Weighing Food Takes Too Long And is OBSESSIVE!
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I have a backup scale now.
I might get one at some point! I always make sure I have spare batteries on hand now, after TWO episodes of the scale dying on me. You'd think I'd have learned after the first round of devastation but noooo... I put myself through the same anguish again about a year later!1 -
weighing food is interesting for a period of time.. educational ... but I have no desire to weigh my corn cob or shrimp shells. lol.. I do think weighing food forever is obsessive.10
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It has changed how I cook. My baking is so much better. Recipes that use cups make me crazy now. Especially for stuff like grated cheese or grated potatoes or anything chopped where the amount can vary greatly depending on how densely it’s packed. The few times I’ve cooked for a crowd (40 people), thinking in terms of weights was key to conceiving plans that worked. So maybe I am obsessive but it saves so much time and effort I’m not going back!8
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elisa123gal wrote: »weighing food is interesting for a period of time.. educational ... but I have no desire to weigh my corn cob or shrimp shells. lol.. I do think weighing food forever is obsessive.
Can't say I have a lot of desire to, but my body seems to be fond of it (though personally I wouldn't weigh corn cobs or shrimp shells).
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I love my scale, it's the math I dislike. Lol
I wish there was an app where you type 214 grams of green apple and it spits out the number of calories.
I guess I could just toss the 14 gms.
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I love my scale, it's the math I dislike. Lol
I wish there was an app where you type 214 grams of green apple and it spits out the number of calories.
I guess I could just toss the 14 gms.
The quick fits-all solution is to find a generic green apple entry that gives calories per 100g and looks reliable. (I just checked the database and there are some dodgy apples around.) Then click on the drop-down menu to change the serving size to 1g, and then type in 214 for your number of servings. Hey presto, done!
It works for any amount, no matter how odd the fraction you eat.
If you were making a joke and it just whooshed over my head, ignore this post.
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I weighed my food for about 3 months. I have a general understanding of my portions and for ME and with my mental health issues, it was becoming obsessive. I enjoy eyeballing more and have gotten majority of my results this way.
I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life tracking so I took a step back from the food scale and just chilled.
Will I ever go back to it? Probably. But as for right now, I’m good.2 -
I love my scale, it's the math I dislike. Lol
I wish there was an app where you type 214 grams of green apple and it spits out the number of calories.
I guess I could just toss the 14 gms.
2.14 servings of 100 grams would be the way to enter it if you're using 100 gram increments.5 -
I find weighing is faster and uses up fewer dishes! love it.JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I have a backup scale now.
I have a back-up scale AND i bought one for work (they are are super cheap ones and purchased over a few years). 0 -
HeliumIsNoble wrote: »I love my scale, it's the math I dislike. Lol
I wish there was an app where you type 214 grams of green apple and it spits out the number of calories.
I guess I could just toss the 14 gms.
The quick fits-all solution is to find a generic green apple entry that gives calories per 100g and looks reliable. (I just checked the database and there are some dodgy apples around.) Then click on the drop-down menu to change the serving size to 1g, and then type in 214 for your number of servings. Hey presto, done!
It works for any amount, no matter how odd the fraction you eat.
If you were making a joke and it just whooshed over my head, ignore this post.
Use "Apples, raw, with skin", which is an entry MFP pulled from the USDA database.
Unfortunately, the "verified" green check marks in the MFP database are used for both user-created entries and system entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. To find system entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and plug that into MFP.
For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP.
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I cook and bake a lot, always trying new recipes. Because I'm a Brit, that means weighing things.
So when I decided to lose weight and people said 'use a scale' it wasn't a chore. I don't weigh everything, only calorie dense things but when something is 25% more than it says that adds up.
I do appreciate how if you've not been brought up with that it's a new skill to learn and quickly could become irritating
In other news, when I was baking an American cookie recipe that was a massive chore, working out 1 cup = 250ml by volume and weighing out sugar after I’d guestimated by volume in my old Pyrex jug.
And that was after frantically googling confectioners’ sugar……
For some of us Americans baking and cooking means weighing too. If a recipe doesn't give grams I just convert it. I keep my staples in containers. On the outside I have listed the measurements in grams...40g(1/4 cup)...etc.
It really doesn't always work though. I made a no knead bread recipe using the normal conversion of 1 cup flour = 120g, and I had to throw it away because it was a mess. Turns out you had to use 135-140g for 1 cup. No idea where they got that 'conversion' from, considering that a serving of flour is typically 1/4 cup (30g).
Sigh.
Was that the America's Test Kitchen no knead bread recipe? Yes, on every package of flour it says 1/4 cup = 30g but Christopher Kimble is adamant that 1 C = 5 oz = 140g.0 -
Weighing the contents of a meal takes less time than composing a 'oh woe is me I'm not losing weight and I'm doing everything right thread' 16
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kshama2001 wrote: »I cook and bake a lot, always trying new recipes. Because I'm a Brit, that means weighing things.
So when I decided to lose weight and people said 'use a scale' it wasn't a chore. I don't weigh everything, only calorie dense things but when something is 25% more than it says that adds up.
I do appreciate how if you've not been brought up with that it's a new skill to learn and quickly could become irritating
In other news, when I was baking an American cookie recipe that was a massive chore, working out 1 cup = 250ml by volume and weighing out sugar after I’d guestimated by volume in my old Pyrex jug.
And that was after frantically googling confectioners’ sugar……
For some of us Americans baking and cooking means weighing too. If a recipe doesn't give grams I just convert it. I keep my staples in containers. On the outside I have listed the measurements in grams...40g(1/4 cup)...etc.
It really doesn't always work though. I made a no knead bread recipe using the normal conversion of 1 cup flour = 120g, and I had to throw it away because it was a mess. Turns out you had to use 135-140g for 1 cup. No idea where they got that 'conversion' from, considering that a serving of flour is typically 1/4 cup (30g).
Sigh.
Was that the America's Test Kitchen no knead bread recipe? Yes, on every package of flour it says 1/4 cup = 30g but Christopher Kimble is adamant that 1 C = 5 oz = 140g.
Flour that hasn't been sifted or mixed in any way (i.e. all settled in the bag) will fit 140g into a cup. Mixed but unsifted flour will fit 128 grams, and sifted flour will be 120 grams. At least according to what I've read. Usually, in baking, I find that the 128 grams works best. 4 -
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I will chime in on this. I do weigh and measure 95% of the things I eat. Time consuming? Sometimes. Worth it? To me yes. I never learned these skills completely while losing. Has to learn them on the fly. What it has done for me is to allow me to visually judge things better. If I am out and just have to get a meal in, I can and not be wildly off.2
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Susieq_1994 wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »I cook and bake a lot, always trying new recipes. Because I'm a Brit, that means weighing things.
So when I decided to lose weight and people said 'use a scale' it wasn't a chore. I don't weigh everything, only calorie dense things but when something is 25% more than it says that adds up.
I do appreciate how if you've not been brought up with that it's a new skill to learn and quickly could become irritating
In other news, when I was baking an American cookie recipe that was a massive chore, working out 1 cup = 250ml by volume and weighing out sugar after I’d guestimated by volume in my old Pyrex jug.
And that was after frantically googling confectioners’ sugar……
For some of us Americans baking and cooking means weighing too. If a recipe doesn't give grams I just convert it. I keep my staples in containers. On the outside I have listed the measurements in grams...40g(1/4 cup)...etc.
It really doesn't always work though. I made a no knead bread recipe using the normal conversion of 1 cup flour = 120g, and I had to throw it away because it was a mess. Turns out you had to use 135-140g for 1 cup. No idea where they got that 'conversion' from, considering that a serving of flour is typically 1/4 cup (30g).
Sigh.
Was that the America's Test Kitchen no knead bread recipe? Yes, on every package of flour it says 1/4 cup = 30g but Christopher Kimble is adamant that 1 C = 5 oz = 140g.
Flour that hasn't been sifted or mixed in any way (i.e. all settled in the bag) will fit 140g into a cup. Mixed but unsifted flour will fit 128 grams, and sifted flour will be 120 grams. At least according to what I've read. Usually, in baking, I find that the 128 grams works best.
This is really helpful, thanks! It’s also why I look for recipes that use weights and avoid those that don’t. This will help my confidence in converting. I agree- no knead bread can be a mess with too little flour. I use 400g to 1.5c water & 1/4tsp yeast, for a recipe that calls for 3c, BTW. (I do use spoons for yeast, spices, and anything else too light to register on my scale.) This is exactly why my baking improved using the scale.
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HeliumIsNoble wrote: »I love my scale, it's the math I dislike. Lol
I wish there was an app where you type 214 grams of green apple and it spits out the number of calories.
I guess I could just toss the 14 gms.
The quick fits-all solution is to find a generic green apple entry that gives calories per 100g and looks reliable. (I just checked the database and there are some dodgy apples around.) Then click on the drop-down menu to change the serving size to 1g, and then type in 214 for your number of servings. Hey presto, done!
It works for any amount, no matter how odd the fraction you eat.
If you were making a joke and it just whooshed over my head, ignore this post.
I wasn't joking! I did not know how to do that! Thank you so much. You made my day. 😊2 -
This is a slight digression, but (as the OP ) I think I'll just briefly digress it!
One useful thing to know: There are a bunch of MFP database entries, often green-checked ones, that start out with 1C as the default quantity. (Some of them are even really dumb ones like hardboiled eggs!) If you see that, click on the serving-size dropdown. Very often, these turn out to be some of the very best entries in the database, with many different serving size options.
For example, look up "Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, year round average". The default is "1.0 cup cherry tomatoes". Hit the drop-down, and you see this, and you can scroll on to literally 20 different quantities, from tomato inch sizes to slices to weights in metric and imperial, including nice 100g and 1g entries.
That kind of bureaucratic language in the title is another hint that it may be one of the old entries imported from USDA - y'know, who says "Chicken, broilers or fryers, thigh, meat only, cooked, roasted" other than the gubmint? (Note some are simpler, but most are like that.)
Some of these entries have goofed-up calories for the cup/spoon quantities, but are mostly fine for grams and counts.
Try the serving size drop-downs. 3 -
I lost 40 pounds in 4 months. Now before you crap a brick, I'm over 100 pounds overweight..so that's pretty common. Anyways, I eat the fries at the bottom of the bag. I just ate a chocolate out of my sons box of chocolates. I lick the spoon when I make brownies. I don't weigh my food. I use a measuring cup if it calls for it. But I've been extremely successful while not weighing and questioning every little thing that goes into my pie hole. I refuse to ever be that way. It makes people miserable.7
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ShayCarver89 wrote: »I lost 40 pounds in 4 months. Now before you crap a brick, I'm over 100 pounds overweight..so that's pretty common. Anyways, I eat the fries at the bottom of the bag. I just ate a chocolate out of my sons box of chocolates. I lick the spoon when I make brownies. I don't weigh my food. I use a measuring cup if it calls for it. But I've been extremely successful while not weighing and questioning every little thing that goes into my pie hole. I refuse to ever be that way. It makes people miserable.
Some folks need to see the difference between what they're guessing and what it really is. It's great that yours is working for you though.
Myself? I hate weighing food because it showed me how really small my ounce of beloved cheese really is.
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ShayCarver89 wrote: »I lost 40 pounds in 4 months. Now before you crap a brick, I'm over 100 pounds overweight..so that's pretty common. Anyways, I eat the fries at the bottom of the bag. I just ate a chocolate out of my sons box of chocolates. I lick the spoon when I make brownies. I don't weigh my food. I use a measuring cup if it calls for it. But I've been extremely successful while not weighing and questioning every little thing that goes into my pie hole. I refuse to ever be that way. It makes people miserable.
Many of us who started with a lot to lose have had this experience. Frankly, there's a lot of room for error when a person is 100 lbs overweight. As our weight goes down, so does the room for error. Some get by OK by "eating less", some of us turn to more accurate logging techniques. It doesn't make me miserable, and I don't worry about every little thing, but this way I know where the issue lies if I'm not losing at the expected rate.8 -
ShayCarver89 wrote: »I lost 40 pounds in 4 months. Now before you crap a brick, I'm over 100 pounds overweight..so that's pretty common. Anyways, I eat the fries at the bottom of the bag. I just ate a chocolate out of my sons box of chocolates. I lick the spoon when I make brownies. I don't weigh my food. I use a measuring cup if it calls for it. But I've been extremely successful while not weighing and questioning every little thing that goes into my pie hole. I refuse to ever be that way. It makes people miserable.
I understand what you’re saying. When you get closer and closer to your goal weight, you have less room for error. Measuring accurately gets really important when your goal is .5lb/week and you only need to lose 10lbs to get to your goal weight. That can take months, it has to be precise, and the strategies that you relied on before when you had more to lose won’t work.9 -
ShayCarver89 wrote: »I lost 40 pounds in 4 months. Now before you crap a brick, I'm over 100 pounds overweight..so that's pretty common. Anyways, I eat the fries at the bottom of the bag. I just ate a chocolate out of my sons box of chocolates. I lick the spoon when I make brownies. I don't weigh my food. I use a measuring cup if it calls for it. But I've been extremely successful while not weighing and questioning every little thing that goes into my pie hole. I refuse to ever be that way. It makes people miserable.
Just for clarification, and speaking as the OP here:
I have not said, and would not say, that everyone needs to weigh food. If someone can achieve their goals without doing so, bravo to them - very sincerely. So, I applaud your success! :flowerforyou:
What this thread is trying to achieve is to help people who want to or need to weigh food to do that in a smooth and efficient way. Sometimes, people think weighing food is fussy and obsessive in ways that it isn't (for some/many of us), because they don't know how to do it efficiently. If they're using cups/spoons to measure, it will be easier and less time-consuming to weigh food, not more obsessive. (I recognize that measuring or weighing food could be a path to obsessive behavior for some people, and I would say that those people should not do it.)
To the bolded: I would not tell you that you must weigh food. I'm startled that you'd tell me I'm miserable. I'm not, I assure you. No worries: I'm quite well-adjusted and happy, thank you. This all just seems like a fun science-fair experiment for grown-ups, to me.
We're not all the same. Can we support each other? 21 -
I didn't read the whole thread so not sure if it's been mentioned already but for those of you who have an Amazon Alexa, Google Home or similar it's a great tool to keep track of weights while your busy running around the kitchen cooking, especially if you meal prep! I created a "food" list and I just yell the weights of my foods at my Alexa! Like "Alexa add 142 grams of carrots to the food list" I mean it takes 2 seconds to stop and write it down but this way you don't have to stop at all.6
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Agree 100%. It is not that hard. It becomes second nature. I feel good knowing how much I'm eating.4
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I bought my first food scale at the dollar store for $1.00. It wasn’t very accurate and wouldn’t weigh very much, but it was waaaayyyyy more accurate than my estimating. Sent me shopping for a good scale.
And it is totally easier than measuring cups.4 -
Who invented these 'cups' though? Ive never understood it, I dont think I have seen one in the shops here although presumably there must be. Years ago I used to think recipes I saw referencing them was referring to the amount you could get into a tea cup!1
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Who invented these 'cups' though? Ive never understood it, I dont think I have seen one in the shops here although presumably there must be. Years ago I used to think recipes I saw referencing them was referring to the amount you could get into a tea cup!
Fanny Farmer, back in pioneer days. Recipes were often handed down, mother to daughter back then, and vague on measurements. Also, not everyone had a scale, but just about everyone had cups and they were a standard (8 fl oz) size.
Her cookbook used those cups as standard measurements and it caught on.
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Who invented these 'cups' though? Ive never understood it, I dont think I have seen one in the shops here although presumably there must be. Years ago I used to think recipes I saw referencing them was referring to the amount you could get into a tea cup!
I have a recipe for bread and rolls that my grandmother wrote in the fly-leaf of a cookbook for my mother when she was visiting, and the amount of flour is 6 to 8 cups, with "white and blue cups" added to indicate which tea cups in my mother's kitchen she had used. Of course, she really just went by how the bread felt, herself, but to oblige, she had counted out how much flour she added using those cups.3 -
estherdragonbat wrote: »Who invented these 'cups' though? Ive never understood it, I dont think I have seen one in the shops here although presumably there must be. Years ago I used to think recipes I saw referencing them was referring to the amount you could get into a tea cup!
Fanny Farmer, back in pioneer days. Recipes were often handed down, mother to daughter back then, and vague on measurements. Also, not everyone had a scale, but just about everyone had cups and they were a standard (8 fl oz) size.
Her cookbook used those cups as standard measurements and it caught on.
Old cookbooks called for “pinch” and “dollop”, etc. but my Grandmother in law was telling me how to cook one of my favorite recipes of hers, and she said to add a “right smart” of something. Had no idea how much that was!
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