A lesson learned on the importance of the food scale -

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  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,578 Member
    My daughter is cooking bacon right this minute to make an egg, bacon and cheese wrap. It smells AWESOME!
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
    snickerscharlie wrote: »
    My daughter is cooking bacon right this minute to make an egg, bacon and cheese wrap. It smells AWESOME!

    So good! I got tired of trying to figure out how many dang calories were in it, I haven't had it in awhile.
  • Kst76
    Kst76 Posts: 935 Member
    I noticed this too but reversed.
  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
    karintalley wrote: »
    I noticed this too but reversed.

    Yeah, that can happen. I notice it with sliced bread. Some are under, some are over. I stopped weighing that because I figured by the time I'm through with the package it will have evened out. Seems less likely with sausage, bacon, hotdogs or the like though.
  • jaga13
    jaga13 Posts: 1,149 Member
    Like others, I don't bother with lettuce, cucumbers, low calorie items. But I was shocked at how much I underestimated pb. And meat...I have no clue so I can't even make an educated guess without weighing it.

    Still can't believe I've been putting pb right on the scale when I could have zero'd out the plate/bowl first. Mind. Blown.
  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,578 Member
    Lol! Live and learn. ;)
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    jaga13 wrote: »
    Like others, I don't bother with lettuce, cucumbers, low calorie items. But I was shocked at how much I underestimated pb. And meat...I have no clue so I can't even make an educated guess without weighing it.

    Still can't believe I've been putting pb right on the scale when I could have zero'd out the plate/bowl first. Mind. Blown.

    Yes, I love love love the ability to zero out a digital scale :)

    I found I was dead on with tablespoons of peanut butter using an actual tablespoon, but when I eyeballed it using a fork I was off by almost double.

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    SuggaD wrote: »
    I refuse to get that obsessive about my food. I lost all the weight I wanted without weighing a single item and have been keeping it off without. It can be done.

    Yup, lost weight many times myself without counting calories or weighing. When I'm just cooking for me losing weight is easy. But when I'm cooking for other people (currently my fiance and his mother, my massage therapist and her family, and sometimes my mother and brother) I need to be more careful. Being obsessive is working for me these days.

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    edited June 2015
    That's why I weigh everything. It's ridiculous sometimes. Graze flapjacks are often 60 to 80 more calories than what the package says... it definitely adds up. Taco shells are often 25% heavier too... bread also (Pepperidge Farm swirl bread, or some English muffin brand with muffins that weighed 65g instead of 57g). Granola bars make me nuts. They're high calories but I like them for the nuts (I don't like nuts otherwise), and often my 150 calorie bar ends up 180 calories and it makes me sad.

    Some sausages are typically 20% heavier too, and it totally messes up my pre-logging. I log 1.5 sausage and end up eating one because otherwise it would be 1.1 sausage and it's just dumb.

    I remember Waffle Waffle brand waffles (yes, it's real), before they changed their product. It was like 130 calories for half a waffle, and it said a serving was 30g, but when you weighed them they were 87g or something... 370 calories waffle. Now they're 'only' 260 calories or so, the weight is still way off, and they are very sad waffles (they made them lower fat).

    I admit I don't bother weighing yogurt cups though (the time I did, it was less, so I figured it wasn't worth the trouble).

    I don't find it obsessive though... I have a small deficit, and I work off TDEE so exercise is included. 100 calories is a big deal. For most people who don't even eat back exercise calories, I can see how it wouldn't be a huge deal at all though.
  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
    I weigh everything! Spices & herbs, serving sizes or not i dont care i weigh it.
    And i have been laughed at, scolded and called obsessive lol

    But i dont care. When i see people posting here i advice weigh your food. ALL your food.
    Most of the time they say, yes i weigh my food. But when you ask a bit further, they dont.
    They log 1 medium apple, or one serving of ham ( 3 slices) etc etc
    Had a cheese cake last time (1 serving was 1 piece of 46 gram was 210 calories according to the label) My piece was more than 46 gram and ended up as 253 calories instead of 210.....43 calories right there!

    When you have a smaller deficit it does matter. All these errors in your logging adds up. Sometimes to hundreds a day
    For example i can easily eat around 80 calories in herbs & spices a day. Add to that some errors of 50 calories and you have 130 calories not accounted for....not much you say...sure its not much But over a week it is 910 Calories!!!!

    Now add to that your overestimating your burns and errors. And walla you have a much smaller deficit than you think you had.

    I see a lot of people using cups and spoons or not doing their low calorie vegetables.....It has calories. It does matter!
    And what does it matter to weigh all your food it just takes a couple of seconds to do so.

    For most people weighing everything is much more important then they think. And most of them also eat more then they log because they dont weigh everything correctly.

    Only for some weighing everything is less important because they create a big deficit by training. So their inaccuracy is not really important/noticeable. And good for them. Hope to be in that position one day too.
    But when you are losing weight and your deficit is depending on your food intake and a couple of hundred burned calories, then it is better to weigh everything that has calories.


  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    Weighing my eggs and Quest bars was a game changer for sure. I weigh just about everything now. For the things I don't like dried spices? (I still measure those with the palm of my hand which is accurate for teaspoon increments, I've cooked by this method so long and tested myself) I leave a buffer leftover in my calories for the day every day.
  • AmorAguacate
    AmorAguacate Posts: 40 Member
    Thank you for sharing that experience. I actually never have thought twice about the label misrepresenting the serving size and now I wonder why I never did. I will have to start checking some things myself. Hmmm.
  • Autum1031
    Autum1031 Posts: 82 Member
    weighing things frozen vs. non frozen makes a big difference, too. I never realized this until a few months ago. I have frozen french fries sometimes, usually potato wedges, and I was weighing my portions faithfully--after I took them out of the oven. Then one day for some reason I noticed the bag said "xx g or about 8 wedges" and I realized I was getting a lot more than that for the same weight. So I weighed some of the fries frozen....and I was shocked. They weighed almost *twice* as much as they do after they are cooked! So now I've really started to pay attention to this. Frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts weigh about 30% more than cooked ones, for example... If you're using the frozen weight nutritional value this can really throw you off for the day.
  • geministyle
    geministyle Posts: 30 Member
    I do think that the closer you are to goal weight, the more "obsessive" you have to be. 100 calories per day is NOTHING but over a year it's ten pounds.

    I'm pretty sure this is what happened to me recently. I got down to 150 in 2013, but I recently was back up to 170! I never did "pig out" but I did allow myself weekly treats and toned down the exercise just a bit. Probably netted out to about 200 calories a day in excess, and there you go --- 20 pounds put back on and no real fun to show for it!
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