrambling eggs, which means I am cracking them into a bowl anyway.
  • ILiftHeavyAcrylics
    ILiftHeavyAcrylics Posts: 27,732 Member
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    Honestly I think personality type as a lot to do with whether people find that it makes them feel more obsessive or not. It doesn't bother me in the slightest and I've been doing it for the better part of 4 years. I imagine I won't do it forever. For the time being I go for as much accuracy as possible without inconveniencing myself too much. :laugh:

    Other people can't tolerate it for very long stretches or it stresses them out. For those people I think that alternate methods are preferable. Like my grandma used to say, there's more than one way to skin a cat (I never asked for clarification on what the different ways might be. ;) )
  • littled1986
    littled1986 Posts: 101 Member
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    This is a great thread! Can I get away with weighing things in ounces? (8 Oz for 1 cup). It's so much easier for me.
  • JPW1990
    JPW1990 Posts: 2,424 Member
    edited March 2015
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    runnrchic wrote: »
    Wow, and I thought I was a stickler for weighing food. I've never weighed an egg. I call them all large. I do enough dishes!

    I watched a video a while ago, Pepin or Ramsey or someone, talking about how to cook sunny side up eggs without overcooking either the whites or the yolk. The advice was to break them into a bowl, use a toothpick to break open the thicker sac of whites that are right around the yolk, and use the toothpick to pull that towards the outer edge of the white. Heat the pan, then tilt the bowl to dump the eggs in at one time so they all cook the same amount of time. It's that thicker part that makes it take longer to cook the whites. It made a huge difference in cooking the eggs - runny yolks with no runny whites, so now I do it that way. Since I have to dirty the bowl anyway, weighing them is no big deal.

    Where the discrepancies really make a difference is when I'm making full recipe batches.
  • angf0679
    angf0679 Posts: 1,120 Member
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    The fact that I should have spent the extra money and got a digital scale. I'm guessing when that arrow points between two lines as to what it actually us. My biggest surprise was when I weighed fries ( they fit in my calorie goal!). There were so few for a serving! I think it was like 7 or 8 fries.
  • runnrchic
    runnrchic Posts: 130 Member
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    littled1986 wrote: »
    This is a great thread! Can I get away with weighing things in ounces? (8 Oz for 1 cup). It's so much easier for me.

    No, liquid ounces is a different measurement. 8oz of orange juice with pulp weighs different from 8oz of lemonade. I did just start weighing olive oil so I don't have to wash so many measuring spoons and it seems like it's 14grams/tablespoon....right?
  • ILiftHeavyAcrylics
    ILiftHeavyAcrylics Posts: 27,732 Member
    edited March 2015
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    littled1986 wrote: »
    This is a great thread! Can I get away with weighing things in ounces? (8 Oz for 1 cup). It's so much easier for me.

    Not really. You'll really get in trouble if you try to do solids that way.
  • Bioprof1227
    Bioprof1227 Posts: 6 Member
    edited March 2015
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    briandap1 wrote: »
    Another food I had to do some research and testing on was steel cut oatmeal. Serving size is 1/4 cup dry, but how much is that wet? I make 2 cups of oatmeal with 8 cups of water in a crock pot every 8 days or so. It yields me 8 cups plus a little extra, so now I know 1/2 a cup is about 1 cup cooked. Before this I was only eating half a cup wet, not thinking about the water absorption.

    I'm confused. Let's assume 1 cup of dry multigrain oatmeal has 130 Calories, and 1 cup holds 500 oatmeal grains. Therefore, the number of calories per grain is 130 Cal/500 or 0.26 Cal/grain. How does cooking change that? After cooking, there are still 500 grains of oatmeal, albeit swollen as a result of absorbing water, which has 0 calories.
  • Cortelli
    Cortelli Posts: 1,369 Member
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    Hearts_2015 wrote: »
    I feel like such a newbie on this thread.. are you all weighing your bananas in the skin??

    Here's what I've been doing but will likely change it now... Sometimes I pick up a couple small bananas and eat 1/2 of it and call it a small as I'd rather go under than over estimate.

    Other times at Trader Joe's since bananas are cheap there I will grab a couple larger ones and eat 1/2 of one and call it small.

    Maybe I should start a new account just to wipe out all my foods in there and start fresh! lol I so would love to get out a bunch of old stuff I never use. Why do the current foods we eat disappear but the old ones we'll never eat again seem to stay forever? LOL

    I don't eat many bananas (the radiation, people! are you not frightened by the radiation?!?) but it's pretty easy to weigh out fruits and what not where there's an inedible portion. Weigh you banana (unpeeled). Eat you banana. Weigh what's left over (whether the skin, or the skin + half-uneaten banana. A little subtraction, and you know what you've consumed.

    (And what you've consumed includes a lot of radiation!!!)


    (just kidding about the radiation fearmongering)

  • krysmuree
    krysmuree Posts: 326 Member
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    Hearts_2015 wrote: »
    KrissyMuree wrote: »
    .. I'm buying my first actual digital scale tonight and you have all terrified me. :| Hahaha. I can't wait to contribute; I've probably been overeating ridiculously for some time!

    aw..maybe, maybe not but having a scale is actually rather fun and you will learn a lot for sure! I just think weighing my bread is gonna be overboard for me so I don't think I'll go there. lol I can get too far to the other extreme if I'm not careful so I'll quit weighing out frozen meals. That was my experiment one and only!

    Have fun scale shopping... might check out a thread or two and see what some recommended as most helpful to them. There's a few different types. I use a Salter brand and it was around $15-20 (with coupon on at BBB) and it's been going well for years. I love the tare feature :)

    Tare feature is a must! I measure everything carefully with measuring cups and such but have heard it's pretty different in results so I'm very curious to see what I'm REALLY consuming. I enjoy accuracy so no doubt I will learn to love this!
  • Hearts_2015
    Hearts_2015 Posts: 12,031 Member
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    KrissyMuree wrote: »
    Hearts_2015 wrote: »
    KrissyMuree wrote: »
    .. I'm buying my first actual digital scale tonight and you have all terrified me. :| Hahaha. I can't wait to contribute; I've probably been overeating ridiculously for some time!

    aw..maybe, maybe not but having a scale is actually rather fun and you will learn a lot for sure! I just think weighing my bread is gonna be overboard for me so I don't think I'll go there. lol I can get too far to the other extreme if I'm not careful so I'll quit weighing out frozen meals. That was my experiment one and only!

    Have fun scale shopping... might check out a thread or two and see what some recommended as most helpful to them. There's a few different types. I use a Salter brand and it was around $15-20 (with coupon on at BBB) and it's been going well for years. I love the tare feature :)

    Tare feature is a must! I measure everything carefully with measuring cups and such but have heard it's pretty different in results so I'm very curious to see what I'm REALLY consuming. I enjoy accuracy so no doubt I will learn to love this!

    I think you will :) Be sure to come back here and share what type you ended up getting... always fun to see what others pick up. I like to look up others models on Amazon for the day mine needs replacing. lol But mine's been alive and kicking for 5+ years ..I think Salter even has a lifetime warranty. Um, but who keeps the package?
  • Shanairah1991
    Shanairah1991 Posts: 152 Member
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    Spaghetti and ground beef!! Both so high in calories and I used to eat an enormous bowl of it before loosing weight. If my calories allow I'll have a medium sized bowl but 9/10 I'll pick either or. In-laws made spaghetti for dinner the other night and I took the ground beef/sauce and put it over spinach & cauliflower instead. Or I'll take the pasta and put it in a veggie salad. Freah pasta salad!)

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