Simple trick that took an embarrassingly long time for you to figure out...
Replies
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Nony_Mouse wrote: »collectingblues wrote: »Also the recipe builder -- but that ingredients don't have to be set in stone.
For things that I make as a recipe that have variable weights -- like a potato gratin, pot roast, chicken paprika, etc. -- I set it up once, and then, as I'm making the actual meal, I go in and alter the quantities to reflect the actual weight of the ingredients. Because things like flour/butter aren't going to change from making to making, but it's not like I'm going to have the exact grams of potato or veg, or beef or chicken, every single time.
Yep, I do this too.
Also, if you're entering the recipe manually, the 'old' recipe calculator works a hell of a lot better for actually matching ingredients.
I will try that old calculator. That new one is crap for matching ingredients.
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Put bowl on scale. Tare. Add ingredient until desired weight is reached. Tare. Repeat.
I don't wanna talk about how long it took me to start doing this. And I have a Ph.D.36 -
RunRutheeRun wrote: »That I don't need to make sure I get 20k+ steps in a day to maintain my weight.... no, I actually just have to eat 200 calories LESS and voila! all that extra energy expended for years for 200 calories!!! needless to say I wish the penny had dropped for me a longggg time ago LOL (I have now no clue how many steps I do in the day and what's more, I don't care)
200 calories seems rather low for what must equate to over 2 hours of walking?6 -
BusyRaeNOTBusty wrote: »You can also put the plate with the piece of bread on the scale, tare it, then put mayo on it and see how much. The tare it again, put cheese on it, etc.
This is how I build my salads.4 -
The tare button is my thing that took me ridiculously long to understand too.5
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That I am capable of gaining weight on an autoimmune diet. Who knew my TDEE would be ridiculously high??1
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collectingblues wrote: »Also the recipe builder -- but that ingredients don't have to be set in stone.
For things that I make as a recipe that have variable weights -- like a potato gratin, pot roast, chicken paprika, etc. -- I set it up once, and then, as I'm making the actual meal, I go in and alter the quantities to reflect the actual weight of the ingredients. Because things like flour/butter aren't going to change from making to making, but it's not like I'm going to have the exact grams of potato or veg, or beef or chicken, every single time.
I use it for meals like Frittatas/soups and change up the ingredients all the time leaving the ones I'm not using with 0 grams (= 0 calories ... AHHHH), so its quick and easy to use and change up. Once you change a item it goes to the bottom so most current changes sit there.
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It’s great that everyone is learning as they go along. You should never feel “embarrassed “ about learning something, or not learning it as soon as someone else (per the title of this thread). All the weighing and logging stuff can be a bit mysterious at the outset and it’s not unusual for it to take people awhile to learn all the little tricks. There’s no reason you should automatically ‘know’ how to tare or do some of the other things. It’s not an embarrassment.
Just keep learning and moving forward!15 -
You can go in to any recipe you have a change it to reflect what you are making this time. For example, I add different things to basic spanakopita like mushrooms or different cheeses but the phyllo and oil stay the same.3
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BusyRaeNOTBusty wrote: »You can also put the plate with the piece of bread on the scale, tare it, then put mayo on it and see how much. The tare it again, put cheese on it, etc.
This is how I build my sandwiches ... and I also either write it down on a piece of paper or enter it into my smartphone's MFP app as I build it. Same goes with ingredients for my cooks.0 -
Not a trick, but it took me years to understand that I, as a 5'1 woman in an office job, have a ridiculously low TDEE and therefore a "normal" diet, which restricts your calories to ~1500 is never going to work. I tried at least 3 times to get along with calorie counting, but since I always overestimated my need, it never worked.
There are many calculation tools out there, which still give me a maintenance number of >2000 calories, while my reality is barely 1600. And without actually trying to understand the entire concept, even the super simple CICO approach has absolutely no effect.17 -
This is why I do all the cardio that people on this thread say they "don't do and just eat less to maintain/lose". For the short women, we have to be pretty active to be able to eat a "normal" amount of food and maintain/lose. I do 45-50 mins intense cardio (HR 165-185 BPM stairmill, bike sprints, uphill fast walking) so I can eat balanced satisfying meals and not be deprived. I am losing very slowly and probably could lose faster just slashing my calories and not working out but when I do this, I cannot sustain it for long, my sleep suffers, my mood suffers, and I start losing my mind. I'd rather put in the work, eat more, and see it come off slowly in a sustainable way. Maintenance will hopefully allow me to eat the same way and ease up on the intensity of the cardio.Not a trick, but it took me years to understand that I, as a 5'1 woman in an office job, have a ridiculously low TDEE and therefore a "normal" diet, which restricts your calories to ~1500 is never going to work. I tried at least 3 times to get along with calorie counting, but since I always overestimated my need, it never worked.
There are many calculation tools out there, which still give me a maintenance number of >2000 calories, while my reality is barely 1600. And without actually trying to understand the entire concept, even the super simple CICO approach has absolutely no effect.
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I've been using mfp for a year, toiling away at scraping foods in and out of separate containers to weigh, hating that I'm wasting time, stopped weighing some days because it was so time consuming. I feel stupid for not weighing it the way you guys have suggested all this time but I'm happy because I've seen the weigh. I'm not crying at all, I have a bug in my eye.
Thank u everyone29 -
MsHarryWinston wrote: »silverblaze55 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »ladyhusker39 wrote: »
But the particularly embarrassing one is that I spent months scooping out foods like cream cheese, peanut butter, oil, butter, etc into a container so I could weight it on my food scale. Eventually someone on here pointed out that I can simply weigh the container before and after I get what I want and subtract the difference to get the total amount I ate. Duh! Now it seems so obvious.
Even easier, put container on scale, tare, remove required amount. Negative reading is your grams
This is a great trick for those of us that like to eat yogurt right out of the container. Lol. It took me a few weeks to figure it out.
I tend to eat Ben&Jerry’s and Hagen Daas straight out of the pint. So this is how I figure out how many portions I’ve actually eaten, lol.
That's easy. One pint = one serving.
Or at least that's how it works in my house.
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Besides food scale tricks, I think the simple trick that I'm still learning is "Don't waste the delicious points!" Meaning don't eat something if it isn't worth the calories. Store-bought bakery items, etc. I'm always more satisfied if my "splurge" is on something really delicious and I end up eating fewer calories because I am satisfied.
Oh, and - find a workout you like! Don't kill yourself running if you hate running. Find something that you are excited you get to do.29 -
motivatekait wrote: »For me it was when I used to just eat a meal, track it, eat a meal, track it, and panic towards the end of the day when I'm starving and realized I have 50 calories left. Learning to plan my whole day out ahead of time definitely took the guess-work out of eating!
I was just typing this lol2 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »
Haha, no worries, i didn't click to that one until I saw it posted by someone else either. Also handy if you've already started to spoon yoghurt into your breakfast bowl and realise you haven't actually turned the scale on. Just get an identical bowl out, put that on scale, turn on, remove, replace with yoghurtified bowl.
You need to make sure your "identical" bowls weigh the same if you do this. I have matching bowls but the weight of the bowl can vary by 20 grams or more when weighing them empty.10 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »Besides food scale tricks, I think the simple trick that I'm still learning is "Don't waste the delicious points!" Meaning don't eat something if it isn't worth the calories. Store-bought bakery items, etc. I'm always more satisfied if my "splurge" is on something really delicious and I end up eating fewer calories because I am satisfied.
Oh, and - find a workout you like! Don't kill yourself running if you hate running. Find something that you are excited you get to do.
Both of these things just clicked for me in the last few months and it has made a huge difference!!!
My lessons learned:
It took me way to long to learn 1) to ask for what I need from my friends on here & 2) it is okay to unfriend people who do not support you the way you need to be supported (I am a "nice" person and it made it hard for me to do this at first).4 -
Just plan ol' CICO. You'd think it would be the easiest thing in the world to figure our, but NOPE! I tried Atkins, Paleo, Keto, Nutrisystem (had me at 1250 calories a day as a 311 pound man...), and even went completely sugar free for a whole month. I worked out HARD for more than an hour a day really busting my hump, the whole time the scale kept rising. I was turned on to MFP and now I'm down more than 45 pounds and I've never had to be hungry this whole time. Need a snack? Bike for an hour! Will work (out) for food!39
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I use to weigh the bowl & subtract the amount of the bowl once I added my food. Until someone on MFP pointed out the TARE button on the scale.. had no idea what it ment! Now I can put the bowl on the scale hit "T" and viola it says 0 then I can weigh my food no subtraction involved took me 1 year to learn that.11
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quiksylver296 wrote: »Besides food scale tricks, I think the simple trick that I'm still learning is "Don't waste the delicious points!" Meaning don't eat something if it isn't worth the calories. Store-bought bakery items, etc. I'm always more satisfied if my "splurge" is on something really delicious and I end up eating fewer calories because I am satisfied.
Oh, and - find a workout you like! Don't kill yourself running if you hate running. Find something that you are excited you get to do.
I'm 100% in favor of both of these. And the first point goes for "healthy" foods too - if you really dislike whole grain bread (ug) then why are you eating it? Try new things and aim for balance, but don't stress out if you never develop a taste for yogurt (gag). When you're keeping calories low, you've got to enjoy what you eat.
As for the second point, remember that anything that's more activity than what you're currently doing is beneficial. I think some people roll their eyes at the whole "just take two 10 minute walks a day" thing, but seriously, twenty minutes of brisk walking is great if you weren't doing anything before. Even people who work out regularly could probably benefit from a couple of walk breaks if their job has them sitting at a desk all day. If you find yourself dreading and putting off going to the gym, give yourself permission to do something else! The gym isn't going anywhere, and in the meantime, there are lots of better options than sitting on the couch and stressing out about not going to the gym.12 -
For me the simple trick was realizing that losing weight would take effort and that effort would take willpower and I have a limited amount of willpower so if I am going to want to lose weight I should look at everything I am trying to accomplish in my life and reprioritize things so that weightloss is higher on my priorities and something else falls off or gets delegated so I have the same amount of effort in my life.
Prior to that I just did what I think most people do which is to just try to lose weight without making changes in my schedule or life that would provide the time or energy to do so and as a result I wasn't very successful.18 -
I've been cooking three eggs and eating only one of the yolks, so I've been trying to cut the two extra yolks away from the whites on my plate. My husband suggested I simply separate the two extra egg whites before I cook them. duh. I'd been doing it the hard way for an embarrassingly long time.15
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I've been using mfp for a year, toiling away at scraping foods in and out of separate containers to weigh, hating that I'm wasting time, stopped weighing some days because it was so time consuming. I feel stupid for not weighing it the way you guys have suggested all this time but I'm happy because I've seen the weigh. I'm not crying at all, I have a bug in my eye.
Thank u everyone
Oh, hugs!1 -
I use to weigh the bowl & subtract the amount of the bowl once I added my food. Until someone on MFP pointed out the TARE button on the scale.. had no idea what it ment! Now I can put the bowl on the scale hit "T" and viola it says 0 then I can weigh my food no subtraction involved took me 1 year to learn that.
The whole concept of how to use a food scale seems to escape a lot of people. I'm glad it's not just me.
At least I figured out pretty early on the importance of using one. Though I don't use it for everything, it's extremely helpful when I "stall" because I know that's when I need to buckle down with it again to get back on track.
Probably the best $20 I've spent this year.2 -
charlenekapf wrote: »This is why I do all the cardio that people on this thread say they "don't do and just eat less to maintain/lose". For the short women, we have to be pretty active to be able to eat a "normal" amount of food and maintain/lose. I do 45-50 mins intense cardio (HR 165-185 BPM stairmill, bike sprints, uphill fast walking) so I can eat balanced satisfying meals and not be deprived. I am losing very slowly and probably could lose faster just slashing my calories and not working out but when I do this, I cannot sustain it for long, my sleep suffers, my mood suffers, and I start losing my mind. I'd rather put in the work, eat more, and see it come off slowly in a sustainable way. Maintenance will hopefully allow me to eat the same way and ease up on the intensity of the cardio.Not a trick, but it took me years to understand that I, as a 5'1 woman in an office job, have a ridiculously low TDEE and therefore a "normal" diet, which restricts your calories to ~1500 is never going to work. I tried at least 3 times to get along with calorie counting, but since I always overestimated my need, it never worked.
There are many calculation tools out there, which still give me a maintenance number of >2000 calories, while my reality is barely 1600. And without actually trying to understand the entire concept, even the super simple CICO approach has absolutely no effect.
Quoting you both for the truth! When your maintenance is around 1500 to 1600 even 1200 cals a day isn’t going to be much lost - I lose in a month what many folks around here say they lose in a week! Without considerable cardio, it would take literally more than a few years to lose the weight I needed to and no way was I willing to eat only 1200 a day for YEARS!9 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »MsHarryWinston wrote: »silverblaze55 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »ladyhusker39 wrote: »
But the particularly embarrassing one is that I spent months scooping out foods like cream cheese, peanut butter, oil, butter, etc into a container so I could weight it on my food scale. Eventually someone on here pointed out that I can simply weigh the container before and after I get what I want and subtract the difference to get the total amount I ate. Duh! Now it seems so obvious.
Even easier, put container on scale, tare, remove required amount. Negative reading is your grams
This is a great trick for those of us that like to eat yogurt right out of the container. Lol. It took me a few weeks to figure it out.
I tend to eat Ben&Jerry’s and Hagen Daas straight out of the pint. So this is how I figure out how many portions I’ve actually eaten, lol.
That's easy. One pint = one serving.
Or at least that's how it works in my house.
Bahaha! That’s how I am too. I very rarely buy icecream because if i do i basically need to accept that I’m either only eating icecream that day (to stick to calories) or be willing to eat to maintenance. With 60lbs left to lose I keep it rare. I’m TRYING to learn to not eat an entire pint in a day but it’s one of my trigger foods.
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MsHarryWinston wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »MsHarryWinston wrote: »silverblaze55 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »ladyhusker39 wrote: »
But the particularly embarrassing one is that I spent months scooping out foods like cream cheese, peanut butter, oil, butter, etc into a container so I could weight it on my food scale. Eventually someone on here pointed out that I can simply weigh the container before and after I get what I want and subtract the difference to get the total amount I ate. Duh! Now it seems so obvious.
Even easier, put container on scale, tare, remove required amount. Negative reading is your grams
This is a great trick for those of us that like to eat yogurt right out of the container. Lol. It took me a few weeks to figure it out.
I tend to eat Ben&Jerry’s and Hagen Daas straight out of the pint. So this is how I figure out how many portions I’ve actually eaten, lol.
That's easy. One pint = one serving.
Or at least that's how it works in my house.
Bahaha! That’s how I am too. I very rarely buy icecream because if i do i basically need to accept that I’m either only eating icecream that day (to stick to calories) or be willing to eat to maintenance. With 60lbs left to lose I keep it rare. I’m TRYING to learn to not eat an entire pint in a day but it’s one of my trigger foods.
PPPFFFFT a pint in a day, I raise you to a pint in one sitting or at least that was the old me.
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