How can you tell how much calories are in a food and what about weighing it?

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1004_Renia
1004_Renia Posts: 11 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Sorry im new to the hole weight loss thing and stuff so i have a few questions:
Firsy i keep hearing about weighing your food. What does that do? Does it somehow tell you the calories?
Second how do you find out how much calories are in food if it doesn't say anywere?

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  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    How old are you really?

    All foods have calories - there are databases everywhere, packaged food has to tell you how many calories per 100g and per manufacturer serving

    You weigh the food - a slice of bread, a potato, a piece of steak

    You enter it in MFP food diary by the weight, in grammes

    MFP tells you how many calories - you double check against other calorie databases eg USDA database through google

  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
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    For your first question: if you have 2 pieces of chicken in front of you, and one is bigger - obviously the bigger one is going to have more calories but you won't know HOW MANY more calories if you don't know how much they both weigh so that you can compare. or 2 apples, or 2 whatever - the one that weighs more will have more calories.
    It's not magic, it doesn't tell you the calories of the specific item you're weighing, it just gives you the information you need to figure that out.

    Which brings me to your second question: That's why the MFP database exists. If you eat an apple or some other food without a label on it that tells you the calories, enter it in your food diary and My Fitness Pal will draw on resources like the UDSA foods database, other members information, etc. to tell you how many calories are in that apple. If you have the weight of the apple, it will be much more accurate, but most entries allow you to select how much you ate based on "small, medium, large" apple, etc.
  • mkakids
    mkakids Posts: 1,913 Member
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    Lets say you decide on an apple for a snack.

    Grab your apple. Turn the food scale on, set to grams. Place apple on the scale. Read the number of grams. Lets pretend your apple is 125 grams.

    Open mfp. Select a meal category to add your apple to. Push the + sign. In the search box type 'gala apple gram'....or whatever type of apple your eating like granny smith, honey crisp, etc...

    Select a listing that has a gram measurement listed next to it. In the drop down menu, once you open the listing, select 1gram. Then type 125 into the amount section (or however much your apple actually weighed). Click ok.

    It will then enter the correct number of calories into your database.
  • schibsted750
    schibsted750 Posts: 355 Member
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    calories = weight * (calories/weight)

    you can look up the calories in a weight of food, but you can't find the weight without a scale
  • 1004_Renia
    1004_Renia Posts: 11 Member
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    Thank you so much every :smile:
  • 1004_Renia
    1004_Renia Posts: 11 Member
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    @rabbitjb im 18 why?
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 24,951 Member
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    Here: http://nutritiondata.self.com/

    Search for a food ... like apples, for example ...

    http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1809/2

    100 grams (that's a unit of measure to describe weight) of apple is 52 calories.

    Therefore 200 grams of apple would be ... ??

    If you guessed 104 calories, you'd be right. :)


    Now try banana ...

    http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1846/2

    100 grams of banana is 89 calories.


    By knowing how many calories is in a certain amount (like 100 grams) of a particular food, and by weighing that food, you can use math to figure out how many calories there is in the food you are about to eat.

  • Orphia
    Orphia Posts: 7,097 Member
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    When searching for a basic food like fruit, potatoes or chicken, put "usda" in the search box too, and it will bring up database entries based on the US standard for the calories in those foods.

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