Weighing "everything"

hamelle2

I am having great success with CICO and my food scale.
However I have a few nagging questions.
I buy individual servings of yogurt, cottage cheese and peanut butter. I haven't been weighing those. Do you actually dump those out and weigh them?
Someday I will reach the point of where every calorie will count...someday.
Please feel free to ask any of your food scale questions here if you'd like.
Thanks!

Lillymoo01

Yep. I weigh everything. When food it in containers I'll weigh the container full, empty it and weigh it empty to get an accurate calculation of how much I have eaten.

bpetrosky

Food packaging usually has a certain degree of overfill over the stated 'net weight'. This is because the manufacturer would be liable if they were constantly underfilling the packages as that would be shortchanging people. A multiple serving package can balance that overfill out more.

So if the serving size on the nutrition label says 28g the actual product weight in the container could be between 28g and 33g.

If you do this for a while you can learn which products tend to be overfilled more than others. I get a certain snack bar that is almost always at least 3-4 grams heavier than the serving, and I just log it a 1.15 servings by default now.

PKM0515

Personally, I don't measure items that are individually packaged. If at some point I can't figure out "why" I'm not losing because I'm doing "everything right", then I might consider weighing them. However, right now I know exactly why I'm not losing and it's not the extra ounce or two of Greek yogurt.

I don't disagree with weighing them, but at this point it doesn't seem worth it to me personally.

xxzenabxx

Personally I’m really relaxed with my tracking. I would aim for a higher deficit in theory to cover any errors. So if I wanted to lose 0.5 lbs a week I would aim for a 350 calorie deficit rather than 250. I don’t even weigh oil. A teaspoon of olive oil is a teaspoon of olive oil. I don’t have the mental energy to weigh everything. I don’t weigh eggs. I weigh cheese, butter, peanut butter, meats. I used to weigh fruits and veggies but now I guesstimate. Right now I’m in maintenance so maybe that’s why. But even when I do go back into my deficit in a few days, I won’t obsess over weighing food. For me, personally, it’s not a good mental state of mind. Oh I also weigh fish because I found that smoked salmon is too high in calories to get wrong. Plus fish is easy to weigh. I also eat my mums cooking so I don’t know how many calories are in her meat dish or lentils 🤷🏽‍♀️. I don’t even weigh the rye bread that I eat. Stopped weighing sauces too except for mayo it’s to high in calories. I definitely weigh avocados and cereal though. It really depends.

Seffell

Packaged items are off by some percentage. That means over or under. So on average over many items it cancels out.
I never weigh packaged items.

pinuplove

If you're losing weight at the expected rate and/or are satisfied with your progress, you don't need to. If at some point your weight loss stalls, it is commonly suggested here to "tighten up your logging" which would include weighing pre-portioned items.

Phirrgus

OP - peanut butter is one of my downfalls. A serving size is two level tbsp. Doubling that - which isn't much at all, gives me (did this in another thread) over 1000 calories per week.

1 serving is 2 tbsps @380 calories. The difference visually between 2 tbsp and 4 tbs after being spread out is just...nothing at all. I was at least doubling, at least, several times a week - easily 1000+ calories that I wasn't accounting for each week.

And that's just peanut butter - I also love olive oil lol. It's easy to account for my weight loss stalls when I start using a scale properly.

edited for correction

pinuplove

Phirrgus wrote: »

OP - peanut butter is one of my downfalls. A serving size is two level tbsp. Doubling that - which isn't much at all, gives me (did this in another thread) over 1000 calories per week.

1 serving is 2 tbsps @380 calories. The difference visually between 2 tbsp and 4 tbs after being spread out is just...nothing at all. I was at least doubling, at least, several times a week - easily 1000+ calories that I wasn't accounting for each week.

And that's just peanut butter - I also love olive oil lol. It's easy to account for my weight loss stalls when I start using a scale properly.

edited for correction

I suspect the OP was referring to PB packaged like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Smuckers-Peanut-Butter-0-75-Ounce/dp/B004G0UL36

Which is depressingly small but at least measured for you.

Phirrgus

pinuplove wrote: »

Phirrgus wrote: »

OP - peanut butter is one of my downfalls. A serving size is two level tbsp. Doubling that - which isn't much at all, gives me (did this in another thread) over 1000 calories per week.

1 serving is 2 tbsps @380 calories. The difference visually between 2 tbsp and 4 tbs after being spread out is just...nothing at all. I was at least doubling, at least, several times a week - easily 1000+ calories that I wasn't accounting for each week.

And that's just peanut butter - I also love olive oil lol. It's easy to account for my weight loss stalls when I start using a scale properly.

edited for correction

I suspect the OP was referring to PB packaged like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Smuckers-Peanut-Butter-0-75-Ounce/dp/B004G0UL36

Which is depressingly small but at least measured for you.

That's what I get for skimming posts

Thanks for the correction pinuplove.

pinuplove

Phirrgus wrote: »

pinuplove wrote: »

Phirrgus wrote: »

OP - peanut butter is one of my downfalls. A serving size is two level tbsp. Doubling that - which isn't much at all, gives me (did this in another thread) over 1000 calories per week.

1 serving is 2 tbsps @380 calories. The difference visually between 2 tbsp and 4 tbs after being spread out is just...nothing at all. I was at least doubling, at least, several times a week - easily 1000+ calories that I wasn't accounting for each week.

And that's just peanut butter - I also love olive oil lol. It's easy to account for my weight loss stalls when I start using a scale properly.

edited for correction

I suspect the OP was referring to PB packaged like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Smuckers-Peanut-Butter-0-75-Ounce/dp/B004G0UL36

Which is depressingly small but at least measured for you.

That's what I get for skimming posts

Thanks for the correction pinuplove.

It's early

Phirrgus

pinuplove wrote: »

Phirrgus wrote: »

pinuplove wrote: »

Phirrgus wrote: »

OP - peanut butter is one of my downfalls. A serving size is two level tbsp. Doubling that - which isn't much at all, gives me (did this in another thread) over 1000 calories per week.

1 serving is 2 tbsps @380 calories. The difference visually between 2 tbsp and 4 tbs after being spread out is just...nothing at all. I was at least doubling, at least, several times a week - easily 1000+ calories that I wasn't accounting for each week.

And that's just peanut butter - I also love olive oil lol. It's easy to account for my weight loss stalls when I start using a scale properly.

edited for correction

I suspect the OP was referring to PB packaged like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Smuckers-Peanut-Butter-0-75-Ounce/dp/B004G0UL36

Which is depressingly small but at least measured for you.

That's what I get for skimming posts

Thanks for the correction pinuplove.

It's early

and coffee!!

Chef_Barbell

SaraKim17 wrote: »

Personally, I don't measure items that are individually packaged. If at some point I can't figure out "why" I'm not losing because I'm doing "everything right", then I might consider weighing them. However, right now I know exactly why I'm not losing and it's not the extra ounce or two of Greek yogurt.

I don't disagree with weighing them, but at this point it doesn't seem worth it to me personally.

This for me too. Ain't got time fo that

ChrysalisCove

I use a food scale for most things, but am not super strict with it. For example: I’ll weigh ingredients going into a recipe, but my current scale is too small to weigh out my portion on a plate to ensure it’s exactly 1/3 of the total dish. I’m likely over on some days, under on others.

So far the weight is coming off just fine. If it stalls, I’ll bite the bullet and purchase a better scale.

sardelsa

When I was tracking, I personally don't weigh anything pre-packaged. If I ever found myself not losing, I would just cut a portion size a bit down and that worked very well for me to get the scale moving again. If you want to give it a go to see if it makes a difference, sure.

kimny72

OP, what it really comes down to, you have to find the level of accuracy that is accurate enough that you get results and that you will have faith in the process, but not so accurate that it becomes unmanageable or stressful and you quit. Different people will draw that line in different places.

I always suggest that when people first start, they should weigh literally everything for at least a couple of weeks so they can get a good baseline starting point and a feel for where they need work. After that, it becomes a more personal decision.

I found weighing out servings made me feel more in control and took me practically no time, so I used the scale more than I probably needed to . As far as single serving packets, I started out weighing them, and if they were consistently correct or within a gram or so, I stopped.

lalalacroix

A couple years ago I had learned about how the prepackaged weights can vary a lot. So I spent a few months weighing literally everything from sliced bread to raw eggs. Items weren't just over the stated weight but sometimes under as well. My observation was that they truly did basically cancel each other out.

So I really don't weigh my packaged items unless they contain multiple servings. If in the future I ever need to tighten my logging this will probably be the first to become more exact.

hamelle2

Thank you all. I'm losing fine right now. When the time comes I will do as you have suggested.
Yes..its JIF on the go. 250 calories in a very little tub. I hate measuring peanut butter.

lynn_glenmont

hamelle2 wrote: »

Thank you all. I'm losing fine right now. When the time comes I will do as you have suggested.
Yes..its JIF on the go. 250 calories in a very little tub. I hate measuring peanut butter.

Just a tip if you want to save money and use peanut butter that isn't prepackaged for you (or perhaps in some circumstances use less than 250 kcal worth): Put the jar of PB on the scale. Tare it (reset to zero). Remove the amount of PB you want from the jar. Return jar to scale. The negative number is the amount of peanut butter you used. No extra utensils or dishes dirtied. And because you accounted for it, you get to lick the PB that stuck to the spoon.

getrealgirl

Bread- package usually gives calories per slice of bread and then how many grams that slice is suppose to weigh. There may be 2 pieces in a loaf that actually weigh that. So...I weigh every piece and then figure calories out mathematically based on how much each slice weighs. Total pain and that in itself keeps me from eating bread often. The ends (even though they look small) are usually the heaviest and higher in calories.

admaarie

When I first started using a food scale I weighed EVERYTHING. I mean every single thing. Lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, onions.. in hindsight it became just way too obsessive for me. Like another posted mentioned I’m a lot more relaxed with tracking & don’t feel the need to weigh out every single thing anymore and still obtain results. For me this works better.