Who *actually* measures and weighs everything?

I mainly weigh snacks, meats, pasta and sometimes canned foods, especially if I plan on draining the juice from whatever.

I don't really.
I cook a lot so I have a pretty good idea what 1/2 cup or 1T of something really looks like.
Occasionally, I will weigh or measure something like baby carrots or spinach because it is harder to judge. After I've weighed it one time, I have a pretty good idea what a serving of those looks like.

I think if you are pretty familiar with actual serving sizes or cook a lot you can eyeball stuff but if you aren't then you should probably weigh or measure for awhile.

I don't actually find it that difficult. But one thing that does drive me crazy is that so many of the foods in the database are in US and not metric measurements. I know, I know, most users on the site are American. But as a Canadian, I don't know nor do I care about ounces and cups, and would prefer to see things in millilitres and grams. The conversions aren't intuitive for me, so it's just sort of frustrating to keep having to calculate conversions.

This is more of a rant about countries *coughs* USA that don't adopt the ridiculously simple metric system, and not a rant about MFP. But just putting that out there.

This content has been removed.

This content has been removed.

NakeshiaBeard wrote: »

How many of you *actually* measure and weigh everything you eat?

When I was first starting I did a lot of weighing and measuring. I found my mental calculation were sometimes VERy far off from the actual numbers. After about a year though I have a good idea of what is what and how much is how much. I don't have a huge range of foods so the only time I do measure or weigh anymore is if it is something different from the norm.

I weight probably 98% of what I eat. If I am at my boyfriend's parent's house I tend eyeball instead of weigh it out.

I weigh almost everything and measure out the rest. The only things I eyeball are leafy greens and the only things I count are eggs and cherry tomatoes.

Same as most, anything that I make and/or eat at home gets weighed. And I even keep a little portable food scale at my desk at work so that if I get stuck and have to buy lunch or a snack out during the day, as long as no one is around I can weigh what I'm eating. Obviously, at a restaurant or at a friend's house or whatnot it doesn't happen, but as long as that's the exception for meals rather than the rule, I'm sure thing will work out just fine.

segacs wrote: »

Yeah I use those when I can find them, too. But I would *love* the ability to filter results in the database to display only those that are entered in grams.

I'd just love the ability to filter to get only the non-asterisk'd entries (which would give you the gram options). It seems to have gotten more difficult since the recent changes, too.

I have weighed everything for the 4 years I have been dieting. Especially at restaurants where they don't even give you their estimates of the calories in their food.
One thing this site could add that would save me and many other LOTS of time (at work especially!!!) is to add a "calories per gram" attribute to the foods. I throw the food on the scale on my desk, enter the grams, and boom! all done! Instead I find myself wading through website after website searching for how much one "serving" actually weighs.
When I put in a food myself, I list the number of calories for 100 grams. When I eat some amount of that food, it takes me maybe 5 seconds to make my log entry. When someone gives me a slice of cake, I weigh the cake, then find that just about every listing for cake states the number of calories for "one serving". If that serving is 50 grams, or 500 grams, who knows??? This issue really need to be addressed. For example, on calorie count, EVERY food is listed in multiple ways to include grams. I switched because that site was becoming very slow and many times not even loading from my work computer. Oh and MFP's ability to scan barcodes from a smartphone! Love it!!

I weigh let's say 95% of what is practical to weigh. 5% of the time I am lazy and eyeball. I have two food scales, one for home and one for work. I usually don't weigh pre-portioned foods (like sausage). I probably should weigh pre-portioned more and maybe will do so down the line if I have a harder time losing weight.

segacs wrote: »

I don't actually find it that difficult. But one thing that does drive me crazy is that so many of the foods in the database are in US and not metric measurements. I know, I know, most users on the site are American. But as a Canadian, I don't know nor do I care about ounces and cups, and would prefer to see things in millilitres and grams. The conversions aren't intuitive for me, so it's just sort of frustrating to keep having to calculate conversions.

This is more of a rant about countries *coughs* USA that don't adopt the ridiculously simple metric system, and not a rant about MFP. But just putting that out there.

I couldn't agree more. I taught Physics for two years and using the metric system greatly simplified things for me and the students. Plus my desktop scale does not weight things in tablespoons! Fun fact: here in Arizona, Interstate 19 from Nogales to Tucson is labeled in kilometers!! It is great because when you're driving the numbers increase / decrease at a faster rate and you feel like you're really movin'!! Every now and then people complain and there is all this talk about changing it to miles. And not to my surprise since the gov't would be doing the work it would cost taxpayers over $5,000,000 to take down the signs and put up signs labeled in miles! I mean really, where are they having the signs made, and are they made out of gold?

It would be really nice to have functionality built in that would automatically provide an oz option from grams or vice versa. You could even set your preference to metric or imperial and it would default to your preference.

girlviernes wrote: »

It would be really nice to have functionality built in that would automatically provide an oz option from grams or vice versa. You could even set your preference to metric or imperial and it would default to your preference.

Yes, this!