Digital Scales

1 yes
2 no

HTH

I use a digital scale and I weigh everything I eat, it keeps things honest and accurate! I don't think you are being to careful!! Good Luck with your weight loss journey!

1) Does anyone else use them?

I have in the past and do occasionally.

2) Am I being a bit too conscientious over food

I don't know about you, but not being conscientious enough about food is what caused me to get fat in the first place. It's OK to obsess a little for as long as you need. Eventually you'll get better at estimating a reasonable portion and probably not need the scale so much, but for now - obsess away!

They are excellent for the small weights like1- 5g for you spices etc and I always used them with the kids in school. V accurate AND if you are baking you can even check yout baked portions easily Was actually wishing I had some at home yesterday as our scales (balance ones) only have a 5g as lowest weight.

I just bought a digital kitchen scale a few weeks ago and found it is a great learning tool. It helps me measure my food portions way more accurately and taught me what 3 oz. of meat really looks like!

As with any tool, I think if it super-helpful if used in moderation to learn how to eat for better health. I think it may become dangerous when you need to weigh every single thing you eat, even familiar foods or pre-portioned food with a nutritional label, and won't eat it unless you know how many calories it contains.

I plan on using it for measuring food until I can pretty much approximate the weight without the scale.

I bought the Starfrit 5kg food scale on sale ($10) and found it works fine for my needs. Easy to clean, compact, tare function, auto-off, good buttons, and switches units from grams to ounces and can even measure volume.

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/8/KitchenBath/GadgetsAccessories/SpecialtyGadgets/PRDOVR~0424076P/Starfrit+5-kg.+Digital+Scale.jsp?locale=en

I agree - using a scale to measure/weigh is really helpful in portion control and re-learning portion sizes.

I've been happy with a nutritional scale by Salter which I got at bed-bath-beyond; it has a easy-remove flat plate for washing, so I can choose to weigh foods directly on the scale's plate OR I can put a plate, bowl or cup and use that for items that are best weighed in a bowl.

Mine has a reset button. That comes in handy, for example, if you are weighing out your cereal. Let's say the cereal says a serving is 56 grams.

I put the empty bowl on the scale, reset it to zero and pour the cereal out of the box into my bowl.

Reset is also useful when putting multiple items on a single plate; I can put my dinner plate on the scale, zero it out, then put the first item on, weigh it, hit reset, next item, weigh it, reset, etc.