Why weigh?

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amythomas2
amythomas2 Posts: 14 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi everyone,
I've been a lurker here for months but never posted before but I have read many posts about weighing food for accuracy and I just wanted to share something.
Before I go on, I will say I weigh everything but I know some don't...

My fiancée and I were making homemade pizza for dinner tonight and the recipe said the dough makes four pizzas at 200cal per pizza base.
The ingredients said 1cup flour.
I weighed out the cup of flour added it into the recipe builder with everything else and it totalled 335 calories per pizza base, so 135 more than if you'd gone by recipe alone! That's a lot of calories if it happened on a regular basis!

Thanks for listening :-) happy new year all.
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Replies

  • socioseguro
    socioseguro Posts: 1,679 Member
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    Thank you for sharing. Good for you to build your own pizza recipe.
    Weighing your food intake is paramount to ensure eating at a deficit, hence to lose body weight.
    Majority of people do not understand the importance of using a food scale. It is an eye opening experience.
    Good luck in your healthy journey and Happy New Year
  • RuNaRoUnDaFiEld
    RuNaRoUnDaFiEld Posts: 5,864 Member
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    Mmm pizza
  • amythomas2
    amythomas2 Posts: 14 Member
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    It was awesome pizza if I do say so myself!

    Thank you for your comments, I knew there was a reason why I weighed food (the obvious) but this highlights the importance for sure!
  • macgurlnet
    macgurlnet Posts: 1,946 Member
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    Mmm pizza indeed.

    Good on you weighing things! I get a bit lax if I'm just trying to maintain my weight, but I tighten up once I'm trying to lose.

    That's a lot of unaccounted for calories otherwise!

    ~Lyssa
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,372 Member
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    Nom. I need to make homemade pizza again.

    But yeah... I NEVER trust recipes. They lie. That being said, making dough is a pain because it's hard to count the extra flour you add for rolling.
  • amythomas2
    amythomas2 Posts: 14 Member
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    I expect most things don't have that much of a discrepancy but if they did, it would soon eat up your deficit excuse the pun haha!

    I never trust recipes either ... I honestly don't know where they get their calories from as the same product in different brands has different calories sometimes!

    Once I'd shown my other half the discrepancy on the measurements in that flour, bless him, he weighed out the rolling flour and we added that in, so have probably overestimated the calories in the end but prefer to have counted slightly more than nowhere near enough! With tomato and pesto base, lacto free cheese and sliced chorizo I was a happy girl :-) he also had acti fry chips with his!
  • middlehaitch
    middlehaitch Posts: 8,483 Member
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    @Francl27 just put a portion of flour on a saucer, weigh, use for rolling, re weigh, enter the difference. I do that with oil in recipes all the time- weigh what is requested, then minus any I find excess.

    Just love the precision of tarring digital scales. :)

    Cheers, h.
  • amythomas2
    amythomas2 Posts: 14 Member
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    I do that with oil but I thought flour might be tricky as it gets scattered/stuck on the work surface?

    middlehaitch wrote: »
    @Francl27 just put a portion of flour on a saucer, weigh, use for rolling, re weigh, enter the difference. I do that with oil in recipes all the time- weigh what is requested, then minus any I find excess.
  • WendyLaubach
    WendyLaubach Posts: 518 Member
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    I weigh or measure, whatever is most convenient. As long as you're not trying to push too close to your calorie limit, which will be evident from the fact that you are reliably and steadily losing weight, you can afford a little sloppage. I'm most careful with calorie-dense foods that I eat repeatedly, such as a rich casserole with leftovers that will be spread out over days, because a small error can mount up. With foods like greens or mushrooms, I'm careless, because it would be almost impossible to eat enough of them to make an error worth noticing. The same goes for whether I guess at a reasonably similar food in the database or go to the trouble of analyzing my own recipe: if it's a rich food, it's worth the extra trouble to be precise. If it's ordinary vegetable soup, not so much. But always, the proof is in the continued weight loss. if the weight is dropping, you're measuring closely enough.
  • jesusarolon
    jesusarolon Posts: 208 Member
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    I weigh everything. It kind off ingrains itself into you. The last thing I want to happen is to end up in the red because i told myself "oh I know by know how much a cup is or how much 200 grams are."
  • neohdiver
    neohdiver Posts: 738 Member
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    amythomas2 wrote: »
    Hi everyone,
    I've been a lurker here for months but never posted before but I have read many posts about weighing food for accuracy and I just wanted to share something.
    Before I go on, I will say I weigh everything but I know some don't...

    My fiancée and I were making homemade pizza for dinner tonight and the recipe said the dough makes four pizzas at 200cal per pizza base.
    The ingredients said 1cup flour.
    I weighed out the cup of flour added it into the recipe builder with everything else and it totalled 335 calories per pizza base, so 135 more than if you'd gone by recipe alone! That's a lot of calories if it happened on a regular basis!

    Thanks for listening :-) happy new year all.

    I now have an accurate, easy to use scale, so I will weigh more now. But until now I've been measuring (and ball-parking when I'm away from home) since I started in early October. I'm down 27.9 lbs - averaging .3/day.

    For me, the important thing on a calorie counting way of eating has always been counting absolutely everything - even if I am off a bit on the calories because the measured quantity don't match USDA or the package nutrients when weighed. (Mine have always been within 10%) But if you find you aren't losing when you measure (rather than weigh) your food, adjusting your allowed calories down may be easier than switching to weighing.
  • neohdiver
    neohdiver Posts: 738 Member
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    WendyLaubach wrote: »
    I weigh or measure, whatever is most convenient. As long as you're not trying to push too close to your calorie limit, which will be evident from the fact that you are reliably and steadily losing weight, you can afford a little sloppage. I'm most careful with calorie-dense foods that I eat repeatedly, such as a rich casserole with leftovers that will be spread out over days, because a small error can mount up. With foods like greens or mushrooms, I'm careless, because it would be almost impossible to eat enough of them to make an error worth noticing. The same goes for whether I guess at a reasonably similar food in the database or go to the trouble of analyzing my own recipe: if it's a rich food, it's worth the extra trouble to be precise. If it's ordinary vegetable soup, not so much. But always, the proof is in the continued weight loss. if the weight is dropping, you're measuring closely enough.

    ^^^^
    This
  • srecupid
    srecupid Posts: 660 Member
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    I weigh pretty much everything because it only takes me an extra couple seconds. I just hate it for stuff like mashed potatoes. I had a package today that was cups prepared. So if I had 4 ounces that would be half cup right? Also it's OK to weigh meat after cooking for meats that would be inconvenient to portion out before hand like a whole turkey?
  • middlehaitch
    middlehaitch Posts: 8,483 Member
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    @srecupid if the meat is cooked just make sure you chose the cooked entry, skin? bone in? dark or light? You can double check quite a lot of the entries in MFP in the USDA.

    @amythomas2
    Back to the flour used for rolling/handling dough. I end up using so little the residue on the counter top is minimal. If you happen to throw it around like confetti at a wedding; you could scrape it up and weigh it too- personally that amount of precision is a little too OTT even for me.
  • ceilingfansandfryingpans
    ceilingfansandfryingpans Posts: 18 Member
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    I lost my old scale when I moved and actually went out and bought another(much cooler) scale today. I spent about 20 minutes trying to get it to work before figuring out I had to take the plastic off from under the battery.. Go me.

    But weighing definitely makes a difference. What you thought was 1 serving of something can easily end up being 3. Also good if you're an OCD freak like me and take pleasure in knowing every single gram of food that went into your body every day.
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,464 Member
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    What do you mean that you weighed out a cup of flour?1 c is not a weight.
  • k_lethal
    k_lethal Posts: 5 Member
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    I used to eat granola on my yogurt that was, according to the label, 260 calories for 2/3 of a cup, or 55 grams. Turns out 55 grams is actually 1/3 of a cup. Good thing I hadn't even bothered ever measuring by the cup and had just gone straight to sprinkling it on my yogurt on the scale or that would've been a ton of extra calories I wouldn't have known about.
  • allyphoe
    allyphoe Posts: 618 Member
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    srecupid wrote: »
    I just hate it for stuff like mashed potatoes. I had a package today that was cups prepared. So if I had 4 ounces that would be half cup right?

    Nope. You can't convert weight to volume like that - that's the whole point of weighing.

    If you really wanted to be precise, weigh your package of dry powder, weigh the reconstituted potatoes, weigh your portion. Then do a bunch of math.

  • neohdiver
    neohdiver Posts: 738 Member
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    lorrpb wrote: »
    What do you mean that you weighed out a cup of flour?1 c is not a weight.

    Recipes, at least in the US, are most frequently given by volume - not weight. If you are following a recipe and determining nutrients per serving by finished weight, you need to know the weight of the flour, even if the recipe calls for 1 cup of flour. (And, typically, the nutrient information on US packages gives an equivalent between volume and weight. E.g. 1/4 cup = 30 g)
  • neohdiver
    neohdiver Posts: 738 Member
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    srecupid wrote: »
    I weigh pretty much everything because it only takes me an extra couple seconds. I just hate it for stuff like mashed potatoes. I had a package today that was cups prepared. So if I had 4 ounces that would be half cup right?

    Assuming ounces = weight, only if the item has the same density as water. If it is denser, 4 oz would be less than half a cup. If it is less dense (like mashed potato flakes) 4 oz would be more than half a cup.
    srecupid wrote: »
    Also it's OK to weigh meat after cooking for meats that would be inconvenient to portion out before hand like a whole turkey?

    Yes, as long as you use nutrition information for meat cooked the same method as you cooked it. Meat shrinks during cooking because it loses fluid and fat, so 4 oz of raw turkey would not result in 4 oz of cooked turkey.

    As a general rule, make sure you pull the nutrition information for the condition (raw, roasted, steamed, etc.) of the food as weighed.


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