Why weigh?

amythomas2

Hi everyone,
I've been a lurker here for months but never posted before but I have read many posts about weighing food for accuracy and I just wanted to share something.
Before I go on, I will say I weigh everything but I know some don't...

My fiancée and I were making homemade pizza for dinner tonight and the recipe said the dough makes four pizzas at 200cal per pizza base.
The ingredients said 1cup flour.
I weighed out the cup of flour added it into the recipe builder with everything else and it totalled 335 calories per pizza base, so 135 more than if you'd gone by recipe alone! That's a lot of calories if it happened on a regular basis!

Thanks for listening :-) happy new year all.

socioseguro

Thank you for sharing. Good for you to build your own pizza recipe.
Weighing your food intake is paramount to ensure eating at a deficit, hence to lose body weight.
Majority of people do not understand the importance of using a food scale. It is an eye opening experience.
Good luck in your healthy journey and Happy New Year

RuNaRoUnDaFiEld

Mmm pizza

amythomas2

It was awesome pizza if I do say so myself!

Thank you for your comments, I knew there was a reason why I weighed food (the obvious) but this highlights the importance for sure!

macgurlnet

Mmm pizza indeed.

Good on you weighing things! I get a bit lax if I'm just trying to maintain my weight, but I tighten up once I'm trying to lose.

That's a lot of unaccounted for calories otherwise!

~Lyssa

Francl27

Nom. I need to make homemade pizza again.

But yeah... I NEVER trust recipes. They lie. That being said, making dough is a pain because it's hard to count the extra flour you add for rolling.

amythomas2

I expect most things don't have that much of a discrepancy but if they did, it would soon eat up your deficit excuse the pun haha!

I never trust recipes either ... I honestly don't know where they get their calories from as the same product in different brands has different calories sometimes!

Once I'd shown my other half the discrepancy on the measurements in that flour, bless him, he weighed out the rolling flour and we added that in, so have probably overestimated the calories in the end but prefer to have counted slightly more than nowhere near enough! With tomato and pesto base, lacto free cheese and sliced chorizo I was a happy girl :-) he also had acti fry chips with his!

middlehaitch

@Francl27 just put a portion of flour on a saucer, weigh, use for rolling, re weigh, enter the difference. I do that with oil in recipes all the time- weigh what is requested, then minus any I find excess.

Just love the precision of tarring digital scales.

Cheers, h.

amythomas2

I do that with oil but I thought flour might be tricky as it gets scattered/stuck on the work surface?

middlehaitch wrote: »

@Francl27 just put a portion of flour on a saucer, weigh, use for rolling, re weigh, enter the difference. I do that with oil in recipes all the time- weigh what is requested, then minus any I find excess.

WendyLaubach

I weigh or measure, whatever is most convenient. As long as you're not trying to push too close to your calorie limit, which will be evident from the fact that you are reliably and steadily losing weight, you can afford a little sloppage. I'm most careful with calorie-dense foods that I eat repeatedly, such as a rich casserole with leftovers that will be spread out over days, because a small error can mount up. With foods like greens or mushrooms, I'm careless, because it would be almost impossible to eat enough of them to make an error worth noticing. The same goes for whether I guess at a reasonably similar food in the database or go to the trouble of analyzing my own recipe: if it's a rich food, it's worth the extra trouble to be precise. If it's ordinary vegetable soup, not so much. But always, the proof is in the continued weight loss. if the weight is dropping, you're measuring closely enough.

jesusarolon

I weigh everything. It kind off ingrains itself into you. The last thing I want to happen is to end up in the red because i told myself "oh I know by know how much a cup is or how much 200 grams are."

neohdiver

amythomas2 wrote: »

Hi everyone,
I've been a lurker here for months but never posted before but I have read many posts about weighing food for accuracy and I just wanted to share something.
Before I go on, I will say I weigh everything but I know some don't...

My fiancée and I were making homemade pizza for dinner tonight and the recipe said the dough makes four pizzas at 200cal per pizza base.
The ingredients said 1cup flour.
I weighed out the cup of flour added it into the recipe builder with everything else and it totalled 335 calories per pizza base, so 135 more than if you'd gone by recipe alone! That's a lot of calories if it happened on a regular basis!

Thanks for listening :-) happy new year all.

I now have an accurate, easy to use scale, so I will weigh more now. But until now I've been measuring (and ball-parking when I'm away from home) since I started in early October. I'm down 27.9 lbs - averaging .3/day.

For me, the important thing on a calorie counting way of eating has always been counting absolutely everything - even if I am off a bit on the calories because the measured quantity don't match USDA or the package nutrients when weighed. (Mine have always been within 10%) But if you find you aren't losing when you measure (rather than weigh) your food, adjusting your allowed calories down may be easier than switching to weighing.

neohdiver

WendyLaubach wrote: »

I weigh or measure, whatever is most convenient. As long as you're not trying to push too close to your calorie limit, which will be evident from the fact that you are reliably and steadily losing weight, you can afford a little sloppage. I'm most careful with calorie-dense foods that I eat repeatedly, such as a rich casserole with leftovers that will be spread out over days, because a small error can mount up. With foods like greens or mushrooms, I'm careless, because it would be almost impossible to eat enough of them to make an error worth noticing. The same goes for whether I guess at a reasonably similar food in the database or go to the trouble of analyzing my own recipe: if it's a rich food, it's worth the extra trouble to be precise. If it's ordinary vegetable soup, not so much. But always, the proof is in the continued weight loss. if the weight is dropping, you're measuring closely enough.

^^^^
This

srecupid

I weigh pretty much everything because it only takes me an extra couple seconds. I just hate it for stuff like mashed potatoes. I had a package today that was cups prepared. So if I had 4 ounces that would be half cup right? Also it's OK to weigh meat after cooking for meats that would be inconvenient to portion out before hand like a whole turkey?

middlehaitch

@srecupid if the meat is cooked just make sure you chose the cooked entry, skin? bone in? dark or light? You can double check quite a lot of the entries in MFP in the USDA.

@amythomas2
Back to the flour used for rolling/handling dough. I end up using so little the residue on the counter top is minimal. If you happen to throw it around like confetti at a wedding; you could scrape it up and weigh it too- personally that amount of precision is a little too OTT even for me.

ceilingfansandfryingpans

I lost my old scale when I moved and actually went out and bought another(much cooler) scale today. I spent about 20 minutes trying to get it to work before figuring out I had to take the plastic off from under the battery.. Go me.

But weighing definitely makes a difference. What you thought was 1 serving of something can easily end up being 3. Also good if you're an OCD freak like me and take pleasure in knowing every single gram of food that went into your body every day.

lorrpb

What do you mean that you weighed out a cup of flour?1 c is not a weight.

k_lethal

I used to eat granola on my yogurt that was, according to the label, 260 calories for 2/3 of a cup, or 55 grams. Turns out 55 grams is actually 1/3 of a cup. Good thing I hadn't even bothered ever measuring by the cup and had just gone straight to sprinkling it on my yogurt on the scale or that would've been a ton of extra calories I wouldn't have known about.

allyphoe

srecupid wrote: »

I just hate it for stuff like mashed potatoes. I had a package today that was cups prepared. So if I had 4 ounces that would be half cup right?

Nope. You can't convert weight to volume like that - that's the whole point of weighing.

If you really wanted to be precise, weigh your package of dry powder, weigh the reconstituted potatoes, weigh your portion. Then do a bunch of math.

neohdiver

lorrpb wrote: »

What do you mean that you weighed out a cup of flour?1 c is not a weight.

Recipes, at least in the US, are most frequently given by volume - not weight. If you are following a recipe and determining nutrients per serving by finished weight, you need to know the weight of the flour, even if the recipe calls for 1 cup of flour. (And, typically, the nutrient information on US packages gives an equivalent between volume and weight. E.g. 1/4 cup = 30 g)

neohdiver

srecupid wrote: »

I weigh pretty much everything because it only takes me an extra couple seconds. I just hate it for stuff like mashed potatoes. I had a package today that was cups prepared. So if I had 4 ounces that would be half cup right?

Assuming ounces = weight, only if the item has the same density as water. If it is denser, 4 oz would be less than half a cup. If it is less dense (like mashed potato flakes) 4 oz would be more than half a cup.

srecupid wrote: »

Also it's OK to weigh meat after cooking for meats that would be inconvenient to portion out before hand like a whole turkey?

Yes, as long as you use nutrition information for meat cooked the same method as you cooked it. Meat shrinks during cooking because it loses fluid and fat, so 4 oz of raw turkey would not result in 4 oz of cooked turkey.

As a general rule, make sure you pull the nutrition information for the condition (raw, roasted, steamed, etc.) of the food as weighed.

srecupid

So would in the case of the potatoes it be a better idea to enter it as a recipe? And as far as finding a cooked vs uncooked entry on mfp i would rather just use the info on the package. Like in the case of the turkey how accurate would just cooking it and then weighing the cooked portion be in comparison to the raw info. I mean it's not feasible to pre cut an entire turkey. I don't feel like doing crazy math for everything.

amythomas2

@amythomas2
Back to the flour used for rolling/handling dough. I end up using so little the residue on the counter top is minimal. If you happen to throw it around like confetti at a wedding; you could scrape it up and weigh it too- personally that amount of precision is a little too OTT even for me. [/quote]


That's what I did, I thought I was missing out on something for a minute then! I like the idea of scattering it round like confetti though!

lorrpb wrote: »

What do you mean that you weighed out a cup of flour?1 c is not a weight.

As in, I got a cup, put it on the scale and then spooned the flour in until it reached the '1cup' marker as per recipe request, but the scale underneath weighed the grams.

macgurlnet

amythomas2 wrote: »

@amythomas2
Back to the flour used for rolling/handling dough. I end up using so little the residue on the counter top is minimal. If you happen to throw it around like confetti at a wedding; you could scrape it up and weigh it too- personally that amount of precision is a little too OTT even for me.

That's what I did, I thought I was missing out on something for a minute then! I like the idea of scattering it round like confetti though!

lorrpb wrote: »

What do you mean that you weighed out a cup of flour?1 c is not a weight.

As in, I got a cup, put it on the scale and then spooned the flour in until it reached the '1cup' marker as per recipe request, but the scale underneath weighed the grams.
[/quote]

Did the flour package have serving size in grams, too? My flour is something like "serving size 1/4 cup (55 g)."

If your package does have that, just use the gram measurement for whatever amount you end up with (in my case, it would be 220g for a cup). Ignore the line on the measuring cup. It may end up being close, or you may find that you're below or above the line by a good bit. Doesn't matter if you're weighing it

I like to just use small bowls instead of my measuring cups - they clean more easily.

~Lyssa

amythomas2

I'm not too sure tbf, I'm in the UK but was using an American recipe book so thought I'd use their measurement per recipe but weigh it for calorie accuracy lol. Maybe next time we make dough I'll use less flour but it might affect the consistency or not make enough dough for four servings...our pizza yesterday was a good size.

Francl27

amythomas2 wrote: »

I'm not too sure tbf, I'm in the UK but was using an American recipe book so thought I'd use their measurement per recipe but weigh it for calorie accuracy lol. Maybe next time we make dough I'll use less flour but it might affect the consistency or not make enough dough for four servings...our pizza yesterday was a good size.

American recipes are a PITA. Your cup of flour could be anywhere from 90g to 150g... it definitely affects the final product. I hate it. I usually do the math and use what the package says (so usually around 124g for one cup) but often the result is just odd.

amythomas2

That's my point, I always weigh everything but I know a lot of people don't, particularly new people, so I wanted to show how not weighing can affect your calorie intake, deficit and therefore loss if it happens regularly.

macgurlnet

Francl27 wrote: »

amythomas2 wrote: »

I'm not too sure tbf, I'm in the UK but was using an American recipe book so thought I'd use their measurement per recipe but weigh it for calorie accuracy lol. Maybe next time we make dough I'll use less flour but it might affect the consistency or not make enough dough for four servings...our pizza yesterday was a good size.

American recipes are a PITA. Your cup of flour could be anywhere from 90g to 150g... it definitely affects the final product. I hate it. I usually do the math and use what the package says (so usually around 124g for one cup) but often the result is just odd.

I've had pretty good luck doing the conversions - my recipes on here end up being in cups because finding the gram entries is a PITA, plus the recipe builder has been a fussy little thing and I can't be bothered arguing with it. It picks something suitable but I can't view nutrition for the replacements if it picks the wrong thing. Aggravating. Could be my computer, but that's a separate issue.

I save all my recipes over on pepperplate.com with the gram numbers, plus the brand(s) of ingredients I'm using. Then I have the instructions and ingredients all in one place.

I'll come back here and adjust servings/ingredients if needed, but using another site to save them has been immensely helpful.

~Lyssa

middlehaitch

@macgurlnet I was so excited when I read about Pepper Plate I went off to join it immediately. Once joined I found it didn't support one of my favourite sites- bbcgoodfood.com! So disappointing.

Being from the UK, but living in Canada, I could never get the hang of cups. I wrote out a list with cups and the imperial and metric equivalents and stuck it to the inside of a kitchen cupboard door. It stood me in good stead for years.

Cheers, h.

macgurlnet

middlehaitch wrote: »

@macgurlnet I was so excited when I read about Pepper Plate I went off to join it immediately. Once joined I found it didn't support one of my favourite sites- bbcgoodfood.com! So disappointing.

Being from the UK, but living in Canada, I could never get the hang of cups. I wrote out a list with cups and the imperial and metric equivalents and stuck it to the inside of a kitchen cupboard door. It stood me in good stead for years.

Cheers, h.

Yeah, that's the worst thing

I get around it by copying & pasting everything manually from the unsupported sites. I don't do a whole ton of cooking, so, at most, it's a new recipe or two every 2-3 weeks.

Evernote used to offer a service called Evernote Food, which allowed you to "clip" a website and save it to your Notes, and, in turn, to a dedicated app that laid everything out beautifully. Sadly, they no longer offer this service so I had to find something else. Pepperplate is as close as I could get to what I wanted.

I may do as you've done and list out the more common numbers and stick it to the door - I can get it laminated at work if I want to, so it'll last forever

~Lyssa

Marianna93637

I weigh everything. I didn't get a digital scale until 3 weeks after I started logging, and it was a huge difference. For example banana. A banana can be 100 gr (a very tiny one) or 180 or 200. You can't just estimate medium or small banana. And you'd be surprised how little 1 ounce cheese is

Logging without accurately weighing the food makes no sense. We already have some inaccuracies when we eat out and have to estimate, etc, at least the rest of it is accurate. All you need to be is 500 calories off on the positive side and not lose any weight, any more and you can actually gain.