new to food scale

mamabanana
mamabanana Posts: 62 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I started using MFP seriously in Feb and for about 3 weeks I saw results. 10lbs! Now it has been 2 weeks since and the scale has not gone down anymore. I have noticed my trouble areas are the weekend (weight goes up 3-4 lbs) and I need to work harder Mon and Tues to get it back to my last official weigh-in. yesterday I finally bought a food scale, because I know my food calculations may be somewhat off. What I want is some advice on how to use the scale more efficiently.
1. best way to measure food in home recipe
2. measure before/after cooked
3. any other food scale advice...

Replies

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    Ok first don't worry, stalls of a couple weeks are totally normal.

    About the scale, weigh before cooking if possible. If not, weigh after, just used the appropriate entry (the entries that have no * before them are from MFP and are pretty accurate - pretty much every generic food will have a raw and cooked entry from MFP).

    For home recipes, weigh everything raw, enter that in the recipe builder, then weigh the whole thing cooked so you can determine how many grams is a serving (it usually involves weighing the pan empty first so you can subtract its weight from the total when you weigh everything after it's cooked). Typically I just enter the weight in grams for the number of servings so I know that if I have 200g of it, it's 200 servings.
  • socioseguro
    socioseguro Posts: 1,679 Member
    Hi

    Congratulations for your achievement.

    Measuring most of what you eat is going to help you tremendously. It did open my eyes to the abysmal difference between eyeballing my portion (and hence my calories eaten) and how many calories I was really eating.

    I always measure each recipe component separately, dry, meaning prior to cooking.
    I also have cups and spoons standard measure set. You can find them at Target or at the supermarket cooking utensil section.

    even if a component seems small in calories, I log it anyway because I am keeping an eye on sodium intake. You would be surprise how much sodium is out there. I do not add salt to my food anymore. Herbs and spices are all I need

    Good luck in your journey
  • 4legsRbetterthan2
    4legsRbetterthan2 Posts: 19,590 MFP Moderator
    1. measure out each ingredient individually and add it so you know exactly how much of each one you used. If I am making it for just myself then I eyeball the servings on the final product and it will average out over the times I ate it. If sharing you can weight the final product and use the % of the final weight to get your serving size for the recipe (this usually takes some pre-planning i.e. don't forget to weight the dish empty first so you don't think you are eating that too :wink: )
    2. It is usally best to weigh anything you can before cooking because cooking effects the water in the food which can greatly affect the weight. If not then make sure you select an option in the database that matches your cooking method.

    this is a great post a savy MFP user put together, it might be interesting to you:

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1234699-logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide

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