Weighing foods

angelamb1970

I have a question hopefully someone has an answer to. I've been diligently weighing everything, even stuff pre-portioned in packages (was surprised to see such variations). My question is, what exactly counts? Say a nectarine, does the pit count in the weight and calories listed on MFP? What about something like chicken sausage...after I've taken it out of the casing and cooked it up draining and rinsing the fat away? Is that 200gr of sausage still 160 calories? What about weighing a sweet potato, do you take the raw weight or the boiled weight, because there is a difference. I know it's not many calories difference, but when you are only allowing 500 calories on fast days, it all matters to me.

Ready2Rock206

Weight things raw, only the part you eat (so unless you eat the pit don't include it), the sausage I would keep at 160 still - the casing probably isn't very many grams and rinsing doesn't wash away calories.

mathandcats

If you are weighing things like sweet potatoes, you need to find the entry that matches the form you are weighing it in. Raw would be the most accurate, but if you've boiled the sweet potato and are weighing it after, find an entry in the database for boiled sweet potato and use that. Not only are the weights different, but so are the calories. As an example, an entry for raw bacon should include all the grease that will come out when you cook it, while the cooked bacon entry would not - so 50g of raw bacon should have more calories than 50g cooked. You will see this in a lot of entries for meat.

Regarding the nectarine, don't count the pit. Weigh it, eat it, then subtract the weight of the pit.

angelamb1970

Yeah, that's what I've been doing mostly, thank you. It would just be nice to get an accurate reading of the meat stuff. I drained off a good cup of liquid and of that at least 2T of fat floated to the top from 5 sausages, after cooking just in a nonstick pan so thinking there must be some calories in there.