Are you measuring food accurately?!
Mangopickle
Posts: 1,509 Member
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/602592-what-do-you-use-when-weighing-food-ounces-or-grams
Here is a link that I have copied to my iPad home page to help me prep food. If you are experiencing long stalls you are likely way off on your food measurement. A few bad measurements a day and Whammo you over ate by 300-400 calories putting you in maintenance not in deficit. Since I am no longer working to drag around 99 extra lbs with every step watching my intake is very key. Many of us resist proper food measurement saying we don't want to be "That person" but in my case I would say I was resisting the reality of the scale. I didn't want one more check on my eating. Grams are grams and oz are oz. A cup of something can be extremely variable. Now the scale is moving again as I improve my food measurement. Hope you find it helpful.
Here is a link that I have copied to my iPad home page to help me prep food. If you are experiencing long stalls you are likely way off on your food measurement. A few bad measurements a day and Whammo you over ate by 300-400 calories putting you in maintenance not in deficit. Since I am no longer working to drag around 99 extra lbs with every step watching my intake is very key. Many of us resist proper food measurement saying we don't want to be "That person" but in my case I would say I was resisting the reality of the scale. I didn't want one more check on my eating. Grams are grams and oz are oz. A cup of something can be extremely variable. Now the scale is moving again as I improve my food measurement. Hope you find it helpful.
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I am pretty good at this tbh. I use measuring spoons, cups and scales for every meal that I have at home. I rarely eat out.
So far my stalls have been limited to less than two weeks at a time, generally only a week. Today I tried a ricotta pancake recipe. Problem faced was calculating the dry pancake mixture I had to add, when the packet information only gave calorie info for the made up mixture with milk added etc. So... much mathematics later, I had my amounts. Just takes patience.0 -
So true! It's way too hard to eyeball a portion. I find it much easier to weigh and measure rather than guess.0
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Glad you posted this Mangopickle! I am so sick of trying to figure out my portion sometimes. I usually weigh everything, but sometime the database just says 1 Tbsp. for example. So I usually go by the container in came in, but it can be a pain in the butt. What do you ladies do in this situation. I have recently just started making my own list and saving in my foods. Any other advise would be greatly appreciated.0
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That's one thing that frustrates me about this new life- I find I eat more packaged foods just because it's easier to measure my intake. For example, normaly I would enjoy making some really fresh guacamole, but now I just buy 90 calorie packs. Even with a food scale and all the other measureing stuff- it just gets overwhelming at times.0
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Thanks for the great reminder, Mangopickle! I have been stalled lately and this is probably the reason. You have challenged me to get back to what I KNOW works best. :flowerforyou:0
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That's one thing that frustrates me about this new life- I find I eat more packaged foods just because it's easier to measure my intake. For example, normaly I would enjoy making some really fresh guacamole, but now I just buy 90 calorie packs. Even with a food scale and all the other measureing stuff- it just gets overwhelming at times.
Have you tried the old recipe calculator in the MFP recipe section. I enter all my homemade recipes and then you can always log a serving of your own homemade recipes with the correct calorie count. I find it very useful. I too ate a lot of packaged food early on but I got rapidly back to my homemade because of the sodium levels0 -
When I input my own recipes I usually cook in bulk, eg. chili, lasagna. I input all my ingredients but how do I figure what a portion is, or is it arbitrary? Any advise/help would be appreciated.0
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I just look at the volume of the pot, convert to cups, 1/2 cups etc. whatever is an appropriate portion for the food item. Lasagna I would just score the surface to determine the average # of slices and that would be the portion I would enter. When it is a odd volume container I will actually use a cup measure to scoop it into another container and count the scoops.When I input my own recipes I usually cook in bulk, eg. chili, lasagna. I input all my ingredients but how do I figure what a portion is, or is it arbitrary? Any advise/help would be appreciated.
If you use a crock pot fill it to the average fill line with water then measure the water. This will give you an idea of how many cups of food you are making and then you can break that down into the size portions you want. For something like dip or salad dressing a serving is 2 tbsp. There are 16 tbsp in a cup so there are 8 servings per cup of dip. When I make cookies I actually count the cooked cookies and then plug the # of servings in the recipe. I always enter a new recipe after I have cooked it in order to determine the number of servings that was yielded after cooking. I use a cookie dough scoop or tbsp to portion my cookies and often end up with more cookies than the recipe stated. Hope this helps.0 -
Thanks Mango- I haven't really used that much but will try more often-and your tips about measuring.
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Harsh reality. If i don't weigh and measure...I don't lose.0
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Thanks Mangopickle for the clarification. I always just found this website and it has helped. I was looking to figure out my canned pineapple. The can says 70calories for 125ml. Which you can not weigh. So I looked at this chart and is says that 80g of canned pineapple is 75 calories. Which at least is measurable. Hope this may help someone. P.S. the start of this chart got pretty detailed about density etc. I quickly skimmed it and went right to the charts.
http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/info/books-phds/books/foodfacts/html/data/data2a.html0 -
Love this post! I have found that I have been sticking with pre-packaged foods as well. But the sodium content is so high that I have started cooking again. I find the recipe calculator on here great to use but I too find it difficult to determine portions. Unless it is something that is like a muffin. I made raisin tea buns today (not for myself to eat) but I do respite care and its for his snacks and my husband loves them to but he uses MFP as well although not sleeved he needs to lose about 60 lbs. So I was able to get the correct nutritional values for him by using the recipe calculator.
Thanks for all the tips! I was steady losing had a couple of stalls! So now I will be weighing and measuring everything. My portion sizes is partially what got me here to begin with. I don't want to go back down that road again.
Thanks for all the great info 0 -
When I cook in bulk, like lentils and veggies or spaghetti sauce, my goal is to have a serving size be 100 or 200 grams. When I serve the family, I give each person servings ion multiples of 100 grams and record how much is served. Then I measure the leftovers and I know the total number of grams that were in the pot. I then go back to the recipe and change the number of servings to the number of 100 or 200 gram servings, and then my wife can copy it from my log after I log it. I also change the. Are of June recipe to include the number of grams in a serving.
Sounds more complicated then it really is once you start doing it. For those who can see my diary, the veggie lentil curry was done this way and came out to 176 calories per 200 grams. For those who can't see my diary, send me a FR,
Rob0
