This started out as an answer to "why did you get fat" but then it got long so...
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Itsonlymeagain wrote: »I don't like the fat so I"m not going to eat it.
\No worries. I'm not staying here. I can understand people giving me a reality check because you're right, I didn't get this way eating healthy ALL the time. But I do not appreciate the third degree. I think some want to see others succeed and others feel that because this works for me this is the ONLY way to do things. I don't see things so black and white. And damn... this is all over weighing vs measuring food and then you say the calorie difference doesn't matter if you drain the fat. Seriously... it DOES matter at the low calorie level because it could mean another 1/2 cup of broccoli as opposed to feeling hungry.
Dahling, if you can't shift 20+ lbs, it ain't the broccoli!! Don't major in the minors. One thing having a food scale and being conscious of everything you log - including liquids, is it helps you identify gaps in your logging. What item did you accidentally think was half as many calories? Where did you miss that the listing was per serving, not per container? Which dressing did you think was 10 cals per tablespoon but actually turned out to be much more? That sort of thing
Read this: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1296011/calorie-counting-101/p1
And yeah the OP don't wanna return but anyone else in the same boat could benefit
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I'm 5'2" also over 40. Currently weigh 150. It's SLOW going. I get 1200 calories . I workout 5 days a week to get more calories! LOL. Log everything. Drink more water. Exercise.0
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Itsonlymeagain wrote: »snickerscharlie wrote: »
Honestly, it's really that simple.
and honestly, it's not, not for everyone. Not for me. And you are indeed calling me a liar because you're saying I"m not being honest with myself. I am quite honest with myself. I got fat by mindless eating and snacking NOT by my meals. It was never by my meals. I have had to change very little in that regard. I've only, really, cut out my snacking.
The scale hasn't budged.
...... so you mean its NOT working then?
If the scale hasn't budged, obviously you DO need to change something else besides your meals. Cutting out snacking is not your way to success, because that hasn't been enough.
It's CICO, no way around it. Being short isnt a curtain to hide behind.0 -
Maybe it's me but I find the mere act of having to log calories in to have a beneficial effect on my intake. Several times that snickers bar wuld be calling my name but I just don't want to commit that "sin" to writing. So I don't have it.0
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Some really useful and helpful info in here, also a couple of needlessly rude comments.
OP, as an example, I used to eat a 'cup' of peanuts, thinking this was around 30g. When I weighed it, I found out it was about 50g. The visual difference was negligible, but the caloric difference was around 200 calories. Done a few times, this was putting me over my calorie goal consistently.
It really is worth weighing, the extra 30 seconds it takes could make all the difference to your weight loss. Take care, and I hope you get the results you want.0 -
I didn't read every comment in this thread so I apologize if I am repeating anything.
Losing weight isn't a one size fits all kind of shirt you put on. That is why it is important, if you are serious about losing weight and are truly ready, to measure your food, track your caloric intake and water consumption, etc. I also would opt to use a scale oppose to a measuring cup. But this is just me.
Your metabolism and the rest of your hormones are obviously way off and not functioning properly. This was/is part of my problem too. See your doctor for a physical and get some labs drawn. Check your thyroid levels since you have had children if you haven't done so yet. That alone will make it harder, not impossible, to lose weight.
Change up your diet. Get rid of breads and pastas all together and opt for rice or potatoes for a carb choice. Maybe even consider eliminating these carbs on days you do not do any workouts and just stick to your lean proteins and veggies galore.
Your metabolism and hormones need to get back to normal. You have to stop looking at the scale and repair the damage and live health 100% and when you start to feel your pants getting looser then weigh yourself. It isn't always about the numbers anyways. Weight lifting will reshape your body and help with your metabolism and hormones as well.
If you need a friend or someone to vent to feel free to add me! I am new here myself.0 -
Errrr, it's only been two weeks and you are relatively light.
Give it at least another two weeks to allow for the normal things that can mask fat loss on the scale (water fluctuations, food still making its way through the GI tract etc) to resolve
If you still see no movement reassess your methods.0 -
So being new here also I have learned weigh my food easy.0
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techgal128 wrote: »I suggest a detox diet. It seemed to totally reset my metabolism. The 17 day diet is about food combos and sustaining from refined sugars, starches. I had to eat more protein (my weakness) and found out that I was less hungry. This detox was a basic clean eating plan and worked to get things in order for me. Just a thought
OMG, don't bring in this quackery to an already quackful thread.
Dr. Oz would like to have a word with you.
Dr. Mehmet Oz is such a quack that he waddles when he walks.0 -
It would seem a safe bet to me in this situation to reduce the daily calorie goal to 1200, that way, you have a buffer so if you are getting your measuring a little wrong, you will still lose. For those who jump in and say it is too little, it would probably end up closer to 1300 with any underestimating, so all is well that ends well.
On the other hand, you might actually need to eat at 1200 in order to lose, even if you weighed every morsel carefully and had no overrun. I do and I am a lot taller than you. I eat at 1200 and lose between 0.2 and 0.4kg a week. If I ate at 1400 I would be in maintenance and if I ate a sloppy 1400 I would gain.0 -
DON'T PANIC!!!!
From your posts I'm going to guess the concept of weighing your food makes you feel panicky (it kind of does me!). Don't sweat that, its not essential. What IS essential is that you measure consistently, and get serious about it. Stop guessing portion sizes, measure them out, even if it means pre-serving your home-cooked meals. If you are being consistent, and the weight isn't coming off at all, then as some folks have suggested, try reducing your portion sizes. You don't need to use a scale to do that, just measure out less food.
Most people here are rabidly in favor of weighing versus measuring. The shared video explains that most people don't understand how to use measuring spoons or measuring cups. Used properly, volume is a perfectly good way to measure the amount of food you're taking in. We measure using volume in chemistry (qualitative and quantitative analysis) ALL the time, and kitchen scales aren't nearly as accurate as a lot of folks think either.
People are pointing out a very hard truth; what you think is a serving probably isn't a serving, it's probably like 1.2 or 1.5 servings. An extra 20% to 50% of calories over the course of weeks and months really piles up! And while you're right that hormones can affect weight gain, most do so by interfering with your body's hunger signals causing eating in excess of physical need. There are a few notable exceptions, particularly thyroid and cortisol.
Give yourself at least 4 weeks on your course of action (making sure you are correctly measuring) before you declare your current program a bust. You may be experiencing natural fluctuation from your monthly cycle, or a lag period in results. You should also look for other things that may be interfering with achieving your goals. High stress, or a lack of sleep can create difficulty in losing weight.
If you still aren't seeing results after a month of very meticulous logging, you may need to discuss this with your physician and a nutritionist. Your physician may want to test you for hormone imbalances, polycystic ovarian syndrome, or cushing's syndrome.0 -
You measure non-liquid / powder items by volume in chemistry? Which ones0
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Jane, most solids at standard temperature and pressure have constant density. In an industrial scale both mass and volume are acceptable. The type of precision necessary for bench chemistry isn't necessary in cooking and exceeds the accuracy of biological calorimetry.
Most kitchen scales have accuracy to 0.1 oz, or grams. The density of bagged sugar is 700 kg/m3. That means the precision with which you can weigh sugar is just over 4 tsp. Obviously the smaller the volume the more critical this error is.
Also there are other implicit errors in calorie counting. Raw foods vary in nutrient content, including caloric load more than you might think. Your digestive systems mileage in releasing energy also varies. These errors are large in magnitude than the error from consistently and accurately using volume on dry ingredients at room temperature and consistent pressure (solid volumes being largely immune to pressure changes).
For a person unfamiliar with the relationship of volume to mass, and unsalted at agitate measurement, the use of the scale can be a valuable aid, particularly for did that don't really fit into a spoon or cup. But most important is that you are consistent, because whether you weigh or measure, with consistency in measurement you can rationally adjust your intake of what you're doing isn't working.
The key difference in weighing in the chemistry laboratory is that we use scales sensitive and accurate for measurements in the hundredths and thousandths of grams.0 -
Thanks! So the one item you mentioned was sugar, which tends to be very fine and indeed has a constant consistency to the extent that a good cup would get the job done. Can't really say the same for solids that when you put them in a cup, there's obviously air gaps of varying degrees from one measurement to another.
I was just wondering which solids you measure by volume for your chemistry experiments / tasks. I imagined they would be fine powder and not coarse, chunky solids0 -
Yes, Jane, they'd mostly be powdery. Dometimes a volume of acrylamide is just a lot faster. There are flocculants that get added volume, and packing materials as well. It always depends on the accuracy necessary for a given task, and how it fits into your workflow
My point is that kitchen scales are just not that accurate, but what they mostly help with is consistency. Rigorously used measuring spoons and cups provide lower error at small masses/volumes.0 -
Yes, Jane, they'd mostly be powdery. Dometimes a volume of acrylamide is just a lot faster. There are flocculants that get added volume, and packing materials as well. It always depends on the accuracy necessary for a given task, and how it fits into your workflow
My point is that kitchen scales are just not that accurate, but what they mostly help with is consistency. Rigorously used measuring spoons and cups provide lower error at small masses/volumes.
I'm surprised that a scientist would say that weighing your food with a scale is less accurate than measuring. With foods like cereal, there is a massive difference in weight between the start of a box when you get all the big pieces of cereal, and the end of the box when you get all the little pieces. A measuring cup would be way off in calories.
I don't think that everyone should HAVE to weigh their food, but if you're stuck and can't lose, yet refuse to even try one, to me that's just stubbornness.
Try it and you might be really surprised how easy it is. It truly is so much faster than measuring with cups, and a lot less dishes to wash! Put bowl on scale, hit zero. Add first item, log weight. Zero. Add second item. Repeat. And if you've given it a real try and still don't like it, fair enough! 0 -
Oh ok. Thank you for clarifying. Yes, I do think anyone mostly eating even textured, powdery items could use cups especially if they're careful to level, and not heap or pack. But for coarse items or foods that are otherwise unevenly textured, a food scale will give more consistent results. Some people have the allowance in their calories where a 300-600 calorie offset is not that big a deal, but I believe one of the videos posted explained how you could have that discrepancy per day just using cups. No Bueno. I burn that much during a pretty tough exercise session, so I'd rather carefully manage that many calories into my goal
Accuracy only has to be adequate to its application. 1g is absolutely accurate enough for food logging. It's just like saying 1mph is not a very fine measurement and so is completely useless for driving. By the same token, that same 1mph might be the entire range being evaluated in another application, and therefore inappropriate for that use case
TL;DR: if cups aren't giving you the results you need, weigh your food0 -
tincanonastring wrote: »
The funny thing is that it's actually easier and more efficient to weigh with a food scale than it is to use measuring cups.
Yeah, I found that, too - especially after getting accustomed to some of the tricks like putting the full container on the scale, hitting "tare", then using the negative to find out how much I ate, or tare-ing the bowl/plate/pan, adding something, tare again, then add the next thing. So easy, and less fiddly than all the measuring cups.0 -
@blankefinder, the problem with weighting is the accuracy isn't 1g, it's 3 for most kitchen scales. That is a huge error. Also exercise "calories burned" is mostly voodoo passed of as "science". You make it work through consistency of measuring, and adjustment based on results, not because your accuracy is great in the actual counting of calories in /out.0
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To illustrate my point, here's a rather accessible essay published in Scientific American about the problem with measuring calories in foods. Even with prefect weighing, the factor you are multiplying by (energy gained per unit food) is amidst certainly grossly in error. Precision and consistency are everything in this, accuracy nothing. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-why-calorie-counts-are-all-wrong/0
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