Question about weighing and measuring...How to not be embarrassed?

I weigh and measure my food when at home, and eyeball it when I'm out. It works pretty well for me. Your really don't need to obsess or run around with your food scale everywhere, just try to be reasonably accurate whenever you can afford to be.

You could also pick up the habit of pre-packing your meals for a few days to come measuring, weighing and tracking everything in advance. This way you will only need to measure a couple of days a week for example, only tweaking and adding if you happen to have something spontaneous outside of your pre-planned meals. When I cook something like soup or stew I just throw all the calories into one day, even if I will be eating the meal for a few days to come. Of course that will only work if you track a weekly amount of calories rather than daily.

I got over the embarrassing factor pretty quickly. Some people are able to weigh for a couple weeks/months, then they have a good sense of portion size and can eyeball it. I don't have that, so I've been weighing food at home for nearly two years and will continue to indefinitely.

I weigh and measure at home, never when at a restaurant, sometimes at a friend's house if THEY already own a kitchen scale. Rather than treat it as a weight loss tool I started out looking at it more like an experiment: How accurate are my eyeballs, really? Can I improve my guessing skills? Then later - what about packaged foods, how many prepackaged items actually weigh what the package states? That helped with any embarrassment factor, initially. I also kind of eased into it, I only weighed meats at first, then whole foods (because WTH is a "medium" apple anyway??), then I saw that the FDA allows a 20% +/- on prepackaged foods so I started weighing those too.

Plus, I long ago discovered that cooking & baking by weights rather than measure cups brings me a great deal of satisfaction (it feeds my love of perfection, haha). A weight is a weight, it's never subjective. You can't accidentally over-pack 200g of flour, but you can easily over-pack a 1c measure, for example. So any time I cook or bake my scale has a prominent place on the counter. It helps to ensure a uniform end product every time. Since I do a LOT of scratch cooking (several times a day, some days!) I sometimes get questions from guests but it's so easy to explain and I have never received negative feedback about it.

I never weigh while eating out or at family/friend dinners.

That being said, don't be embarrassed. Does eating with a spoon make you embarrassed? Think of the scale as a utensil/tool just the same as silverware.

There's absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. I mean...did you realize what proper portions of food looked like before putting them on a scale? I sure didn't! I was sitting down with 3 servings of ice cream in the evening, 2 portions of pasta... I was shocked to see how small a serving of rice and peanut butter really is! I had no idea how much I was consuming. People are asking me how I'm losing weight, and the answer is my scale.

missh1967 wrote: »

I weigh and measure at home only. I always bring my own food to work so I know exactly what and how much I'm eating. When out, I just try to be careful of my portion sizes. If I eat at a chain restaurant, I'll find what I'm eating online and log it.

This. I measure at home, and bring my own food to work every day. If we go out, I look up their menu online first to see what my options are, and plug that into mfp and play around with it to see what I can fit into my day and what I can't. That being said I go out to eat very rarely. Occasionally i'll have a stint where I get lax on my measuring at home (especially with rice, i'll be all like oh yeah that's TOTALLY 100 grams) and then I have to remind myself to keep it up. I hate to beat the dead horse, but the scale really honestly is the most important part of this. No need to be embarrassed about it, if anything it was very interesting to me to see what a serving actually is.

I LOVE my food scale and plan to use it forever, but I only use it at home. If I'm at a friend's house that owns a food scale, I ask to use it. I'm not embarrassed at all because it's not about what others think. I'm doing what I need to do for my health, and those that are close to me already know this and are supportive. Besides, several of my family and friends are on their own health journeys and don't have time to worry about me. When I'm dining out, I just eyeball it. I don't eat out as frequently as I use to prior to losing weight (generally about 1 time a week now) because I have large eyeballs and can easily overeat. Ha!

Do what you have to live and be healthy. You might be surprised who you inspire along the way.

booksandchocolate12 wrote: »

...I'm one of those people who will have to do it forever. I know from past experience that if I stop weighing my food, after a while "portion creep" sets in, where my portions get slightly bigger, and bigger, until I'm eating way too much.

I like the term "portion creep"!

I've stopped weighing regularly, but I still do it from time to time as a reality check, to prevent that from happening. I'm in maintenance, and if I find that my weight starts slowly creeping up again, I'll go back to weighing more regularly.

I as well only measure at home, and pack my own food for work. When I eat out or with others I guesstimate (if it's a restaurant that has nutrition info, I assume my meal is what they say it is). It's not a common enough occurrence that the error in measurement will be significant.

I'm new to this too and just bought my scale yesterday. I can tell you that I certainly cannot portion properly with my eyes. I had some bread tonight and the portion according to the pkg is 50g. I sliced some and my piece was 45g. In the past I would've eaten three of these pieces thinking I was ok - not tonight!

Why would this be embarrassing? I weigh when home, but when I eat out, it's guesstimation time.

I weigh only at home (85% of my meals), tend to go to chains when eating at a restaurant or fast food (3%), and use best guess everywhere else (12%, parents house, etc).

With almost 90% of my meals accurate, best guess on the rest doesn't impede my progress. Plus, you'll learn over time what certain portions look like.