How I stopped kidding myself
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RelCanonical wrote: »For the scale-too-small issue - I made a thread yesterday about scale recommendations, and one person recommended a scale that had a pull-out display. https://www.oxo.com/products/preparing/measuring/5lb-food-scale-w-pull-out-display#black
It's da best based on reviews; but, tends to be expensive
Thanks!! I've been looking for a new one!0 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »I've never used a food scale at a restaurant nor at anyone's house.
Let us know how that works out for you.
I can just hear your mom.
I don't know, I lost almost 50 pounds without a food scale at all and eating away from home quite frequently. I bought a food scale when I was 30 pounds from goal - and I didn't even use it all the time. It was getting more difficult to lose by that point. However, I didn't have a body-weight scale and was only weighing myself once a month so I needed some control.
There are three things I'm tracking: food, exercise and my own body weight. If I keep up my exercise and keep weighing myself a couple times per week I think now I could easily estimate my food eaten away from home BUT that's because I have used my food scale so long and so regularly. I can pretty much dissect any dish I eat and get close enough. You'll get there in time, too.
For about four or five years after I got to maintenance I didn't use my food scale. I also didn't own a body weight scale. That made it tough! I was trying the intuitive-how-do-my-pants-fit thing. The scales are so much easier. Now it's just habit.
Lol yup my mom’s going to think I’m crazy. I already get all kinds of judgement for how much I use my food scale (my boyfriends father rolls his eyes at me while I carefully weigh out the mayo that’s going on my burger, for example).
I know I have a much better idea of portion sizes now that I’ve been using a food scale, which comes in handy when I eat out. For now though, I’m still learning and will continue to religiously weigh everything I eat at home. I’m still astonished at the discrepancy in the weight of even pre-packaged food (I bought some cookies that were supposed to be around 30g each— those suckers ranged from 25-40g/cookie in reality).
It’s a pain in the *kitten* sometimes (it takes me like 30 minutes just to put together a simple salad due to weighing every little thing)...but the results I’ve seen since adopting this new habit of being absolutely meticulous have really paid off.
The bolded makes me worried that you're not using this methodology: Put the plate or bowl on the scale, tare (zero) the scale, add the lettuce, note the weight, tare the scale, add the cucumbers, note the weight, tare the scale . . . etc. (I prefer to note on a junk-mail envelope and log in one swoop when my hands are clean/dry).
Also works for soup/stew ingredients going into a pan, sandwich being built, etc.
For your mayo, I hope you're putting the jar on the scale, hitting tare, scooping some out with a knife, and reading the negative on the scale (it's the amount you took out). Ditto for peanut butter, pickles, yogurt from a tub, a piece of cheese being cut off a bigger hunk, etc.
I purchased too small of a scale to be able to put my plate on it. I go through the hassle of using various small cups - zero out the cup, put the ingredient I’m measuring into the cup, put it on my plate - repeat for all ingredients. Maybe it would be worth investing in a large scale that would accommodate the quicker approach.
As for the way you suggested weighing the mayo, etc - I have not been doing it that way (again, my small scale won’t allow for placing an entire jar of mayo on it). I realize I lose a very small amount of residue in my various small glasses that I transfer the weighed mayo in and out of. As I’m typing this out - I realize how silly my approach sounds. A lot of extra work and losing a touch of accuracy (at least I’m shorting myself rather than giving myself too much).
Aw, dang. Thanks, @AnnPT77. Another eye opener for me. Time to invest in a larger scale! 😭 😂
Instead of purchasing a larger scale, place an empty mixing bowl right side up on the scale first, then your plate on top of the bowl and tare it, then weigh as usual. This is what I do with my little scale.11 -
My salad building routine at work (I eat late so don't incur the ire of other patrons): Weigh the container, note wt on lid. Add lettuce. note wt on lid. Repeat for each thing I add. Then when I get to my desk, I do a little math and enter it into my food diary.
At home, I have a scale that has a "hold" button. If the container is too big, I hit the hold button and it holds the weight reading when I remove the container. Though I think I may need a new one, it's been knocked to the floor a few times and I wonder at its accuracy anymore.2 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »IdLikeToLoseItLoseIt wrote: »This post is a great reminder on the importance of using a food scale!
For the first time in about a week, I pulled my food scale out of the drawer to weigh some pickles... and there was Doritos dust on it. I was thinking, how did Doritos dust get on my scale? Then I remembered, oh yeah, that was me weighing Doritos last week.
So yes, whether it’s 10 calories of pickles or 140 calories of Doritos, I appreciate the accuracy of using a food scale. It was a PITA at first, especially having to add a bunch of entries to my own diary so that I would have an entry in grams instead of oz (or worse, when “11 chips” or something similar was listed as the only serving size after scanning a barcode of a product).
But, it turns out I’m a creature of habit and after a few months I didn’t have to add many custom entries that corrected for grams.
I actually find weighing out 28 grams of chips much faster than counting out 11 would ever be! Plus how do people account for broken chips if they think 11 is a serving? Besides that, a perfect serving is closer to 40 grams for me, ha!
I love my OXO scale, it was expensive though, but it has held up well for years. I happen to have a 1 gram scientific weight and it’s perfectly accurate to boot.
Lol I feel ya with the whole chip serving thing!! Before using a food scale, I would count out the chips and end up piecing together what I thought was a fair chip size with the broken ones...I’m certain I was fooling myself and my little pile of broken chips that were supposed to equal one probably added up to more than that. Funny how our brains work against us sometimes lol
And people say scales are time-consuming and obsessive.
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sarahlucindac wrote: »
Lol I feel ya with the whole chip serving thing!! Before using a food scale, I would count out the chips and end up piecing together what I thought was a fair chip size with the broken ones...I’m certain I was fooling myself and my little pile of broken chips that were supposed to equal one probably added up to more than that. Funny how our brains work against us sometimes lol
That almost made me spit out my coffee... I've done the "piece together" thing with chips too... Aren't we humans a silly bunch?8 -
for solid foods, i put a sheet of plastic on my scale, put the solid foods on the plastic and dump it into the bowl after weighing it.
for non-solids, like mayo, i am going to adopt the 'weigh the jar before and after removing the spoonful' method suggested above - i love it!4 -
for solid foods, i put a sheet of plastic on my scale, put the solid foods on the plastic and dump it into the bowl after weighing it.
for non-solids, like mayo, i am going to adopt the 'weigh the jar before and after removing the spoonful' method suggested above - i love it!
I like to keep some plastic yogurt-tub lids around to use as scale protectors for weighing small solids. A quick rinse, and it's clean. Recycled/reused, nothing to dispose.
If the food's something you chop, another option is to keep the heaps a little separate on the cutting board, put the cutting board on the scale with chopped stuff on it, zero the scale, scrape the first item into the bowl with your knife, put the cutting board back on the scale, read/note the negative, zero the scale, scrape the next item, etc. Or, just put the bowl on the scale and zero between adds. (If your cutting board is too big to see the scale display, carefully elevate it on a bowl on the scale.)
Figuring out how to use zeroing (tare-ing) the scale, and using the negative scale readings, is really a magical time saver. Anything with fewer dishes to wash, and no arithmetic needed, appeals to me.13 -
Put stout glass on scale. Put plate or bowl on top of glass. Read scale from under plate or bowl.[/quote]
Wow, this never occurred to me but man would that make some things easier!!3 -
Apparently I dont get how to approprately quote thing here yet, but I love this thread!3
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quiksylver296 wrote: »
Awww quiksylver I’m just seeing this!! Thank you!! ❤️❤️❤️5 -
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RelCanonical wrote: »For the scale-too-small issue - I made a thread yesterday about scale recommendations, and one person recommended a scale that had a pull-out display. https://www.oxo.com/products/preparing/measuring/5lb-food-scale-w-pull-out-display#black
It's da best based on reviews; but, tends to be expensive
I own this one... works great. It was also the winner of America's Test Kitchen's digital kitchen scales test.
Edit: their winner was the 11-pound version2 -
for solid foods, i put a sheet of plastic on my scale, put the solid foods on the plastic and dump it into the bowl after weighing it.
for non-solids, like mayo, i am going to adopt the 'weigh the jar before and after removing the spoonful' method suggested above - i love it!
I like to keep some plastic yogurt-tub lids around to use as scale protectors for weighing small solids. A quick rinse, and it's clean. Recycled/reused, nothing to dispose.
I have a little set of three nested metal bowls that live on my scale.3 -
I learned something interesting.
I used to weigh soup out of a can after cooking it- wrong. I knew that the soup would weigh less after cooking it due to evaporation, but I just recently realized that it’s only water weight that the soup lost (duh, lol...no calories there, obviously). If you don’t weigh items like canned food, I strongly suggest you do. This is the one item I’ve noticed the most discrepancy with. A can of soup that should contain about 500g almost always contains more like 400-450g. That is a huge difference! You might be shorting yourself up to 100 cal if you’re not weighing canned items like soup and chili.
Also, I’ve now lost 54 lbs!! Hooray for accurate calorie logging ☺️
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sarahlucindac wrote: »I learned something interesting.
I used to weigh soup out of a can after cooking it- wrong. I knew that the soup would weigh less after cooking it due to evaporation, but I just recently realized that it’s only water weight that the soup lost (duh, lol...no calories there, obviously). If you don’t weigh items like canned food, I strongly suggest you do. This is the one item I’ve noticed the most discrepancy with. A can of soup that should contain about 500g almost always contains more like 400-450g. That is a huge difference! You might be shorting yourself up to 100 cal if you’re not weighing canned items like soup and chili.
Also, I’ve now lost 54 lbs!! Hooray for accurate calorie logging ☺️
I must confess I have NEVER weighed a can of soup. I don't eat soup much, but now I'm curious. Totally doing it next time, if nothing else, for my own curiosity.7 -
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quiksylver296 wrote: »
McPoyles! 😂1 -
Update: I finally got a large scale and it has been a game changer!! Salads are a lot easier now 😂13
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sarahlucindac wrote: »Update: I finally got a large scale and it has been a game changer!! Salads are a lot easier now 😂
I've been debating. What did you get?!?2 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »Update: I finally got a large scale and it has been a game changer!! Salads are a lot easier now 😂
I've been debating. What did you get?!?
I got the OXO Kitchen Scale - 11 lb capacity! It’s nice because the display pulls out so you can still see it even if you’ve got a huge plate/pan sitting on top.6 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »Update: I finally got a large scale and it has been a game changer!! Salads are a lot easier now 😂
I've been debating. What did you get?!?
I got the OXO Kitchen Scale - 11 lb capacity! It’s nice because the display pulls out so you can still see it even if you’ve got a huge plate/pan sitting on top.
How much was it (if you don't mind sharing that info)?1 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »Update: I finally got a large scale and it has been a game changer!! Salads are a lot easier now 😂
I've been debating. What did you get?!?
I got the OXO Kitchen Scale - 11 lb capacity! It’s nice because the display pulls out so you can still see it even if you’ve got a huge plate/pan sitting on top.
How much was it (if you don't mind sharing that info)?
It was actually a gift, so not entirely sure. It’s listed on Amazon for $49.99 though.
My boyfriend’s father was tired of watching me struggle with the tiny scale 😂7 -
Update #2: As of today, I have hit 60 lbs lost! I’m lowering my goal yet again - going for another 3-5 and then it’s off to maintenance land 🎉33
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sarahlucindac wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »sarahlucindac wrote: »Update: I finally got a large scale and it has been a game changer!! Salads are a lot easier now 😂
I've been debating. What did you get?!?
I got the OXO Kitchen Scale - 11 lb capacity! It’s nice because the display pulls out so you can still see it even if you’ve got a huge plate/pan sitting on top.
How much was it (if you don't mind sharing that info)?
It was actually a gift, so not entirely sure. It’s listed on Amazon for $49.99 though.
My boyfriend’s father was tired of watching me struggle with the tiny scale 😂
Nice gift!!! Good job, bf’s father!2 -
sarahlucindac wrote: »Update #2: As of today, I have hit 60 lbs lost! I’m lowering my goal yet again - going for another 3-5 and then it’s off to maintenance land 🎉
Wowwee!!! Sixty pounds is AH-mazing! Way to go, girl!3 -
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