Have your food scales impacted your weight loss?

I don't post or comment very often, but I do read here a lot. My weight loss had stalled a bit, and the one thing I wasn't doing was using a food scale. I got one and realized that I was eating more than I thought. One example is some crackers that I like. The box said 9 crackers was a serving, but when I actually weighed them out for the recommended grams, 9 crackers was several grams over the serving size. It was more like 7 crackers. It doesn't seem like much, but it adds up. Since I've started using a food scale, the weight has started coming off again.

My food scale was one of my best purchases! Way easier to use than measuring cups and spoons and so many less dishes to wash! So much more accurate too! I can totally tell on my bathroom scale when I have been slacking on using my food scale! There's just no way to be accurate without one.

When I first started losing weight, I had a good 30-40 pounds to lose and I lost without one. Pretty soon I had to get one because my calories in were just not accurate enough to be losing consistently. I found the switch to be very easy as I was dirtying less measuring cups. If I want to cook my dinner in a skillet, I literally put the pan on the scale and start adding ingredients, using the tare option to set it back to zero in between. Very easy.

A very rude awakening when I got a food scale. My guesstimates of what I thought was a portion, in particular for things like cereals, rice or pasta was often quadruple of what it should have been. LOL

I just bought one last night at Walmart. $15. I have lost weight without one, but this time around I was just curious. Like yesterday I logged half an avocado as 150 cals, but I'm dying to know what it really is. I'll weigh the other half today.

It lets me incorporate things like cheese which are so high calorie I would otherwise be wary. This way I can measure out 20 grams or whatever and know if it's in budget for the day. The certainty keeps me from feeling guilty

My food scale and I are BFFs... I have lost weight in the past without one - I was still a little Nazi about serving sizes, but it was so much more time consuming to be strict without one. I would literally pour out a box of pasta that had 7 servings and divide all the pieces up into 7 piles and put them in separate baggies. And when you're using measuring cups, etc you dirty so many dishes and you can never get that last little bit of peanut butter out of the tablespoon. The food scale makes life so much easier in retrospect.

One handy hint that I found (and maybe I'm just dense that it took it took so long for this to occur to me) was that for things that are semi difficult to measure on the food scale because maybe the pan is too big to set on there, or whatever the reason, you can put the container of whatever you're using (lets say peanut butter for easiness sake) on the scale, zero it out, and then get some out and see what container weighs after... whatever the negative number is in grams is how much peanut butter you used.

But yeah, over weighing my food has made my life easier in the long run rather than tougher.

Absolutely and in a positive way - my problem was portion control. Now when I prepare a dish, I weigh the whole amount and then divide by the number of servings it is supposed to have, so I can get the right size serving. Huge benefit for me.

Getting a digital food scale was by far the single most important factor contributing to my being able to lose weight. I'm pretty much not capable of losing weight without using it, I wish I was exaggerating. I got to my goal weight a while ago and then got pretty lax about it and decided to see what would happen if I stopped using it, and I gained about 15 pounds in just a few months. Especially if you're down to the last 10 or 20 pounds, and you're like me and don't always exercise as much as should, a digital food scale (in my experience) is pretty crucial.

mbcieslak87 wrote: »

My food scale and I are BFFs... I have lost weight in the past without one - I was still a little Nazi about serving sizes, but it was so much more time consuming to be strict without one. I would literally pour out a box of pasta that had 7 servings and divide all the pieces up into 7 piles and put them in separate baggies. And when you're using measuring cups, etc you dirty so many dishes and you can never get that last little bit of peanut butter out of the tablespoon. The food scale makes life so much easier in retrospect.

One handy hint that I found (and maybe I'm just dense that it took it took so long for this to occur to me) was that for things that are semi difficult to measure on the food scale because maybe the pan is too big to set on there, or whatever the reason, you can put the container of whatever you're using (lets say peanut butter for easiness sake) on the scale, zero it out, and then get some out and see what container weighs after... whatever the negative number is in grams is how much peanut butter you used.

But yeah, over weighing my food has made my life easier in the long run rather than tougher.

Yes - to me, that's the big plus: Weighing is easier & quicker than cup measures, once you know the tricks (and yes, way more accurate).

Another tip, assuming your scale has the tare/zero function, is for multi-ingredient things. First, put your pan or bowl on the scale (sit it on a narrow, light bowl or jar if it blocks the display). Then zero it, put in the first ingredient, log it. Zero the scale, put in the next ingredient, log it. Repeat until all the ingredients that go in at once are logged. Great for salads & such!

For things that go in separately, I like to keep some plastic yogurt lids (or cottage cheese lids, or whatever). I put a lid on the scale, zero, put an ingredient on it, log it, set the lid aside until it's time to add the ingredient to whatever I'm fixing. This is especially good for small but messy things, so you don't have to wash the scale off (and the lids are easier to rinse than dishes).

Finally, because I don't like to keep my phone on the kitchen counter for logging (I'm messy), I note the ingredients/weights on a junk-mail envelope & log it electronically later. (Yeah, you can use a pretty, new notepad instead. ).

And you don't have a bunch of cups to scrape stuff out of, wash, etc.! Yay!