Do I have to weigh everything if I am wanting to be in a calorie deficit?

abiiwardd

For example. How much sauce I am using? Also say if I have a ready meal and the calories are on the packaging do I still need to weigh it?

Retroguy2000

For best accuracy, yes. Especially if you think your weight change, or lack of, is not matching where you believe your calorie tracking is.

Of course you don't need to weigh a ready meal with defined nutrition label.

For me with sauce or coffee creamer, I might try to count how many servings a bottle gets me, and use that as an estimate.

tomcustombuilder

Getting an accurate calorie count is important however probably equally or even more so is actually logging everything you consume that has calories every day consistently

Lietchi

Well, that'll depend. I prefer to be as precise as possible, but some people do well being less precise. (Heck, some people even lose weight without counting calories at all )

The smaller the deficit/the smaller the rate of loss you're aiming for, the more precision will be useful, I think. Try it and find out? If you don't weigh everything and you lose weight, good for you. But if you're not losing weight/more slowly than expected, weighing everything would be my first step.

PS: if you want to decide what to weigh and what not to weigh -> calorie dense foods (like fatty/oily sauces) have a higher impact than less calorie dense foods (for example most vegetables)
I will always weigh my salad dressing but will regularly eyeball my salad greens and cherry tomatoes, for example.

AnnPT77

You don't even have to count calories in order to be in a calorie deficit. You just have to eat enough less to be in a calorie deficit. That's what people did before calorie counting was practical: Cut back, watch for a few weeks to see if they were losing, if not cut back a little more. (Yes, I'm that old. Yes, people succeeded. Even I lost weight like that, back decades.).

So that works, but it's somewhat harder to get the food intake at the right level consistently. Inconsistency makes the process more unpredictable, of course. But it can work.

If a person wants the process to be more predictable, they log their food. It's OK to log approximately, or spot check by logging typical days. If weight loss results, that's working.

If it's not working, then they might want to be more accurate in their calorie counting. There are different levels of accuracy, even then. Least accurate logging: Logging other peurople's whole meals or dishes (lasagna, ham sandwich, etc.), eyeballing portions or using entries like "one plate". Most accurate logging: Weighing every single thing, home or away, verifying each entry (against something like the USDA Food Data Central database) before logging it.

In between those extremes, there are a huge range of accuracy variations. More accuracy means more predictability. Less accuracy risks less predictability. More accuracy may risk obsessive behavior for some people, or some other kind of dysfunctional relationship with food or eating, which would be bad, of course.

I don't imaging I'm saying anything you don't already know, if you think about it.

But that's the tradeoff. Other folks have said good things above. Only you can decide what's right for you, in your context, with your strengths, limitations and preferences. What works for you overall is what works.

I know it can be hard to figure out. Wishing you good outcomes, whatever you decide!