Can you honestly judge your portion sizes and how long did it take you?
Sued0nim
Posts: 17,456 Member
So after 9 months of weighing and conscientiously logging this morning I free-poured my eggwhites into the bowl I've used every morning to see if I could adequately judge portion size without looking at the scale.
aiming for 80 - 100g, I actually poured 126g (I appreciate that with eggwhites that means diddly-squat)
so it seems I've still not quite got it
if you judge portion sizes how long did it take you to train yourself to do it somewhat accurately
aiming for 80 - 100g, I actually poured 126g (I appreciate that with eggwhites that means diddly-squat)
so it seems I've still not quite got it
if you judge portion sizes how long did it take you to train yourself to do it somewhat accurately
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Replies
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sometimes I am spot on and sometimes I am waaayyyy off0
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Of certain things I can. Meat is easy for me to eyeball, but not pasta or cheese. I'm okay with veggies and fruit from weighing out smoothie ingredients.
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sometimes I am spot on and sometimes I am waaayyyy off
This is me, too. The one thing I can judge well is peanut butter...I'm usually within a fraction of a gram for what a tbsp weighs. I've been weighing and measuring my food for a year and I'm still not confident enough to eyeball everything.0 -
cbhubbybubble wrote: »sometimes I am spot on and sometimes I am waaayyyy off
This is me, too. The one thing I can judge well is peanut butter...I'm usually within a fraction of a gram for what a tbsp weighs. I've been weighing and measuring my food for a year and I'm still not confident enough to eyeball everything.
I've been logging and weighing a year and everything gets weighed, but I'm the same with peanut butter, it's my superpower! (sadly I now eke it out by the teaspoon, as overdoing the tablespoons of nut butter as snacks are one of the reasons I ended up needing MFP in the first place).
Randomly, I'm usually within 5g of guessing a sweet potato's weight too, but normal white potatoes always amaze me how heavy they are for the size!0 -
cbhubbybubble wrote: »sometimes I am spot on and sometimes I am waaayyyy off
This is me, too. The one thing I can judge well is peanut butter...I'm usually within a fraction of a gram for what a tbsp weighs. I've been weighing and measuring my food for a year and I'm still not confident enough to eyeball everything.
Oddly enough, nut butter is the only thing I'm good with too. I'm absolutely terrible with everything else.
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I'm good with grated cheese
I often wonder if there is some kind of school hypnosis programme in the States that indoctrinates you all into loving Peanut Butter?0 -
I'm pretty good at eyeballing now, and if I'm way off then I've usually over-estimated instead of under-estimated.
For dry goods I've learned that my normal handful = 1/4c, and for scooping foods a heaping table spoon = 1/4c, so I use that as my baseline when I'm not around my scale.0 -
I'm pretty good with shredded cheese and my lunch meat, but everything else I usually weigh...just in case0
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I'm pretty good. I still measure a lot but I try to guess what it will be and I'm usually pretty close.0
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I can eyeball it after seeing the correct portion size once.0
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Took me 2,5 years. I'm mostly a bit under on my estimations versus over.0
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I'm spot on with peanut butter too, I wonder why so many people are?0
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I still can't, honestly, and I've been at it for 2 years! Maybe I could eyeball cheese crumbs and shredded cheese, but if I mess up by even 5g, that's 20 extra calories, so I'd rather just weigh it anyway. I do ok with cooked beef and chicken. I still get shocked at how a small piece of cheese can be 44g.0
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i am usually pretty close, such as with a glass of milk i can usually judge oz pretty accurately. i think measuring and weighing everything helped with that. i think it helps to be able to at least give a somewhat accurate measure by "eyeballing it" in case i'm away from my scale.0
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I'm good with grated cheese
I often wonder if there is some kind of school hypnosis programme in the States that indoctrinates you all into loving Peanut Butter?
English here and a relative newcomer to the stuff. Prefer almond butter. Healthy living bloggers hypnotised me into liking the stuff.0 -
Certain things yes.....Like cheese, and PB, and liquids(milk, juice, pop)
Other things - NO0 -
More or less. If in doubt, overestimate. Though it may be better to leave guessing to "safe" foods like vegetables where 20g one way or the other is like 10 kcal.0
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Yes. I can't remember, maybe a year? It's funny, I'll put in a number sometimes and a voice inside goes "nope, wrong, add .5 a whatever".
I used and use measuring cups (everyone will say it's bad, lol, but whatever, it worked well enough to help me lose 50 lbs) + math from packaging. E.g. I'll use a given amount of ground beef (say it says 400 grams on the package) and decide it's worth 4 portions. I divide that up and store each portion separately. Or I'll chop up an onion and use the measuring cup to scoop it into the pan. So I'm constantly feeling and seeing and using proportions, using the cups. I wonder if that makes a difference (for me).
(when weight:volume isn't obvious, I google e.g. "how much is 0.5 cup ground beef in grams")0 -
I have eyeballed portions and then checked weight or measurements and I am usually pretty close.
I don't think it took very long to figure out portion sizes but I also cook a lot so I have been used to seeing measurements of food for years.0 -
I've been doing it for several years. I can usually get pretty close but occasionally I'm way off. Because actually weighing only takes seconds, I still do it every day to avoid the variance.0
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Thinking about it though, I suppose it's only a useful skill for foods I'm not preparing at home ..I find weighing quite natural so it's no effort at all0
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It's a game I've been playing with myself for years. I'm really good at estimating ounces on the kitchen scale. So when we had to play a "guess the weight" game at a Christmas party, we had to pick up items from a table and guess. Guess who won?
Still, I religiously use my kitchen scale.0 -
At it for two years now and i still use my scale/0
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Heh, when I'm using up the remaining egg whites left in the carton, I'm always pretty amazed at how many more grams shaking out the last few drops adds to the total weight that I've weighed out. I always expect maybe it'll add another gram or 2 with the final shakes of the carton, but it adds something like 10-30 more.
I will eyeball stuff that's so low calorie it's barely worth the bother of precise weighing or logging, like celery and cucumbers.
Also almonds. Each almond weighs about a gram, and after a good while of weighing almonds and this seeming to be always the case with almonds, I just count the number of almonds I'm going to eat and log that number as grams.
I probably eyeball other stuff from time to time, but I can't think of anything else right now. Just about everything that's not single-serving pre-packaged will get weighed.0 -
Nope! That's why I have the scale0
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I can do it with most things I eat frequently, but that's because I've weighed it out into the same dishes probably a hundred times or more. I know exactly what 55g of veggie ground round looks like in a pan and I know exactly what 15g of goat cheese looks like because I eat them several times a week, but I still weigh them. It doesn't really take any extra time and then I know what I'm eating.0
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I am very good by eye, but just to check sometimes I'll eyeball it and then measure it to make sure, gotta say most of the time I am dead on so I don't weigh and measure as much as I use to but I keep myself in check
I'm also great at guessing the calorie content of foods, but I have been tracking food in some form or another since I was a teen. * sigh life long process
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After being on this journey for awhile, I'm really good at judging most things. Since I use the same bowls/plates, I pretty much can eyeball it. However, just to keep my skills sharp every once in awhile I'll eyeball it and then weigh/measure it to make sure I'm on track. Note - weighing and measuring everything stresses me out way too much. As long as the scale is moving down, I'm good with the eyeball method.0
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I can get pretty close (usually within 5%), but I still use a food scale almost always because it is more precise.
To be fair, I have type 1 diabetes, so I've been eye-balling carb amounts (because it makes a difference for insulin dose) for about 20 years.0 -
I get close, but not close enough. I actually tend to underestimate most of the time0
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