Who *actually* measures and weighs everything?

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  • KylaDenay
    KylaDenay Posts: 1,585 Member
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    For the most part I do. I have come to realize how off many prepackaged items are. Now it is important to weigh EVERYTHING.
  • rioricorick
    rioricorick Posts: 22 Member
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    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!!
  • Mexicanbigfoot
    Mexicanbigfoot Posts: 520 Member
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    I measure most things (minus restaurant portions and other special situations) I have found that I grossly misjudge portion sizes when I try to eyeball them. :blush:
  • girlviernes
    girlviernes Posts: 2,402 Member
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    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.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    For a time I did...I can eyeball most things pretty accurately now, but it was pretty important for me in learning portion control in the beginning.

    I still weigh certain things now...spaghetti comes to mind. I can't eyeball a serving of dry spaghetti.
  • rioricorick
    rioricorick Posts: 22 Member
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    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?
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    Whole foods have a gram option (these are the non-asterisked ones, which should be easier to find). Packaged items are usually listed as they are on the package, and restaurant items as the restaurant has them. Beyond that, nothing is going to be remotely accurate anyway--certainly not someone else's homemade recipe unless we can see the recipe--so you either guess or create a recipe yourself. I mean, I guess it would be nice to see the variation of calories for a particular size piece of cake so as to estimate better, but there's a tremendous range depending on what you put in the cake.
  • girlviernes
    girlviernes Posts: 2,402 Member
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    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.
  • ksuh999
    ksuh999 Posts: 543 Member
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    I do. Not EVERYTHING but most things. Like, I don't weigh bananas, I just bloody well refuse to do it. Or apples. I just can't. But most everything else.
    I never used to weigh bananas either and assumed they were all around 150g I bought a banana today and it was 212g so I was off 62g and it does make quite a big difference if you're trying to lose weight

    That's incredible. I've never gotten a banana that weighed more than 105 grams.
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    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!
  • LeanButNotMean44
    LeanButNotMean44 Posts: 852 Member
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    I weigh when I am preparing something at home. I was GROSSLY underestimating my measurements for my oats, blueberries, and apples. The 1/2c measuring cup I used had probably close to 50g of oats when I filled it up verses the 40g that make up the 1/2c measurement on the package. Also, I was buying loose apples versus bagged apples and found them to be WAY to much - 200+ grams verses 150-180g for the packaged. Not to mention that measurements of small, medium, and large when applied to pieces of fruit are all relative; meaning that what is medium to one person may be large to another.
  • ChrisM32205
    ChrisM32205 Posts: 218 Member
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    I do when it comes to meat and other things where I don't consume the entire portion (such as servings from large containers.. like cottage cheese, yogurt, etc.)
  • kristydi
    kristydi Posts: 781 Member
    edited November 2014
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    I'm not an elite athlete nor am I working with a razor thin margin with my calories so no, I don't weigh everything. I'm still losing so I'm happy. If I stop losing, then I'll reevaluate.

    It's really important to me that this losing weight thing for not become a burden or get too complicated. Weighing every single thing, especially prepackaged stuff, crosses that line for me. I accept that a margin of error exists and that's OK with me. I weigh stuff like meats and veggies. Like I said, if I stop losing then maybe I'll start weighing more stuff, but till then what I'm doing seems to be working.
  • dunnodunno
    dunnodunno Posts: 2,290 Member
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    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!!

    Well if you ate a generic piece of cake that someone else made wouldn't it still be an estimation any ways unless you knew the exact ingredients they used?

    If you eat ice cream and the grams on the carton are listed at 67 & you have 72 all you need to do is use a calculator & divide 72 by 67 & you have your serving size.
  • Tea_Mistress
    Tea_Mistress Posts: 105 Member
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    I weigh most things unless I'm going to eat the whole container of something in one sitting or day( eg. a small tub of cottage cheese) , or if it's separated into servings, then I just go by what the nutrition says for each serving (eg. sachets of porridge) .
    But I weigh things that are less exact, like fruit, condiments, meat, pasta etc :)
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
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    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    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.
    That is the one enhancement I'm surprised they've never made. There must be a reason because from a database perspective, it would be easy.

  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
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    ksuh999 wrote: »
    I do. Not EVERYTHING but most things. Like, I don't weigh bananas, I just bloody well refuse to do it. Or apples. I just can't. But most everything else.
    I never used to weigh bananas either and assumed they were all around 150g I bought a banana today and it was 212g so I was off 62g and it does make quite a big difference if you're trying to lose weight

    That's incredible. I've never gotten a banana that weighed more than 105 grams.

    I have trouble believing that was a peeled banana's weight (212g). I just weighed an in-peel banana and it was 163g.

  • 47Jacqueline
    47Jacqueline Posts: 6,993 Member
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    Often, just to check.
  • Smoothguy67
    Smoothguy67 Posts: 1 Member
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    I'm thinking of getting a food scale to weigh food portions. Was curious if any of you had any suggestions on what machines work best. Thanks in advance!
  • kimiebee
    kimiebee Posts: 62 Member
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    I do....with everything!!!