The Honor Code?
Rebirth08
Posts: 174 Member
I'm logging my food as honestly as possible, but with some things, it's almost impossible to know exactly how many calories I'm consuming. Example: I marinated some raw chicken tender strips and bell peppers. The marinade included oil. I cooked maybe 3 oz of the chicken and two handfuls of veggies. Them I had mashed sweet potatoes made with garlic and cream cheese. Since sweet potatoes vary in size, I went by what MFP and gave myself the highest calorie count because of the cream cheese and the varying sizes of the sweet potatoes. I think y'all get my point. Anyone having a similar issue? What do you do to keep the 'honor code'?
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Replies
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Have you tried weighing your food with a food scale? You have to lie to yourself much less that way.41
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I think the above post was too harsh, but definitely, the only way to know for certain is to log.20
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Yes, sweet potatoes vary in size. That's why you weigh them and use a database entry that uses mass/weight units, which you have verified against a reliable source, such as the USDA nutrient database (ndb.nal.usda.gov). Ditto on "handfuls" of veggies.
My "honor code" with myself was that I would log everything and weigh whenever possible.15 -
Digital kitchen scale.
End thread.28 -
You can find a good kitchen scale for pretty cheap and it takes the guesswork out of a lot of that stuff. Today I weighed my shredded red cabbage, my grated carrots, pumpkin seeds and cubed chicken breast for my salad and it made it so much better than going off of "cups". Volumetric measurements depend on packing and weird shapes. It's just not as reliable.
I hear you on the multiple ingredients thing though. Logging makes me want to eat simpler meals just to make my logging experience that much easier! That said, I went out for sushi tonight and that was no fun to log.10 -
There's no "honor code" about it. It all shows up on the bathroom scale.20
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Weigh sweet potato. Weigh cream cheese. Measure oil. weigh chicken. Done. No mystery or guesswork required.18
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I never weigh anything. I just do my best to estimate what I actually eat. It can work if you are as honest with yourself as possible and especially if you go on the high side rather than lowballing the amounts. I cook for two. My husband usually gets a somewhat larger portion, but I still just split the total calories in two. That gives me a bit of wiggle room for errors.11
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TimothyFish wrote: »There's no "honor code" about it. It all shows up on the bathroom scale.
I'm not here to lie. I now know on something like sweet potatoes, I need to weigh. I measure as much as I can with the tools I have. I'm 70# lighter, so I have no reason to deceive myself on purpose.13 -
Thank you for answering, but your answer ended nothing. I Appreciate more feedback. I will invest in a digital scaleHeather4448 wrote: »Digital kitchen scale.
End thread.12 -
I also find it helpful to set up my most used foods by gram. For example, if a banana is 1 cal per gram, I peel it weigh it and log the exact amount.3
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spiriteagle99 wrote: »I never weigh anything. I just do my best to estimate what I actually eat. It can work if you are as honest with yourself as possible and especially if you go on the high side rather than lowballing the amounts. I cook for two. My husband usually gets a somewhat larger portion, but I still just split the total calories in two. That gives me a bit of wiggle room for errors.
Thank you for getting it! I have a manual scale and I use cups, so I'm trying. But some things are more of a challenge and I too log high rather than low in these cases.12 -
luckywizard wrote: »You can find a good kitchen scale for pretty cheap and it takes the guesswork out of a lot of that stuff. Today I weighed my shredded red cabbage, my grated carrots, pumpkin seeds and cubed chicken breast for my salad and it made it so much better than going off of "cups". Volumetric measurements depend on packing and weird shapes. It's just not as reliable.
I hear you on the multiple ingredients thing though. Logging makes me want to eat simpler meals just to make my logging experience that much easier! That said, I went out for sushi tonight and that was no fun to log.
Thank you for understanding where I was coming from. I have a manual food scale but it's time to invest in a digital one.7 -
VintageFeline wrote: »Weigh sweet potato. Weigh cream cheese. Measure oil. weigh chicken. Done. No mystery or guesswork required.
I weighed and measured everything but the potatoes. I'm becoming more mindful and will invest in a digital scale. Thanks4 -
I have a scale and use it for lots of things. But when I cook a whole meal I often don't. So if I sue a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan, cook for four and eat my share I usually put a tsp of oil in my serving. My whole theory is that when I stop losing I'll tighten up on things like that. But while I'm steady dropping weight I don't want the bother so I don't do it.10
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I get where you are coming from for sure.
My digital kitchen scales live on my table. I have a stack of plastic clear jugs to make weighing easier. And this is great to determine how much jam you actually put on toast, or how much a banana weighs. It was great to see how much milk I put in my coffee (100mls!!)
Once you delve into cooking a meal it's a nightmare- especially if it's not all for you, or you decide to 'health it up' and chuck in a lot of vegies. In that case, I search up what I've made ("chicken and vegetable soup"), and pick a random. I find weighing it helps with portion control, but the reality is I have no idea how many KJs/Cals or in my bowl. I justify that by 1. Remembering those vegies and how healthy they are, 2, Remembering that I want time to actually eat and not spend 2 hrs logging a meal, and 3, ENJOYING the cooking (and eating) process.
I also have some 'clues' of where to look if I gain weight that week
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My food diary is a tool for me to use. If I want it to be most useful I log as best I can. I'm not going to be 100% accurate. If I am not getting the results I want I tighten up my logging.
I use the recipe builder to enter and log homemade foods with multiple ingredients.
I log my food for the whole day every morning so I can just eat what I logged.
I check that the database entries I chose are right.
Weighing things instead of guessing less at amounts is useful.
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Oh c'mon this isn't rocket science. If you want to cook a new recipe and want to know what the nutritional value is just weigh everything in grams and then look it up, I do it for any new recipe and takes a few mins not two hours.shannonwaters2395 wrote: »I find weighing it helps with portion control, but the reality is I have no idea how many KJs/Cals or in my bowl. I justify that by 1. Remembering those vegies and how healthy they are, 2, Remembering that I want time to actually eat and not spend 2 hrs logging a meal, and 3, ENJOYING the cooking (and eating) process.
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Amanda_Brit_Expat wrote: »
Oh c'mon this isn't rocket science. If you want to cook a new recipe and want to know what the nutritional value is just weigh everything in grams and then look it up, I do it for any new recipe and takes a few mins not two hours.shannonwaters2395 wrote: »I find weighing it helps with portion control, but the reality is I have no idea how many KJs/Cals or in my bowl. I justify that by 1. Remembering those vegies and how healthy they are, 2, Remembering that I want time to actually eat and not spend 2 hrs logging a meal, and 3, ENJOYING the cooking (and eating) process.
Yup. I weigh foods as they go into the pan, while stuff is cooking, I create the recipe. It really doesn't add much time at all to the process.8 -
shannonwaters2395 wrote: »I get where you are coming from for sure.
My digital kitchen scales live on my table. I have a stack of plastic clear jugs to make weighing easier. And this is great to determine how much jam you actually put on toast, or how much a banana weighs. It was great to see how much milk I put in my coffee (100mls!!)
Once you delve into cooking a meal it's a nightmare- especially if it's not all for you, or you decide to 'health it up' and chuck in a lot of vegies. In that case, I search up what I've made ("chicken and vegetable soup"), and pick a random. I find weighing it helps with portion control, but the reality is I have no idea how many KJs/Cals or in my bowl. I justify that by 1. Remembering those vegies and how healthy they are, 2, Remembering that I want time to actually eat and not spend 2 hrs logging a meal, and 3, ENJOYING the cooking (and eating) process.
I also have some 'clues' of where to look if I gain weight that week
I hear ya and thanks for getting where I'm coming from. When I first started my weight loss process, I logged everything. But it does get tedious. It's not that I want to lie...for what? It's just that some things seem more trouble than it's worth trying to measure. But then when I stop measuring, I find that my portions get larger and unhealthier. So to avoid the scale to creep up and down, I'm going to measure for a good while. Maybe until I lose all of the unwanted fat. Some person above said that's why they keep their meals simple. I agree. It's easier to log. I'm going to get that digital scale too
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/quote]
Oh c'mon this isn't rocket science. If you want to cook a new recipe and want to know what the nutritional value is just weigh everything in grams and then look it up, I do it for any new recipe and takes a few mins not two hours.
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Ouch. Soz if my post came off nasty. I'll be the first to say I am not tech savvy, and it takes me ages. Kudos to those who have the techy skills 0 -
I'm logging my food as honestly as possible, but with some things, it's almost impossible to know exactly how many calories I'm consuming. Example: I marinated some raw chicken tender strips and bell peppers. The marinade included oil. I cooked maybe 3 oz of the chicken and two handfuls of veggies. Them I had mashed sweet potatoes made with garlic and cream cheese. Since sweet potatoes vary in size, I went by what MFP and gave myself the highest calorie count because of the cream cheese and the varying sizes of the sweet potatoes. I think y'all get my point. Anyone having a similar issue? What do you do to keep the 'honor code'?
Why aren't you weighing these things? Why guess when you can weigh and know?
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If you weigh, you never have to guess or estimate.5
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I weigh as much as I can if I need to track closely. If my weight's coming off as expected, I slack on the weighing, but it's the first thing I do if weight starts to creep up again. You may not be able to weigh cooking oil absorbed in food easily, but it's simple to toss the chicken or sweet potato on a scale as you cook. I keep a notepad and a pen by my scale and note as I cook.
Then I weigh the finished entree and my portion to figure out what percentage of the dish I'm eating.
Heck, using the tare function it's really easy to weigh even things like how much peanut butter you put on your sandwich (funnily, I'd been OVER estimating that one).
It doesn't have to be all or nothing, just do what you can.2 -
I found the "recipes" tab in the food calculator to be helpful when making a large dish like your sweet potatoes. For example, I made a large bowl of guacamole. I weighed each ingredient on my digital scale (in grams). Then I weighed the whole bowl when I was done(minus the weight of the bowl). The recipe calculator let's you divide the whole recipe into number of servings. So my 408g bowl of guac has 4x 102g servings, and MFP did all the calorie and macro calculations for me. I just weighed my portions. Hope that helps a little.4
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I'm logging my food as honestly as possible, but with some things, it's almost impossible to know exactly how many calories I'm consuming. Example: I marinated some raw chicken tender strips and bell peppers. The marinade included oil. I cooked maybe 3 oz of the chicken and two handfuls of veggies. Them I had mashed sweet potatoes made with garlic and cream cheese. Since sweet potatoes vary in size, I went by what MFP and gave myself the highest calorie count because of the cream cheese and the varying sizes of the sweet potatoes. I think y'all get my point. Anyone having a similar issue? What do you do to keep the 'honor code'?
Why aren't you weighing these things? Why guess when you can weigh and know?
Yea I should've weighed. I was being lazy. After reading the responses, I need to weigh as much as possible. I guess with the oil is what I was questioning. I need a digital scale too to become more accurate. No excuses.9 -
I'm logging my food as honestly as possible, but with some things, it's almost impossible to know exactly how many calories I'm consuming. Example: I marinated some raw chicken tender strips and bell peppers. The marinade included oil. I cooked maybe 3 oz of the chicken and two handfuls of veggies. Them I had mashed sweet potatoes made with garlic and cream cheese. Since sweet potatoes vary in size, I went by what MFP and gave myself the highest calorie count because of the cream cheese and the varying sizes of the sweet potatoes. I think y'all get my point. Anyone having a similar issue? What do you do to keep the 'honor code'?
Why aren't you weighing these things? Why guess when you can weigh and know?
Yea I should've weighed. I was being lazy. After reading the responses, I need to weigh as much as possible. I guess with the oil is what I was questioning. I need a digital scale too to become more accurate. No excuses.
Well, you mentioned an awful lot of different things in the OP. I'm not surprised that no one picked up that it was the oil in the marinade you were most concerned about.
If you're really worried about the oil in the marinade, weighing is the best and easiest way of figuring out how much oil is ending up in the chicken you cooked. Weigh the oil you use and the total amount of marinade before adding the chicken. (This is assuming everything else in the marinade is fairly insignificant when it comes to calories -- water, vinegar, spices, herbs. If you're adding sugar, barbecue sauce, etc., you're going to have to account for those too.) Then weigh the marinade that's left when you remove the chicken. Do the math. But honestly, compared to inaccuracies from not weighing stuff in general, worrying about the exact amount of calories you're getting from oil in marinade is probably a relatively minor issue.5 -
I don't even bother logging marinades. It's not like you're chugging it. Most of it cooks out.4
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Yup, weigh anything that isn't liquid.
I always find it bizarre (and kind of hysterical) that people imply that weighing everything will take hours and is some big imposition. It adds literally seconds.4
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