How and why to use a digital food scale
debr1126
Posts: 28 Member
I'm no expert, but I've finally made peace (or at least an uneasy truce) with weighing my food. Along the way, I've found a couple of tricks to help make it easier and, since I like to write, why not share? Anyway, here goes.
First of all, if you don't have one, buy a digital food scale. Just do it. If you're trying to lose weight, you NEED one. Trust me. Here's the URL to the one I have (because I'm too lazy to make it a real link):
http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Stainless-Pull-Out-Display/dp/B000WJMTNA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400334102&sr=8-1&keywords=oxo+digital+scale
That particular model costs ~$50, which isn't pocket change for most of us, but I believe it's the most important and essential tool in your arsenal when you're trying to lose weight. (The other, in my opinion, is a heart rate monitor--but that's another topic.)
Of course, you don't need to buy the same kind I have. Buy whichever one you like. If a pink or purple food scale will make you like it more (or hate it less), get that! Just read the reviews and make sure it's accurate and, whichever one you buy, it must have two features: The option to weigh in GRAMS, and a "ZERO" or "TARE" function.
Grams are important because, if you look at a food label (which you should be doing, right?), you'll notice that they'll always put a serving size with an arbitrary measurement--3 pieces, 1 scoop, 1/12 cake, 1/2 cup, one rounded tablespoon, and so forth--followed by a weight in grams. The weight in grams is required by the food label police because pieces, scoops, slices, measuring spoons, etc., are ridiculously arbitrary for solid foods. Pieces vary in size. Chunks break off. You can mash food down or let it stick out the top of a measuring cup. Your idea of a "rounded" spoonful or a "full" cup and mine may be totally different from what the label guy had in mind. Grams, however, don't lie. They are what they are, no matter how you stack them. They are the best and often the ONLY way to make sure you have an actual "serving" of food, and not 1.16 or .89 servings. You can even weigh those tortilla chip crumbs at the bottom of the bag that you tell yourself "don't count." Unfortunately, they do have a weight--and they do count.
Once, you've got your scale, how should you use it? This may sound obvious, but some people need to read it: Weigh everything you're about to eat, unless 1) It's a liquid (you should usually use measuring cups for liquids), or 2) It comes prepackaged and pre-measured in a single-serving container. Notice I said "pre-measured," so fruit is NOT EXEMPT. Think about it: Do you really know what a "small" apple is? A "medium" banana? A "large" baked potato? Don't trust your eyes to tell you; if yours are like mine, they're lying cheats. Maybe you live in Brobdingnag (Gulliver's land of the giants), and your idea of a "small" apple is what the nutrition label guy calls, "OMG! What IS that thing?" It takes about ten seconds to find out for sure and, if you're on a tight calorie deficit budget like I am, you should try to be as accurate as possible. Otherwise, "Why am I not losing weight?" Been there, done that.
The "tare" or "zero" button is something I just couldn't live without. It's bad enough having to keep a scale near my food; if I also had to have a notebook, pencil and calculator on hand, forget it. Oh, wait. Sometimes I do that. *sigh.* Anyway, what does "tare" mean? Here's from Wikipedia. "Tare weight /ˈtɛər/, sometimes called unladen weight, is the weight of an empty vehicle or container. By subtracting it from the gross weight (laden weight), the weight of the goods carried (the net weight) may be determined." In other words, it can be used to subtract the weight of your plate from the weight of your plate + food. Here's how that works.
Let's say you want to eat a serving of spaghetti and meat sauce. Who doesn't? You've been good and read the label (or looked it up online if the label was unclear) and found out that a "serving" of cooked spaghetti is 1 cup (140 g). Now, spaghetti is a perfect example of how difficult it is to use a measuring cup for a solid food. How the heck are you supposed to get an accurate "cup" of spaghetti? My mushy spaghetti will settle into the cup like it's found its forever home. My husband's chewy spaghetti will be desperately trying to escape, like it knows what's coming next and wants no part of it. Spare yourself the drama!
Put your scale on a flat, stable surface. Turn it on and wait for the display to settle. If it's reading anything but 0, tap the "zero" or "tare" button. (I'll just call it the "zero" button from now on to save time.)
Now that you've made sure the scale is reading "0" when nothing is on it, weigh the plate you plan to eat from. Make sure your scale is displaying grams (mine has a button to switch from lbs to grams). It's a good idea to notice the weight of the empty plate, just in case the scale turns itself off before you're finished weighing stuff. (Mine has an auto-off function that sometimes triggers before I'm done weighing--which is the only thing I *don't* like about it, though it does save batteries when I forget to turn it off manually.)
Once you've weighed your empty plate, tap the zero button. Now your scale is "zeroed" (tared) for the weight of the plate. Take the plate to the spaghetti bowl and let your lying eyes guide you as you wrangle a "serving" of spaghetti onto the plate. Bring the laden plate back to the scale and weigh it. The weight you see is for JUST the spaghetti. How close did you get to one serving? Take off or add spaghetti as appropriate until you're right at 140 g. You can use a measuring cup to dish a serving of meat sauce onto your spaghetti, or weigh it too, if you know the weight of a serving (I'll write about that in a minute).
It occurs to me as I"m typing this that "guessing" a serving, then weighing to see how accurate you were, might be a way to gradually "train" yourself to better estimate serving sizes--but, having regained nearly all my lost weight using the 'eyeballing' method, I doubt I'll ever trust myself that much again.
Anyway, back to your spaghetti dinner. What if you're going to eat another weighable food along with the spaghetti and meat sauce? Zero the scale and add the next food to the plate. Now you're weighing just the new food, all by itself. It's almost like magic! *ahem* It's science magic.
What if you're making a recipe? You can weigh/measure each ingredient separately, or use the scale to weigh each item as you add it to a mixing bowl, not forgetting to zero out after each new addition. Unless I'm sure I can get it all weighed quickly, I usually weigh each item separately as I go because of that auto-off feature I griped about before.
Oh, and here's another way your scale can help you! (And this is a good argument for buying a scale with a higher weight limit than you think you might need.) Let's say you're making a nice pot of homemade chili. The recipe says it makes 8 servings. (By the way, check out MFP's recipe builder if you haven't already. It will total the calories per serving of your recipe for you.) But exactly how much IS a serving? By the time you've added chopped veggies, liquids, accounted for evaporation (?), and so on and so forth,how can you tell how much 1/8th of the pot is, without the dreaded guesstimation?
Before you even start cooking, weigh the pot you're going to cook the chili in. Write down its weight. Add all the ingredients, cook your chili, then (carefully--it's hot!!!) weigh the full pot of chili. Now, one thing life has taught me is to avoid math at all costs, but sometimes you need it. Don't you hate when teachers are right? Subtract the empty pot's weight from the weight of the pot filled with chili. That's the weight of your entire recipe of chili. Divide by eight. (You have a calculator on your computer, btw.) That's the weight of one serving of a chili recipe that makes "8 servings." Voila! And it's also an example of when you might use a scale instead of a cup to measure a liquid(y) food.
What if you forgot to weigh the pot, didn't write it down, or ate the scrap of paper you wrote it on? All is not lost. Weigh the pot full of chili. Ladle your chili into an attractive serving tureen. You were going to do that anyway, right? ;-) Now wash out the empty pot. Don't rush, you have plenty of time--that chili will still be piping hot when our sun turns to a cold black cinder. Weigh the empty pot and subtract it from what it weighed when it was filled with chili. Divide the result by 8 with your handy calculator. That's the weight of a serving. Now you know exactly how much chili you can has.
That's all I've got. I still don't love weighing my food, and I guess I never will, but I do love my food scale. That other scale in the bathroom? Not so much.
If anyone has more tips for using the food scale to make life easier, or doing things better, faster, easier or smarter than I do, please post them. I'm still learning, too.
First of all, if you don't have one, buy a digital food scale. Just do it. If you're trying to lose weight, you NEED one. Trust me. Here's the URL to the one I have (because I'm too lazy to make it a real link):
http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Stainless-Pull-Out-Display/dp/B000WJMTNA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400334102&sr=8-1&keywords=oxo+digital+scale
That particular model costs ~$50, which isn't pocket change for most of us, but I believe it's the most important and essential tool in your arsenal when you're trying to lose weight. (The other, in my opinion, is a heart rate monitor--but that's another topic.)
Of course, you don't need to buy the same kind I have. Buy whichever one you like. If a pink or purple food scale will make you like it more (or hate it less), get that! Just read the reviews and make sure it's accurate and, whichever one you buy, it must have two features: The option to weigh in GRAMS, and a "ZERO" or "TARE" function.
Grams are important because, if you look at a food label (which you should be doing, right?), you'll notice that they'll always put a serving size with an arbitrary measurement--3 pieces, 1 scoop, 1/12 cake, 1/2 cup, one rounded tablespoon, and so forth--followed by a weight in grams. The weight in grams is required by the food label police because pieces, scoops, slices, measuring spoons, etc., are ridiculously arbitrary for solid foods. Pieces vary in size. Chunks break off. You can mash food down or let it stick out the top of a measuring cup. Your idea of a "rounded" spoonful or a "full" cup and mine may be totally different from what the label guy had in mind. Grams, however, don't lie. They are what they are, no matter how you stack them. They are the best and often the ONLY way to make sure you have an actual "serving" of food, and not 1.16 or .89 servings. You can even weigh those tortilla chip crumbs at the bottom of the bag that you tell yourself "don't count." Unfortunately, they do have a weight--and they do count.
Once, you've got your scale, how should you use it? This may sound obvious, but some people need to read it: Weigh everything you're about to eat, unless 1) It's a liquid (you should usually use measuring cups for liquids), or 2) It comes prepackaged and pre-measured in a single-serving container. Notice I said "pre-measured," so fruit is NOT EXEMPT. Think about it: Do you really know what a "small" apple is? A "medium" banana? A "large" baked potato? Don't trust your eyes to tell you; if yours are like mine, they're lying cheats. Maybe you live in Brobdingnag (Gulliver's land of the giants), and your idea of a "small" apple is what the nutrition label guy calls, "OMG! What IS that thing?" It takes about ten seconds to find out for sure and, if you're on a tight calorie deficit budget like I am, you should try to be as accurate as possible. Otherwise, "Why am I not losing weight?" Been there, done that.
The "tare" or "zero" button is something I just couldn't live without. It's bad enough having to keep a scale near my food; if I also had to have a notebook, pencil and calculator on hand, forget it. Oh, wait. Sometimes I do that. *sigh.* Anyway, what does "tare" mean? Here's from Wikipedia. "Tare weight /ˈtɛər/, sometimes called unladen weight, is the weight of an empty vehicle or container. By subtracting it from the gross weight (laden weight), the weight of the goods carried (the net weight) may be determined." In other words, it can be used to subtract the weight of your plate from the weight of your plate + food. Here's how that works.
Let's say you want to eat a serving of spaghetti and meat sauce. Who doesn't? You've been good and read the label (or looked it up online if the label was unclear) and found out that a "serving" of cooked spaghetti is 1 cup (140 g). Now, spaghetti is a perfect example of how difficult it is to use a measuring cup for a solid food. How the heck are you supposed to get an accurate "cup" of spaghetti? My mushy spaghetti will settle into the cup like it's found its forever home. My husband's chewy spaghetti will be desperately trying to escape, like it knows what's coming next and wants no part of it. Spare yourself the drama!
Put your scale on a flat, stable surface. Turn it on and wait for the display to settle. If it's reading anything but 0, tap the "zero" or "tare" button. (I'll just call it the "zero" button from now on to save time.)
Now that you've made sure the scale is reading "0" when nothing is on it, weigh the plate you plan to eat from. Make sure your scale is displaying grams (mine has a button to switch from lbs to grams). It's a good idea to notice the weight of the empty plate, just in case the scale turns itself off before you're finished weighing stuff. (Mine has an auto-off function that sometimes triggers before I'm done weighing--which is the only thing I *don't* like about it, though it does save batteries when I forget to turn it off manually.)
Once you've weighed your empty plate, tap the zero button. Now your scale is "zeroed" (tared) for the weight of the plate. Take the plate to the spaghetti bowl and let your lying eyes guide you as you wrangle a "serving" of spaghetti onto the plate. Bring the laden plate back to the scale and weigh it. The weight you see is for JUST the spaghetti. How close did you get to one serving? Take off or add spaghetti as appropriate until you're right at 140 g. You can use a measuring cup to dish a serving of meat sauce onto your spaghetti, or weigh it too, if you know the weight of a serving (I'll write about that in a minute).
It occurs to me as I"m typing this that "guessing" a serving, then weighing to see how accurate you were, might be a way to gradually "train" yourself to better estimate serving sizes--but, having regained nearly all my lost weight using the 'eyeballing' method, I doubt I'll ever trust myself that much again.
Anyway, back to your spaghetti dinner. What if you're going to eat another weighable food along with the spaghetti and meat sauce? Zero the scale and add the next food to the plate. Now you're weighing just the new food, all by itself. It's almost like magic! *ahem* It's science magic.
What if you're making a recipe? You can weigh/measure each ingredient separately, or use the scale to weigh each item as you add it to a mixing bowl, not forgetting to zero out after each new addition. Unless I'm sure I can get it all weighed quickly, I usually weigh each item separately as I go because of that auto-off feature I griped about before.
Oh, and here's another way your scale can help you! (And this is a good argument for buying a scale with a higher weight limit than you think you might need.) Let's say you're making a nice pot of homemade chili. The recipe says it makes 8 servings. (By the way, check out MFP's recipe builder if you haven't already. It will total the calories per serving of your recipe for you.) But exactly how much IS a serving? By the time you've added chopped veggies, liquids, accounted for evaporation (?), and so on and so forth,how can you tell how much 1/8th of the pot is, without the dreaded guesstimation?
Before you even start cooking, weigh the pot you're going to cook the chili in. Write down its weight. Add all the ingredients, cook your chili, then (carefully--it's hot!!!) weigh the full pot of chili. Now, one thing life has taught me is to avoid math at all costs, but sometimes you need it. Don't you hate when teachers are right? Subtract the empty pot's weight from the weight of the pot filled with chili. That's the weight of your entire recipe of chili. Divide by eight. (You have a calculator on your computer, btw.) That's the weight of one serving of a chili recipe that makes "8 servings." Voila! And it's also an example of when you might use a scale instead of a cup to measure a liquid(y) food.
What if you forgot to weigh the pot, didn't write it down, or ate the scrap of paper you wrote it on? All is not lost. Weigh the pot full of chili. Ladle your chili into an attractive serving tureen. You were going to do that anyway, right? ;-) Now wash out the empty pot. Don't rush, you have plenty of time--that chili will still be piping hot when our sun turns to a cold black cinder. Weigh the empty pot and subtract it from what it weighed when it was filled with chili. Divide the result by 8 with your handy calculator. That's the weight of a serving. Now you know exactly how much chili you can has.
That's all I've got. I still don't love weighing my food, and I guess I never will, but I do love my food scale. That other scale in the bathroom? Not so much.
If anyone has more tips for using the food scale to make life easier, or doing things better, faster, easier or smarter than I do, please post them. I'm still learning, too.
31
Replies
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Thank you for this information! :flowerforyou:0
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Thanks so much!! I don't use a scale but was thinking of getting one, this is super helpful.0
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Too long to read.19
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Awesome read! I actually was having trouble earlier today with spaghetti, wish I had found this a few hours sooner haha.0
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My scale was 17$ on sale at Canadian Tire and came with a bowl...(regular price was 57$)
It sits on my counter beside my toaster actually.
I weigh a lot of empty dishes, add ingrediants, write it all out (recipe) then weigh the total cooked, minus dish, get cooked weight use that to determine serving sizes...ie Greek penna with feta normally weighs 1500grams when cooked, so 15 servings of 100g each...
I use the tare button too but butter...put the knife on it, zero it out, get my butter weigh it...5g bam.
get in the habit of guessing how much it is going to be to get good at estimating...I have lost track of that.
Only other thing...keep it away from your microwave makes mine go all wonky....:sad:
I weigh 98% of the food I eat at home...even prepackaged stuff like bread, crackers etc.
ETA: I weigh my take out too...I know I know a bit ocd.4 -
Thank you so much. I can now actually use the scale I purchased. I need clear and detailed instructions like yours to learn new information. Best thing I learned today !!!!!
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Great advice!
Sometimes instead of putting the bowl or plate on, then zeroing it, I'll put the container of food I'm about to eat on there and zero that out. Then I scoop out what I want until I get to the appropriate (negative) grams.
For example, I love cottage cheese and I buy the big one from Costco. When I go to get a serving, 117g, I put the whole container on the scale, hit zero, and then start scooping until the scale reads -117g.
Also, this method is really handy with peanut butter or other spreads. It can be hard to weigh a spoon and then put the spoon back on the scale, especially if it's smallish like mine. But putting the whole jar on and just scooping out what you need is super easy!
I actually never thought to do it this way until I read about it on here, but I can't remember who mentioned it!! So thank you, random MFP person for this advice which I am now sharing with others :flowerforyou:14 -
Thanks for this, I have been using my scale but am greatful for the additional info.
Cindy0 -
Amazon.com has tons of digital scales that are pretty accurate and cheap, I got mine in stainless steel for $10.00 but I'm cheap.
What I found most amusing once I started using the scale is not only was I underestimating everything but one serving is actually pretty satisfying. If I get one serving of wheat pasta and chicken instead of my eyeballing exaggeration, at the end of the meal I’m full.
So use the scale and learn to love it! You will once the one sitting on the bathroom floor makes you smile.3 -
Great advice!
Sometimes instead of putting the bowl or plate on, then zeroing it, I'll put the container of food I'm about to eat on there and zero that out. Then I scoop out what I want until I get to the appropriate (negative) grams.
For example, I love cottage cheese and I buy the big one from Costco. When I go to get a serving, 117g, I put the whole container on the scale, hit zero, and then start scooping until the scale reads -117g.
Also, this method is really handy with peanut butter or other spreads. It can be hard to weigh a spoon and then put the spoon back on the scale, especially if it's smallish like mine. But putting the whole jar on and just scooping out what you need is super easy!
I actually never thought to do it this way until I read about it on here, but I can't remember who mentioned it!! So thank you, random MFP person for this advice which I am now sharing with others :flowerforyou:
See, now that's why I come here. Talk about smart people... Thanks0 -
Great advice!
Sometimes instead of putting the bowl or plate on, then zeroing it, I'll put the container of food I'm about to eat on there and zero that out. Then I scoop out what I want until I get to the appropriate (negative) grams.
For example, I love cottage cheese and I buy the big one from Costco. When I go to get a serving, 117g, I put the whole container on the scale, hit zero, and then start scooping until the scale reads -117g.
Also, this method is really handy with peanut butter or other spreads. It can be hard to weigh a spoon and then put the spoon back on the scale, especially if it's smallish like mine. But putting the whole jar on and just scooping out what you need is super easy!
I actually never thought to do it this way until I read about it on here, but I can't remember who mentioned it!! So thank you, random MFP person for this advice which I am now sharing with others :flowerforyou:
^^This. When I discovered negative grams, it changed my weight loss forever.4 -
For example, I love cottage cheese and I buy the big one from Costco. When I go to get a serving, 117g, I put the whole container on the scale, hit zero, and then start scooping until the scale reads -117g.
Also, this method is really handy with peanut butter or other spreads. It can be hard to weigh a spoon and then put the spoon back on the scale, especially if it's smallish like mine. But putting the whole jar on and just scooping out what you need is super easy!
I was just about to say the same thing and use peanut butter as an example!
Also the one liquid I do weigh is milk (semi-skimmed) when I add it to my cereal (as it goes into the bowl using the 'tare' thing) as it has pretty much the same density as water (1g = 1ml) and then I don't have to wash a measuring jug after! (I tested it with a jug once and it was correct but other liquids will vary)1 -
I actually never thought to do it this way until I read about it on here, but I can't remember who mentioned it!! So thank you, random MFP person for this advice which I am now sharing with others :flowerforyou:
Thank YOU for resharing the knowledge Never thought of it either. I would just make sure to buy an accurate scale when doing this. 0 -
I heard of another tip that has served me well:
When making a recipe, I set the "number of servings" to equal the number of grams of the final product. For example, I recently did this for my tuna noodle casserole. I originally set the serving size to 1 (so i can get to the "add ingredients" screen). I added all of the ingredients I used. I cooked the casserole. I figured out the weight of the final product (obviously excluding the container). It came out to about 1,100 grams so I edited the number of servings equal to 1,100. Then when I go to get my share, I zero out my bowl, weight the food in grams, and used that number.This works for me because I think it saves time, especially if I want more or less than 1/8th of the casserole.8 -
I just bought a digital scale about 2 hours ago. I had been using a scale that my mother had from the 70s! Yeah, one of those! After reading the OP's post, I know that I have been miscalculating just about everything. Things are gonna change for me, folks!1
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Bump.
Also nice to get a scale with a "hold" button in case you can't see the number under the container. It'll lock the screen so you can remove the container and see the weight.2 -
Bump for good info0
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Great information! I have never weighed my food before, but now it doesn't seem so intimidating.0
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OP
>best post of the week, hands down. :bigsmile:0 -
I heard of another tip that has served me well:
When making a recipe, I set the "number of servings" to equal the number of grams of the final product. For example, I recently did this for my tuna noodle casserole. I originally set the serving size to 1 (so i can get to the "add ingredients" screen). I added all of the ingredients I used. I cooked the casserole. I figured out the weight of the final product (obviously excluding the container). It came out to about 1,100 grams so I edited the number of servings equal to 1,100. Then when I go to get my share, I zero out my bowl, weight the food in grams, and used that number.This works for me because I think it saves time, especially if I want more or less than 1/8th of the casserole.
I do this as well, but divide by 100. So if I eat 114g, I had 1.14 servings.1 -
Great post! Thank you for taking the time to write this up.0
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Hi there,
I haven't purchased a scale yet - but your info was great!
Thanks, 0 -
One recommendation I make (and I do it myself) is to take the total weight of the ingredients before you cook, and how many servings you want, and then weigh it again after it is cooked. Divide the cooked weight by the uncooked weight (yeah, more math) to get the cooked to uncooked ratio, and then multiply that result by the uncooked serving size. This is very important, because the weight will change (usually get lighter after it is cooked, from lost moisture) which means that uncooked 100g serving is only 80ish grams cooked. For calorie dense items, that 20g makes a difference. Then you have the opposite. I've noticed potatoes absorb water, so after you drain them (I make mashed potatoes on occasion) they end up weighing more, which means a serving of them can be a little bit more (do you really wanna cheat yourself out of food you can eat?)
It's a bit harder, I even made a spreadsheet, and listed the weights of the pots and pans I use the most so I don't have to worry about weighing them every time, but it is worth it to make sure you're getting the right amount of food.1 -
Bumping to share later.0
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This is very helpful, thank you!0
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Felt like this could use a bump today.0
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Very awesome.0
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Great Info!0
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I have a tip for homemade meals. Say banana bread or even a casserole dish. I weigh the whole thing and call a serving one oz. Then log however many oz or servings I want. This keeps me honest as I grab a little bread and helps save leftovers in different sizes based on how many servings I can afford. So it may say I had 8 servings of pasta ECT.1
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I need to buy one of these! :O
BUMP0
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