eating more than you think....

Every time I hear people say "eat more" to lose weight, I think of the things my father said.

He was a professional wrestler for 30 years and was a Greco-Roman wrestler before that, and made it to the Olympic finals, so he was a proper athlete. Coached football and wrestling at the university of Alabama and Chattanooga, and a couple of things stick in my mind:

I asked him what exercise to do to lose weight, and he said there was only one - stretch your arms out and push away from the table.

I also heard stories of him eating absolutely nothing for 2 days except a single piece of toast to qualify for a lower weight division. Apparently, if you eat less, you lose weight, starvation mode or not.

Also my sister has a ph. D in nursing and has taught nursing, pediatrics, and pharmaceuticals at universities across the country for 20 years, and she is always sending me medical studies from proper medical journals that show that when they underfed monkeys, they were much healthier than the ones who were even slightly overfed. Not that I agree with animal testing, mind you.

I think we have to be very careful and make sure to discourage people from eating disorders but we also don't need to be telling people who are chubby (like me!) to eat more. Nice story, but no.

Ok- I just want to clear some things up. When I posted this, I was really trying to help someone who thought they were logging correctly and not losing weight. I was not trying to promote becoming obsessive. I really don't thing the 3-4 gram difference in packaged food will make a huge difference because it has been stated it can go either way. (i haven't noticed that yet.) I just really wanted to point out that measuring makes room for more error than weighing. Especially if you are only eating at 300-400 calorie deficit. It can stall weight loss for months, like it has for me. I read a post where a woman refused to weigh her food to see if that helped. It opened my eyes to what I was doing wrong. And just wanted to share.

Jill

This is so true! I refuse to weigh yogurt though.. too many dishes. I just have a lower goal to make up for those things. But I try to weigh bread, tortillas, pretty much everything else. It is definitely an eye opener.

Bumping for knowledge. And to remind me to weight my eggs in the morning because now I'm curious!:huh:

Here's my question about this: I use spray for cooking. It has zero calories for 1/3 of a second of a spray. But, I assume after that, it has 1 calorie, and then 2 and on and on. However, zero times 1,000,000,000 is zero, so how do you calculate stuff like that? It says zero calories, but there is no easy way to actually measure.

I can read what you're typing, you know? Or at least I would... if you could spell.

Not once did I say that weighing food will lead to an eating disorder. Not once.

My background is no different than anyone else's here on MFP. I was obese, I started counting calories to lose weight, I became obsessed (as many here are, just look how many hours a day we spend online arguing about this nonsense), and I came to use food to control my life.

I simply stated that there is no reason to weigh everything. I realize the OP was focusing more on the bigger picture, suggesting that you weigh meats, vegetables, peanut butter, protein powder, etc. because the measuring cups/spoons aren't as accurate. I have a food scale. I understand that. In fact, just the other night, I made cupcakes and weighed each one before and after icing to get a better idea of how many calories were in each.

I am replying to the other posts I've read.

To open a bag of bread, weigh a slice, and readjust the calories from a 28g serving to a 30g serving is ridiculous. To do it on a daily basis? Even more ridiculous and bordering on unhealthy. To the person who asked about cooking spray: what are you doing? Using the whole damn can? It. Doesn't. Matter. To the person who weighed a snicker's bar: you probably got an extra peanut or two in it. It's no big deal. Weighing a container of yogurt to check for a 5 calorie discrepancy with the label is going too far -- it's just like crying over diet coke.

Don't you dare undermine my opinion because you think I am less than you.

This is the definition of obsessive. Some packages overestimate calories, and some even underestimate calories. Calm down, eat at your calorie goal, and let the rest even out.

This reminds me of the time I cried for 2 hours when I found out diet coke as 1 calorie per 8 ounces.

The point is that if you can't measure accurately you can't just "eat at your calorie goal." Especially when people only have a small amount of weight to lose, there is a very small margin of error. Weighing food is another tool for people to learn to accurately log and achieve their goals. No one is crying here. They are learning.

I'm not talking about the issue of weighing foods vs. measuring with cups/tablespoons. I understand that those measurements are often wrong and can mean trouble when it comes to consuming on a regular basis as a part of a strict calorie goal. I am all for weighing meats or homemade meals. But someone here mentioned that they weigh mustard. You don't think that's gone a little too far?

Pfft I weigh mustard. It's 15 calories a serving. If you never weigh your condiments, you can go over by quite a bit at the end of the day.

And if you think it's obsessive... *shrug*. It's worked for me. My health matters more than whether people think I'm obsessive or not.

A serving of mustard is 1 tsp. I'm sorry, but there are not 15 calories in a teaspoon of mustard. I don't know where you got that from. It's usually around 3-4 calories per teaspoon depending on the type, and those calories will not matter in the long run.

For me there's got to be balance. I don't weigh spinach or pre-packaged foods. I don't take my food scale to restaurants. But I do weigh my mayo and other condiments.

To me it's about realizing that there's some margin of error in the process, but still trying to minimize that margin as much as possible.

And I don't think everyone needs to weigh everything. Some people don't like the place it takes them mentally and that's fine. But if you have a small deficit and you're not losing, it's the first thing I'd suggest.

I think you have a healthy point of view on weighing food. I'm mainly concerned about the people here who are taking things to an extreme.

See here is my problem. I have lost weight, I have about 15 pounds left to reach goal. I know how to lose weight. Well the scale has been going up and down 5 pounds over the last few months. I really thought something was wrong with me. But I am not a special snowflake, even though I would love to be. So I knew I had to really look in to my diet.

Well my friend and I decided to weigh and measure my foods. My 1Tbsp of peanut butter which should have been 16 grams was actually 23 grams. Yogurt - the package says 150g ...it was 159g. Arnolds sandwich thin- package says it is 43g....one weighed in at 50g and another one 51g. This one made me feel really dumb. Apples- I usually log as a medium apple, because well there are bigger at the store and smaller ones. (yeah I know...dumb!) Well a medium one is 140g my "medium" apple was 210.

I still have no idea how to log a banana. All the entries go by size, and the associated weight is more often than not ways of what my 'medium' banana actually weighs (like it will say medium 8 inch banana (120g) and mine will be 150g or something. And do you count the skin or not when you weigh it?

Good thing I almost never eat bananas...