Finding your happy medium of logging accuracy

paperpudding

Maybe you like weighing every little thing and checking bread slices, muesli bars etc are the weight they say they are and bringing banana peel home to weigh and subtract from total weight of banana each time you take one for a snack at work.....if so, this thread is not for you.

I do wonder though how many people have fallen by the wayside because the bar of logging seems set too high and they feel if you dont do it to this level of accuracy you cannot succeed.
'Perfect is the enemy of good' type of thing

Whilst I am not suggesting weighing nothing and just blindly guessing all intake, I do think it is important to find the level of accuracy you can cope with long term and the level you actually need in practice, not in MFP perfect theory.

Just like you dont win by eating the smallest amount or by having the most deprivation, you win by eating the most you can (and want to) to still lose weight.
Likewise I dont think you win by being the most accurate logger - you win by finding the easiest, user friendly ,laziest way to acheive enough accuracy for you.

For me, weighing things like bananas or mandarines or strawberries or any fruit I regularly eat and then just assuming all other bananas were that size because they looked like they were, was ok.
Assuming bread, muesli bars, tinned food, frozen meals were the size they said they were and it will average out if they are not, was ok
Assuming every cup of coffee I drink has same amount of milk as the one I first measured, was ok

TL;DR - lazy logging is ok.

queenliz99

I just bought a sleeve of fresh figs and weighed one because the rest were approximately the same size. I do this all the time, yep, call me lazy.

Thanks for pointing this out

middlehaitch

Nicely said @paperpudding

Consistent lazy logging is fine. My mandarins, bananas, coffee, bread, cookies, glasses of wine, salads, and veg were more often than not best guess estimates for the first 10 lbs I lost because I had a lot of leeway.

For the 2nd 10lbs things had to get tighter. Bread, fruit, wine, and desert were weighed.

For the last 10lbs e v e r y little thing was weighed and measured. My maintenance calories were so close to my deficit calories there wasn't room for error.

Lazy is great until one has to tighten the logging, and accurate logging is a great skill to learn when you are just starting out.

Most of the time when accuracy is emphasized it is because someone has a problem losing. Logging is the easiest to rectify, and more often than not the culprit.

Cheers, h.

ETA: I have been maintaining 6+years and only log a couple of times a year, or when the fancy takes me- change of workout or routine.

AnvilHead

I'll admit to being a lazy logger. I weigh certain things that are difficult to estimate portion sizes, but I eyeball the vast majority of my intake. We eat at restaurants usually a couple times a week and I rely completely upon estimation for all of those meals. I don't weigh packaged foods, eggs, most meats, cheese, vegetables, etc., other than maybe a periodic check just to make sure my "calibrated eyeball" isn't slipping. It's worked well for me through 54 pounds lost so far - but if I start having problems losing further, I know exactly what the cause is and what I have to do to remedy it. I'm somewhere between 5-15 pounds from goal weight right now (really going on bodyfat percentage and the mirror rather than a specific number on the scale), and haven't had the need to tighten up the logging yet.

The proviso to the above is that I've been logging/losing for over a year now (have lost the weight slowly, exactly as I intended to), and also logged/lost weight for over a year using MFP back in 2012-2013, so I'm very familiar with portion sizes and the calorie counts of most foods I commonly eat. I did much more weighing and measuring in the beginning and paid close attention to portion sizes to develop the "eye" for it.

I think weighing and measuring is a valid tool and a good idea for people just starting out, and there are two sides to that coin; it could help you stay within your calories if you tend to be an underestimator, but it could also give you more to eat than you thought if you're an overestimator! If you screw up the estimate on a 4 ounce piece of meat and call it 7 ounces instead, you just cheated yourself out of 3 ounces of meat (or the equivalent amount of calories you could have eaten in whatever other food). Remember, whoever gets to eat the most and still lose weight wins!

paperpudding

Thanks for your thoughtful answers - yes I agree if it isnt working - ie someone isnt losing weight as expected (presuming their expectation is realistic) , then, yes, tightening logging is a good step to see where problem might be.
Or they could try just cutting a snack somewhere from each day - skip the bowl of ice-cream after dinner, for example.
But both approaches are valid and if they have no idea where to start, accurate logging is good step.

and if they claim they are not losing despite eating only 1000 calories per day or something, checking logging accuracy is a must.

and, yes I certainly weigh some things - especially calorie dense things which I eat in loose amounts and am prone to trying to sneak a bit extra of, if I dont weigh and make myself stick to limit - have great fondness for cheese and dried fruit, for example.

and I certainly suggest people starting out do weigh and measure - but perhaps not to the 'extreme level' some posters recomend.
Unless they find they are not losing to plan - which, for me, never happened - I ate 1460 (or thought I did) and I did lose 10 kg in 10 months, as expected.
Now maintaining on 1710 (or what I think is 1710)

Francl27

It's totally fine. It's when people don't admit that their logging isn't accurate then complain that they're not losing weight that it's a problem (which baffles me a bit, honestly... if you're not losing, eat less).

Pawsforme

I'm a consistently lazy logger. I guess if I started gaining weight (I've been in maintenance for months) I'd tighten up. But I had no problem losing and have had no problem maintaining while being consistently lazy. It kind of boggles my mind that people talk about weighing individual slices of bread or taking a food scale with them to a restaurant. But OTOH, if they need to do those things to have success then . . . okay. I guess most of us who are successful figure out what's necessary for us.