Serving vs calories

spdaphne

I was just serving myself some smoked salmon and for some reason I thought a serving was like 5 oz only to see it's 2-3 oz. That in combination with the rest of my breakfast (rice, zucchini and mushrooms) and a size of almond butter (ate this separately), gave me a healthy 413 calorie breakfast.

Question is, do you pay attention more to servings or calories? Do you ignore calories if you're getting the right amount of servings?

Alatariel75

Calories 100%. I completely ignore serving size, i don't even know where they come from.

dutchandkiwi

Calories and weight of food, no doubt about that. Serving sizes on packages are usually so small that unless you weigh the serving size they are pretty useless in the the greater scheme of things

__TMac__

Calories. I'm using calorie counting to lose weight, so counting servings isn't useful to me. A single serving of fish will have a very different calorie count than a single serving of beef.

That said, I do count servings (well, I count grams, but it's the same idea) of fruit and veg to make sure my nutritional needs are met.

RuNaRoUnDaFiEld

Calories, my favourite bag of lentil crisps serving size is 0.8 of a bag

kommodevaran

A serving or serving size is whatever amount the manufacturer or the government thinks is a reasonable amount to eat/drink in one setting, often with the intention to make it easier to compare different products of the same category, but usually ending up confusing the consumer (case in point, no offence, this is the built-in defect).

I serve myself whatever portion I want and can make room for of each food, and those calories are what matters.

lemurcat12

Calories, how much I want, the meal and macros.

Most of the things I eat don't have servings on them, so I'm never even sure what a serving is supposed to be.

There are a few things where the serving provides a reasonable size/amount of calories that I use as a template. Ice cream is one (.5 cup makes sense to me), and also pasta and oats as I am terrible about visualizing how much they will make when cooked so I used to always make too much and eat it because it was made. Limiting it to a serving helped me there.

lioness803

RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »

Calories, my favourite bag of lentil crisps serving size is 0.8 of a bag

A jar of pickles I used to buy listed a serving size of 2/3 of a spear. Calories are more important for sure!

MichelleWithMoxie

Alatariel75 wrote: »

Calories 100%. I completely ignore serving size, i don't even know where they come from.

Yep, this.

TonyB0588

spdaphne wrote: »

I was just serving myself some smoked salmon and for some reason I thought a serving was like 5 oz only to see it's 2-3 oz. That in combination with the rest of my breakfast (rice, zucchini and mushrooms) and a size of almond butter (ate this separately), gave me a healthy 413 calorie breakfast.

Question is, do you pay attention more to servings or calories? Do you ignore calories if you're getting the right amount of servings?

If you serve yourself 5oz of Salmon and you have access to information on how many calories that would be, then that's what you need to enter on your chart. Packaged items usually have a recommended serving size, and a statement of number of calories in that serving.

For non-packaged items, the usual recommendation on MFP is to weigh your food and then use an entry in the smallest common factor. Therefore you'd find a listing for 1g or 1oz of Salmon, and then enter the true number of grams or ounces you actually ate.