weighing food

weighing out a portion of a food item is how I know the calories are counted as accurately as possible. if you dont measure how do you figure a serving? I can use a measuring cup to get a 1/2 cup serving of oatmeal and then weigh that same amount and find it is actually more than what a 1/2 cup serving should be by weight. meaning if I just used the measuring cup I would be eating more than the serving and my calorie count would not be correct. it may seem trivial but it all adds up. I weigh out almost every single thing I eat. it also teaches us what a normal portion size is supposed to look like. the kitchen scale is my most used tool in my kitchen. It keeps me honest.

I have been going by the labels on the back of packages or if I make something homemade then I add the calories the best I can..thats why Im asking someone to explain it. I dont understand weighing...if I weighed a bowl of soup and it was 8oz then how many calories?? If i eat a scrambled egg then I look at what one egg has in calories...if I add a 1/2 slice of cheese then I add half of what one slice is. I add individually if I have to.

So, for example, if it's a pre-made soup, then just find the item in the database and add the correct portion size to your food diary. When you locate the item in the database you have the option to adjust the number of servings you had. So, say 4 oz of canned tomato soup was one "portion/serving", and has 100 cals according to the label, and you had 8 oz, then you select "2" as the number of servings and the correct number of calories gets calculated (200 in this case).

If you're making food from scratch (which we often do), then use the Recipe tool (under the "food" tab). There, add all the ingredients (properly measured/weighed), indicate how many servings the entire recipe makes, and the system will calculate the calories etc. for one serving, which you can then add to your diary. It can be a bit of a pain adding new recipes but it's worth it because it takes the guesswork out.

But yeah, eyeballing/guessing your servings is a recipe for disaster until you've measured something out enough times that you can correctly estimate with a small margin of error. It's the quickest way to accidentally go over your cal goals.

On that note, weighing is ALWAYS preferable to measuring with cups. I've been astounded by how much the servings vary if I use cups and they're almost inevitably much higher, like 10-30%! This is more the case for dry goods (cereals, grains, flour, etc.) but also for dense stuff like peanut butter. I still use cups and spoons (mostly) for true liquid measures and for very low-cal items like spices.

Your doing fine but to be 100% sure you are logging to right amount of calories weigh your meats and anything you can truly fit into a measuring cup. Use the Receipe builder for homemade things like soup. Go by the serving size on the nutrition facts and once again measure to be sure.