How accurate are you?

I weigh everything whenever possible. With that said if I'm out and about and I happen across a banana I want to eat I don't have a scale in my purse and I'm just going with the small, medium or large option.

I can definitely tell on the body scale when I haven't been using the food scale as much as I should be.

I weigh whatever I can. Most solids when I'm at home go on the food scale. That includes ingredients in cooking and baking, raw veggies that go into stir-fries or roasts, raw meats, bread slices, nut butters, squares of chocolate, you name it. I measure liquids in cups and tablespoons.

I rarely weigh things like bananas or apples. I just am consistent with logging them, so I figure that the absolute accuracy may be off by a bit, but the relative directional accuracy should be fairly good.

Restaurant food or eating out at someone's house, I guesstimate. My estimation skills have improved thanks to weighing and measuring at home, but of course, there's going to be some error there. That's okay. That's life.

I try weighing now and again. I never weigh at restaurants or when I'm eating at my mom's house.

The frustrating thing is I keep finding out that I'm eating less than I think. I don't want to eat more, because that just means more shopping and more money. Does anyone else find that a tablespoon of chia seeds is closer to 8 grams than 15?

Right now I only weigh my grapefruit, because that can vary by 40 g. Instead I eyeball, or do portions of a recipe (I figure if I eat the whole recipe over several days, I end up with all the calories anyway).

I want my rate of loss to slow because I've moved from the obese to overweight category (I've been losing 3-4 pounds a week). Since I find weighing a little annoying, I think I'll just increase the amount of calories I can have a day rather than weighing. I still have a deficit of 700 calories/day right now (before exercise), so there is room to do this. When my deficit gets down to 100-200 calories a day, and extra calories can make a bigger difference, or if I hit a stall, I plan on weighing more.

bwogilvie wrote: »

I weigh or measure calorie-dense items, such as meat, nuts, oils, cheese, avocados, etc. I don't bother with calorie-poor items, such as lettuce, sweet peppers, cucumbers, etc., unless I'm planning to eat a huge number of them, or if it's a particularly huge specimen. I figure that if that red pepper I ate had 60 calories rather than 51, it's still not a significant difference to my overall daily intake.

This is what I do too, although now and then I weigh the calorie-poor items also, just to keep a handle on my logging, because I do log it all, regardless if I'm round off the grams due to "knowing" how big a slice of green pepper is.

OP: I would love to know if these answers are representative of the MFP community or if the topic was of interest mostly to those who see weighing foods as priority. I do not mean any disrespect at all to those of you who have responded in the affirmative - and perhaps I am wrong - but my guess is that those who have responded to this post tend to be those who value weighing their food. The reason I bring this up is simply to take a little pressure of the OP, especially since she mentions that she doesn't weigh everything. One might get the impression that you're "doing it wrong" if you don't weigh your food, which - of course - isn't true. All that said, well done to all - we're all working hard, just doing it in different ways!

not knocking it, for sure - !

I weigh most things. I am very skilled at accurately eyeballing meat portions and things like rice. I am not good at eyeballing fruits and vegetables. Their weights vary too much. So I weigh them when possible, especially fruits because they are usually more caloric.

TimothyFish wrote: »

I eyeball everything, especially when it comes to fruit. The weight of fruit (and pretty much everything) changes between the time you buy it and when you eat it, due to dehydration, but the calories stay about the same.

This happened to me! I deseeded a pomegranate (is there an actual word for this?) and had just over 300 grams. I decided to eat 100 grams for two days, and then polish it off on the third. On the third day, there was only 60 grams left - the seeds had dehydrated in the fridge...but the calories would be the same (I know what it's like, I've lost water weight too...) Even when you weigh, you won't be 100% accurate on calories...

I don't bother, just do it by eye. The results are fine, but my priority isn't weight loss it's sports performance.

I weigh everything except individual prepackaged items and eggs. Weighing is easy and fast and a habit, taring my scale to weigh a handful of spinach is easier and faster for me than the time it takes for me to even consider just eyeballing it.

ETA: This is at home, eating out I wouldn't weigh, I'd just eyeball best I can, or go by the online nutrition info for a restaurant item if available, etc.