When do you weigh you meat?

knightreader

i can't stop laughing about the title of this topic. thanks for making me smile!

daisiecpa

i weigh after cooked. i cook for me and my husband so it would be hard to separate my weighed portion before cooking. he sometimes eats more then me and i make extra so he can take lunch to work.

the calories are so confusing as it is. i do not know what is accurate all the time so i hope i am not too far off.

for example someone posted 4 oz chicken breast equals 120 calories. the chicken breast in my freezer say on the package 4 oz equals 100 calories. tonight my chicken thighs package says 4 oz equals 190 calories but nothing matched up on the data base so i just increased the chicken thigh meat to the equal the amount i calculated after weighing the chicken. also i bought another brand of chicken thighs and it said 3 oz equals 210 calories. that is a big difference. how do you know what is right?

mmtrnr

Before and after. For example, tonight I made steak tacos. The raw meat was 19.05 oz. After cooking it was 14.00. I ate 3.00 oz of the 14. With a little math, I can calculate what portion of the original package I ate: 3/14*19.05. The answer is how many ounces of the raw meat I ate. Then I divide by 4, since a serving size is 4 oz. That gives me the number of servings to enter into MFP.

Yes, it can be time consuming. But it works for me.

sharleengc

Serving size weight and calories are based on pre cooked weight. I weigh mine before I cook it... I used to cook my portions in a separate pan but then I took a few "after cooking" weights and now I can cook mine in the same pan and weigh it after but it is about a 2oz difference.

emtjmac

I just take use the weight that the supermarket printed so I guess it's a raw weight.

derek2680

Yeah, I figured I would get a few people who grabbed onto the weighing of the "their meat" haha. I thought about changing the title, but the thought of that action being done also made me laugh haha. Thanks for the replies everyone.

VelociMama

I also use raw weight.

monicalosesweight

(BTW - in this database, use the food listings that do NOT have an asterisk before them. The info is from the USDA nutrient database and will have both raw and cooked...it'll be much more accurate for you as well!)

Cool. Thanks for the advice.

Cathcandoo

Right before I eat it

jenmsu83

I always weigh it raw.

jojorocksforeva

After it cooks ofcourse.

sunshine1992

I usually weigh after I cook, mainly because it is rare I cook just for me or just for one meal. I will cook up say 750g of chicken breast, and use it through the week.

I know it's not perfect, but I am not going to lose any sleep over an odd 50 calories. What is the worst that can happen? It takes a few more weeks to reach my goal. I am never right on my calorie goal that it would matter a huge amount anyway.

gsager

I weigh before if it's like a steak. I cook chicken breasts for the week to go on my salads for lunch. When I measure it after its cooked I weigh 3oz. for a 4oz serving since cooking dehydrates it.

gp79

It depends. Always weight before if you know how much you want to eat and can pre-portion it. ie. chicken breasts

Weight it before and after for things such as a roast. If it went in at 20 ounces and came out at 10 ounces. Eating 5 ounces of cooked is as if you were eating 10 ounces of raw. Those are extreme figures but it goes to show my point. At the end of the day...it's all an estimation anyway as there's no 100 foolproof way for the average person to know exactly how many calories are from protein and fat.

MaryJane_8810002

I weigh it raw.

hesn92

I don't. Lol. I use the raw weight though... I guesstimate. Like if a package of chicken is 1.15 pounds and it has 10 little "strips" then each one is 1.84 oz roughly...

tamellis003

Does it really matter? What if you cooked it, weighed the cooked meat to weigh the same as if it was raw?

Linda_Darlene

If I'm dealing with a hunk of meat or fish (yum) I weigh mine cooked as well, be it baked, grilled outside or on my George Foreman.

Linda_Darlene

Always weigh prior to cooking.

4oz of raw, boneless skinless chicken breast is 120calories. You cook it, one of two things happens:
1. you cook it perfectly and it's moist and juicy in the middle still, it now weighs about 3.5oz because of the water is lost while cooking.
2. you overcook it and it's now sorta dry and tough, it now weighs about 3 oz because it lost a lot more water.

If you weigh outcome 1, you'll be entering 105 calories for that 120 calories of chicken breast.
If you weigh outcome 2, you'll be entering 90 calories for that 120 calories of chicken breast.

Yes, some fattier meats will lose some of the fat while cooking, but it's still always meant to weighed raw since there is no way to account for how much or how little of anything is actually going to cook out of the meat. If you order a 1/4 pound burger at a restaurant, you are getting a burger that weighed 1/4 of a pound before it was cooked, because that's just the standardized way that meat is weighed and nutritionally recorded.

This makes sense.

Linda_Darlene

Right before I eat it

:bigsmile: