How accurate are you when tracking your meals?

Kathryn41057

I'm wondering how exact are you when logging your foods? I'm particularly wondering about green salads? I do weigh my protein, dressings, fats. Thanks

Francl27

I weigh everything. Put my bowl/plate on the scale, and tare it every time I add an ingredient.

For recipes, I eyeball now because I'm lazy (loosely maintaining, but I'm pretty good at it after 5 years), but I used to enter everything in the recipe builder and weigh everything too.

Unknown

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speedingticket

I eat leafy greens a pack at a time, so I just use the weight it says on the pack. It's probably not that accurate but it's basically just water anyway, so meh. I weigh all other veg that I put into a salad (grated carrot, onion, beetroot, shredded cabbage, etc.)

kristen8000

When I'm losing, I weigh everything. Because I'd just rather know.

Now, in maintainance, I eye ball most things, still weighing some.

17adf33

I had major portion distortion, especially with pasta so did start to weigh foods. Big difference.

Kathryn41057

Most of the foods that I log, I do measure. I was just curious how everyone else measured. I don't stress too much over lettuce, or cukes, celery, but I do measure everything else. It's just a bit overwhelming at times. Thanks

busyPK

For salads, I weigh everything even the lettuce/greens. When I'm adding a bit of lettuce to a taco, I enter 20g and don't weigh. I'd say I weigh 98% of the food I make at home and eat.

hesn92

For a salad I would weigh the important things like chicken avocado cheese dressing etc. but not the lettuce, tomato, cucumber, things that don’t have many calories. Just depends how accurate you want to be.

collectingblues

Kathryn41057 wrote: »

I'm wondering how exact are you when logging your foods? I'm particularly wondering about green salads? I do weigh my protein, dressings, fats. Thanks

Unless I'm eating at a restaurant, I am exact to the gram. With everything.

janejellyroll

When I'm at home and preparing my own food, I weigh all solid foods (including vegetables). I consider this to give me leeway to estimate when I'm eating food that others have prepared for me.

jsminer827

For salads I put in a serving of lettuce - it's like 20 calories or something, and I eyeball it. It's mostly water anyway. Cucumbers and celery are the only other two that I eyeball... everything else that goes on gets weighed. For virtually every other food I eat, I weigh everything to the gram (or convert to ounces, whatever comparative is needed to enter into mfp. If I'm out, I build a meal in mfp and save it for myself so I always have an idea of what I'm consuming calorie-wise (especially helpful because I pre-log most days, so if I know I'm going to X restaurant for dinner, I can plan the rest of my day around that). It isn't perfect, but we know it's calories in versus calories out over time...

maybe1pe

collectingblues wrote: »

Kathryn41057 wrote: »

I'm wondering how exact are you when logging your foods? I'm particularly wondering about green salads? I do weigh my protein, dressings, fats. Thanks

Unless I'm eating at a restaurant, I am exact to the gram. With everything.

same. If I'm in my house or in my office. I weigh everything exactly. Even prepackaged things like protein bars.

change4char

moosmum1972 wrote: »

I don't bother personally about lettuce or cucumber but everything else is logged.

This. I'll log what I estimate it to be (since I've been weighing for a couple years and feel comfortable doing this), but I won't weigh leafy greens or low calorie vegetables.

JennJ323

I pretty much weigh everything all the time, if I access to my scale. Really small portions of veggies I don't bother with (a piece of iceburg on my burger, or shredded iceburg on a taco) but pretty much everything else gets weighed. I like to keep in the habit so I don't get lazy about it. Drives my husband crazy when I'm weighing all my food before dinner, but I'm the one who has lost 28 pounds, not him!

Good_Morning_Glory

I’ve been weighing all my veggies that prior I’d not worry about. Because primarily, I want to make sure I’m hitting my nutrient goals. I honestly am not concerned with the minuscule calories.

There are so many nutrients in veggies. They really are wonderful.

dboyer30

JennJ323 wrote: »

I pretty much weigh everything all the time, if I access to my scale. Really small portions of veggies I don't bother with (a piece of iceburg on my burger, or shredded iceburg on a taco) but pretty much everything else gets weighed. I like to keep in the habit so I don't get lazy about it. Drives my husband crazy when I'm weighing all my food before dinner, but I'm the one who has lost 28 pounds, not him!

This same habit drives my husband nuts! I weigh and measure everything. I've lost 50+ lbs doing this and it works for me!

AnnPT77

When I was losing, I was pretty precise, for 3 reasons:

1. Besides managing calories, I was slso trying to fine tune nutrition (macros/key micros) and optimize satiation, so it helped to have full data, especially when weekly totals were part of the assessment.
2. It took me the better part of a year to lose 50+ pounds, and the last stages were slow. I wanted to build up some weeks/months of accurate data to help me estimate maintenance calories: It was already obvious that MFP & other NEAT/TDEE calculators were way off for me. I routinely eat several hundred calories of veg/fruit daily, so they're a significant factor.
3. I, too, make salads by putting the bowl on the scale and zeroing after noting each addition. It would actually take me more mind-share and be more error-prone if I had to be thinking "weigh the sweet corn, skip the cucumber, weigh the chickpeas, skip the onions . . . .". Too much hassle!

I'm a little less precise about good longitudinal records in maintenance. (I'll skip logging some things that are a pain. Appetizer buffets at events are a good example: While losing, I would've put more effort into remembering/estimating/logging them than I do now.)

MelanieCN77

I'd say very accurate. Easiest thing to tare the scale with a bowl on it, and choose a good entry in the DB. I also make use of the recipe builder.

lulalacroix

It varies for me. I had been eating at maintenance for more than the last month due to family circumstances, I didn't log well.

Now I'm back on track, but I still consider myself a sloppy logger at times. I often don't log very low cal veg, or my energy drink if it's 10 calories, and I no longer weigh my prepackaged foods because when I did most items actually came in lower than stated. When I get closer to goal I will probably have to tighten up.

gtm197

For salad dressings and peanut butter I put the bottle or jar on the scale and get an initial reading then re-reading them after I poured the dressing or knifed out the peanut butter to get the net grams used.

jjpptt2

IMO -

The more calorie dense a food item is, the more important it is to weigh/measure/log it. The difference in calories between 1 serving and 1.5 servings of peanut butter or ice cream is very different than that of 1 or 1.5 servings of lettuce, an apple, etc.

On a related note, the lower your calorie goal is, the more important it is to weigh/measure. Estimating something and being off by 150 calories is very different for someone on 1200 cals per day compared to someone on 2500 cals per day.

JeromeBarry1

I log almost everything. Anything I don't log is because I forgot to, and then I regret forgetting and further resolve to log.

lemurcat12

If by green salads you mean spinach and arugula and so on, I usually weigh since it's just as easy as I have a bowl on the scale and am weighing other components (if I am logging at all -- I often don't, since I am at maintenance). However, I don't think it's going to matter if you estimate 2 cups or some such.

I would have logged veg for the reasons Ann says above.

Gisel2015

I weight most of the items, salads included because I am also watching macros and micros; but I also round everything to the closer digit most of the time (71g=70g but 78g-80g).

I am in maintenance so accuracy is not longer needed. I do admit that it wasn't either when I was losing because I didn't have a kitchen scale back then (OMG, heresy!!)

fitoverfortymom

I weigh everything, but don't freak out if I take an extra nibble of cucumber or something while slicing veggies. My salads can have 50-100 calories worth of veggies. That counts, in my book.

Timshel_

I error high on calories and low on excise calories burned. I find exact measurements helpful, but I tend to find the highest average calories for particular foods and go with that, and lowest average caloric burns as well.

Seffell

For the leafy greens I write what's on the packet. It is usually very accurate and even if it isn't I don't care cos it's 8cals anyway. I weigh lettuce and such but since I've been doing this for two years I can eyeball it too. The higher the calorie content, the more careful I am.

Christine_72

I weigh and measure everything i eat/drink. I weigh everything i use in recipes too, except i use serving sizes instead of weighing the pot before and after blah blah blah and inputting 2000 or whatever serving sizes. I used to do that, but just couldn't be bothered anymore!

Marykaylady2010

I weight pretty much everything I put the plate I’m going to eat on the scale and zero it and then add each item and zero it each time so i only use one plate and goes pretty quick I will usually try to hit the same number of grams with veggies so when I go to log I know I had say 30 grams of lettuce tomatoes carrots celery and then I don’t have to write each item down to remember