Portion Control Weighing your food success stories pls!

I weighed my food religiously for more than a year. It's messed up my food mentality quite a bit because I got into this mindset of "if I don't eat everything on this plate, how will I have known how much I ate?" Not good.

If I have anything left on my plate, I put it in a leftover dish. It's then "free" calories for anytime I'm extra hungry, because it's already been counted for in my day. I have no problem grabbing an already accounted for leftover container for a midnight snack.

What are these 'leff tow vers' of which you speak?

Well...occasionally....under very rare circumstances....my eyes are bigger than my belly! Usually I can stuff it in, but there's been a time or two there's just not room!

When I began my diet back in January, I didn't weigh. It sounded a bit obsessive and unnecessary. But I found the weight wasn't consistenty coming off.

After 3 months away from the diet in summer I came back with a renewed determination to take it seriously. I decided that meant weighing. And weighing just about everything.

Since then, the weight has come off absolutely to plan. One pound a week (at least) without fail. That for me, is a water-tight argument for weighing. (And really, is it that difficult?)

I've lost a bit over 50lbs by weighing most thing & using measuring cups on the rest.

Things i weigh pretty religiously are the high calorie things like meat, cheese, nuts. Measure most things with measuring cups, the only exception being low cal veggies like green leafy ones & onion.

To make my life easy i keep a set of cheap set of 1/4 c, 1/2c, 1c measuring cups, a 1TB right in an easy place to grab & use. (If i had to dig them out every time, it wouldn't happen). My food scale lives next to coffee maker easy enough to grab to measure things like cereal & milk at breakfast.

The easiest thing, for me, on most things, is to look at the number of servings and divide that by eye. For example, 1c of rice is 4servings. so ill make that on Monday. Hubby and i have 1/2 Monday for dinner (1/4 of the cooked stuff), & the other 1/2 on Tuesday. In the end, if you divide them, even if eyeballed, averages out over the week.

It really did help me figure out how much I was eating. I had no clue what a serving was. For example, my biggest eye opener was a "serving" of pasta. It's only 1c of cooked pasta! Who, over age of 5, only ever eats 1c?!?!

I thought that I was eating a healthy diet before joing MFP, but by measuring everything, I realised that my portions were WAY out. I started out by putting out what I thought a portion would be, then measuring it and found in some cases I was eating nearly double what the recommended serving size is (damn you pasta!)

I don't think it takes any extra time really to weigh things out, if you are pouring things into a bowl, just put it on top of the scales before you start, it's second nature now to me. And after a few weeks, you'll find that you are much better at judging sizes.

I think my ticker speaks for itself.

I can't imagine not weighing my food. How do you know how much you're eating??? I try to keep a 500 calorie deficit. If I eyeballed the ground beef I just had, I could easily underestimate by 100 calories. And then the PB and J I had this morning? How do I know how much 2TBS of PB is? There goes another 50. What about cheese on my taco? I love that stuff, and could easily see myself eyeballing 2 ounces as 1...there's another 100 calories! Before you know it, my 500 calorie deficit is gone!

Exactly this! I was way over estimating what I ate, and when I started weighing it all, I couldn't believe it. Once you do, you know your calories are correct.

Portion control is the key to our success. DH and I are doing this together, which is also helpful. When we started last year we bought a food scale from Amazon at a reasonable price and ALSO bought food dishers. These look like ice cream scoops and are used in the restaurant industry to serve consistent portions to customers. We chose to get 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 cup scoops. We started out using measuring cups but they're awkward. We've modified our diets somewhat to cut out junk food like potato chips, but most of our success is based on portion control. We're still able to eat the things we love and don't get filled with resentment or cravings that lead to blow-outs or quitting.:bigsmile: :bigsmile: Good luck to you.

I've lost a bit over 50lbs by weighing most thing & using measuring cups on the rest.

Things i weigh pretty religiously are the high calorie things like meat, cheese, nuts. Measure most things with measuring cups, the only exception being low cal veggies like green leafy ones & onion.

To make my life easy i keep a set of cheap set of 1/4 c, 1/2c, 1c measuring cups, a 1TB right in an easy place to grab & use. (If i had to dig them out every time, it wouldn't happen). My food scale lives next to coffee maker easy enough to grab to measure things like cereal & milk at breakfast.

The easiest thing, for me, on most things, is to look at the number of servings and divide that by eye. For example, 1c of rice is 4servings. so ill make that on Monday. Hubby and i have 1/2 Monday for dinner (1/4 of the cooked stuff), & the other 1/2 on Tuesday. In the end, if you divide them, even if eyeballed, averages out over the week.

It really did help me figure out how much I was eating. I had no clue what a serving was. For example, my biggest eye opener was a "serving" of pasta. It's only 1c of cooked pasta! Who, over age of 5, only ever eats 1c?!?!

Wow, what an eye opening post! I didn't have a CLUE that 1 cup of rice is 4 servings!?!?!!!??? :noway: and 1 cup of cooked pasta is a "serving". WOW....this explains a LOT to me in terms of why the scale isn't moving for me as I'd like. Thank you so much for posting. I also LOVE what you said about a "cheap set of measuring cups too...that's extremely doable. Congrats so much also on your weight loss too!!!:flowerforyou:

Don't use measuring cups they are inaccurate. Use a food scale

This is correct. Measuring cups are more accurate than eyeballing, of course, but scales beat the pants off measuring cups for accuracy.

By the way, someone asked above who eats only a single serving of cooked pasta. Once I started weighing it out (although I do so dry, again, for more accuracy), I do. So does my husband. If it doesn't feel like enough food, mix with some veggies (spinach, mushrooms, bell peppers, zucchini). You're not pretending it's pasta, you're just rounding out the meal, but it is a lot more filling that way.

I weigh the pasta dry. Most serving size is 2oz, dry. So measure that, then cook it. Of course, it doubles in size, and it IS a lot for one person.

Pro Tip - When weighing things like peanut butter, jelly, mayonnaise or any other high calorie but hard to estimate stuff... Put the bread on the scale first and then zero the scale out, then add whatever it is to the bread to get that weight right.

I remember when I first started weighing things, somebody told me that and it helped me.

Same here. When I started hearing "Weigh everything" I was thinking to myself, "I am not going to weigh out 10 grams of butter before I put it on my toast. That's just silly!" Well, it is silly because there's an easier way, hehe.

I found another tip about weighing things like butter or oil etc. Instead of weighing the bread before and after (and getting crumbs everywhere) weigh the tub of butter before, take out what you want and then weigh it again and check how much less it is! No mess no fuss!

I think once you start weighing, you'll begin to get a good idea of how much is a portion size. You may not need to weigh for years and years, but it's definitely a great way to see exactly how much you want to/should be eating.