Getting more, but wanting less

stupid_in_the_street wrote: »

Ive been trying to weigh my food less often. It is just not practical for me in certain situations, and while others may be comfortable with it, i am not. I am relativley good at eyeing portions of things like cereal and vegetables, but ive recently noticed that many foods weigh more than their packages state. For example, complete cookies seem to weigh a minimum of 12 grams more than the package states-- this adds 20 calories. Veggie burgers which i buy weigh an additional 20 grams, kind bars weigh more. The list goes on. How do you log reliably on the go without weighing food? Do you simply make a routine of breakinbg a piece off or counting the food as more? It doesnt seem like much, but say i unknowingly ate an additional 30 calories a day-- that's a two pound weight gain in a year. It's remarkably easy to do this as well. What sort of solutions have you to found?

If I knewe that X product routinely weighed 10% or 20% or whatever more than it said on the package, I would log it as 1.1 or 1.2 or whatever servings, assuming I was without a scale for some reason.

I weigh everything I can and love it. If I can't weigh a packaged food, like my protein bars, I just log it as one serving. I've found that just as many foods contain less than the package states, so I figure it'll even out. I'm a pretty big stickler about accuracy, but this is something I wouldn't worry about for two reasons.

I don't know a ton about it, but I imagine most people don't actually know the number of calories they need for maintenance down to an exact calorie. I think it's healthier, at least for me, to aim for a number but allow a little leeway, say 25 calories give or take or even a bit more. I also think there will be times where you're unwittingly burning a few more calories than you think, which would cancel out any extra you're eating. Bottom line - and this is just my opinion - worrying about so few calories is too picky, seems to create a lot of anxiety about eating, and is a bit unrealistic. I'm sorry if that came off negatively or anything like that. That's not how I intended it.

Do a little bit more exercise every day to give you a buffer.