How do you log the small stuff? (butter, grated cheese etc)

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NewGemma_x
NewGemma_x Posts: 4 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I did MFP for six months several years ago and it really worked well for me. I remember in the end I began finding it quite impractical to input many of the things I ate, as I couldn't measure everything all the time.

So I wanted to ask - how do you log things like the butter that you put on bread? Grated cheese? The small things that aren't easy to log. It became a pain everytime I'd eat a sandwich to loh '2 slices of bread, 1 slice of ham, some cheese, a bit of butter...' - it always felt like I wasn't really doing it properly and the calories from my estimates were probably way off.

Thanks for any help!

Replies

  • JenniDaisy
    JenniDaisy Posts: 526 Member
    edited March 2015
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    Just weigh it like I do everything else.
  • annette_15
    annette_15 Posts: 1,657 Member
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    JenniDaisy wrote: »
    Just weigh it like I do everything else.

    this.

    Get a food scale
  • joycemfp8
    joycemfp8 Posts: 21 Member
    edited March 2015
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    If you want to be really certain, measure it. Otherwise, just eyeball it. I don't know if I'm allowed to post links to other websites here but I recently saw this: http://eatwell.festfoods.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/measurements.jpg and that helped me in better estimating serving sizes etc. Of course, it's not as accurate as measuring everything but hey, if it helps you to stick to logging it's a good thing right?
    Also, if you have regular meals with the same ingredients you can save them as a meal and you don't have to log every component every time you eat that meal...
  • hanymamdouh
    hanymamdouh Posts: 123 Member
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    JenniDaisy wrote: »
    Just weigh it like I do everything else.

    That's it. I found simple workaround; I standardized my meals and saved it under "Meals" tab. For example, I have meal called Turkey Wrap. It contains
    50g smoked turkey breast
    1/2 wrap of homemade bread (I have all of its nutrition facts)
    50g red tomatoes
    50g green pepper
    1 oz. of Frico Red Wax Edam Cheese
    10g of mayonnaise.

    Whenever I want to have such wrap I made it exactly as it is saved in my meal. The challenge is 10g of mayonnaise, so I weighed 10g of it first time, compared it to my teaspoon and that's exactly one teaspoon flat not full. Now it is very easy to repeat it again and again.

    You can use the same way, weigh your small portions, compare it to something for easy measure like spoon, small cup you have, tequila shots for example, even baby milk powder cups will work and you can put signs on the cup from outside for each kind of food.

    Hope I could help you.
  • pamfin
    pamfin Posts: 169 Member
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    I have a great set of digital scales. I put the bread on, reset it to 0, take it off and butter it and then re-weigh it. It takes seconds. I know what 10g of butter looks like on the bread but I still weigh it anyway.
  • likehlikeo
    likehlikeo Posts: 185 Member
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    pamfin wrote: »
    I have a great set of digital scales. I put the bread on, reset it to 0, take it off and butter it and then re-weigh it. It takes seconds. I know what 10g of butter looks like on the bread but I still weigh it anyway.

    Same here :) I just put my bread on the scale, weigh -> 0 -> fat -> weigh -> 0 -> tofu -> weigh -> DONE. Everything else would make me underestimating. 10g looks almost the same to me as 20...and it makes a big difference, if you use fats and work with a low deficit.
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
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    Weight when you can, eyeball when you must.
  • galgenstrick
    galgenstrick Posts: 2,086 Member
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    Jruzer wrote: »
    Weight when you can, eyeball when you must.

    This^^

    I weigh everything at home. Eyeball at work. But at work I only eat stuff easy to count. For example, I'll buy a tub of cottage cheese and pre log the whole container over 3 days.
  • jessjess210
    jessjess210 Posts: 91 Member
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    When it's smaller quantities like 10 g mayo or 15 g ketchup I'll put the jar on the scale and zero it out. Then I'll just keep scooping out little by little til it shows -10 g, or whatever the weight I want.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
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    Take some time to eyeball the measurement of those items you find tedious and check yourself to see if you are reasonably close. Maybe compare the portion size to your hand, a coin or something you always have with you.
  • tekkiechikk
    tekkiechikk Posts: 375 Member
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    pamfin wrote: »
    I have a great set of digital scales. I put the bread on, reset it to 0, take it off and butter it and then re-weigh it. It takes seconds. I know what 10g of butter looks like on the bread but I still weigh it anyway.

    ^This

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