Do you allways wheigh your food?

I am also pretty consistent with weighing my food when I cook at home, but mostly because I am keeping track of my macros, specially protein and carbs, and because most of my meals need to go in the recipe builder. But I admit that sometimes I like to keep amounts in my head, rather than using a piece of paper, so at the end I need to estimated because I forgot the original amount. I have been maintaining for almost 6 years and I don't need to be that accurate.

I don't take the food scale out of my kitchen and I don't log anything unless I know I made it or if the restaurant has the nutritional information in their website; and I don't log much when I am on vacation.

I don't eat all my exercise calories so I very often have "extras" for the weekend or special occasions. I like to add, that I don't like to weigh and log my food and I often take a break from doing it.

When I'm at home I weight around 90-95% of what I eat. Eggs and certain prepackaged items, like yogurt cups, I don't bother to weigh. So far, this hasn't caused problems, but if I ever hit a plateau I'll just get more conscientious about my weighing.

When I'm out I usually just eyeball my portions.

I weighed everything, including the food in the canteen whenever I had something new. The reason being that I only had 40 (initially 20) lbs to lose and I wanted to be as precise as possible. Plus I noticed that portion kreep does appear sooner or later. If I took say 50 grams of rice one day (one serving spoon), then it might have crept up to 75 grams (still one serving spoon) a while later. Besides, I don't see the inconvenience part of it: weighing everything, including what I cooked took me about 5 minutes each day. That's hardly an inconvenience.

i weigh things all the times except:
1)vacations .i tried it but when you're not doing the cooking it's hard to count calories properly,so i eyeball portions and keep a mental note.
2)if at the end of the day i have calories left and i want a small snack, which i know won't make me surpass my daily allowance, i eat it but don't record it.

mds438 wrote: »

Thanks. I will try to continue not wheighing, because it really is a motivation-stopper for me.
If I at a point feel like wheighing the food or if I dont loose wheight at all, I will try to use my scale more.
Most of the times I eye-ball the food or measure it in handfulls (mostly veggies) or tablespoons (butter, nuts, dressing, mayo etc)

If that method is working for you then stay with it. You now have the tools (scales and information) to stop those kg 'sticking like glue' when you're ready.

I started out weighing all things that didnt have pre portioned amounts with a label, and learned that I was pretty on target on many things (for example I was okay at guessing whether this is a large banana or medium one, or getting in the ballpark of correct in guessing how much broccoli I was serving up). These items are low enough in calories that a little error here and there was not a huge deal and didn't seem to be in a consistent direction (sometimes I'd slightly overestimate my broccoli size, sometimes underestimate...it evened out over time). So, I usually just guesstimate these things. Prepackaged single serve items (like a small bag of chips) I usually don't bother to weigh, though I mostly eat whole foods so this type of food is not a major part of my diet. If I ate a lot of packaged meals I would probably check the major kinds I ate to see how much error that brand had and if the error is in a consistent direction (if they always are filling the package fuller than the label indicates).

Other things, especially high calorie food, I weigh precisely because I'm a bad estimator of them. Nuts, dried fruit, cereal, oatmeal, pasta, rice, etc are notoriously underestimated.

When eating out, I go by what the restaurant website says if that info is available; if not I guesstimate. I try not to eat out too much bc I don't trust that the info provided by restaurants is accurate--it depends on the specific worker following company serving size standards to the letter and in some places that is going to happen more than others. Also, I prefer to control what goes into my food more...I add a lot less oil and sodium than a typical restaurant.

As far as weighing being more trouble, it really isn't. Get a digital scale that you can keep on the counter, put the food on it. Simple. Or put your plate/bowl on it and zero out, then add food. When I make cereal I just put the bowl on the scale... And then add cereal until the number matches a serving size grams that I want. It takes no more time than sitting the bowl on the counter and pouring until my eyes like the visual size of the serving. When making a PbJ sandwich I put the bread on the scale, zero, then add the peanut butter. Note the number of grams. Zero out, add jelly and note the grams. It is simple. For more complex recipes I use the recipe builder to calculate nutrition for the whole meal, then decide how many servings I want the meal to be and divide by that.

I really recommend that you at least try weighing everything for a short time, to help become more aware of where your estimates are off so you can address it. If you figure out you estimates are mostly on target and only off in a random direction then maybe you don't need to weight those items any more. It also trains your eye to know what a proper serving looks like in those situations where you can't weigh.

All I have to add here is that you may surprise yourself with a digital scale: I find that 1oz of cheese, 4oz meat, etc actually lands me a larger serving than I was eye-balling pre-scale. Great news!

Those are the types of foods I use it for. It's to make sure I'm getting every single bite I've counted, ha! Otherwise, no. I'm not a very consistent scale user...

No, I rarely weigh anything I eat.

I weigh calorie dense items like cheese. I don't really bother for calorie poor items like raw cole slaw mix.

I would say overall I weigh about 80% of what I eat.

If I'm eating out I either go by online nutritional info or I take my best guess at numbers. It isn't that often that I eat out and I refuse to make myself nuts over one meal.

At home...I don't weigh prepackaged stuff like protein bars, snack pack cookies/crackers, eggs, yogurt cups, bread, the milk in my coffee.... (What would I do with the sliver of protein bar/bread that's over the limit? Throw it away or save a single bite? No!!!) I do weigh most fruit/veggies/meat/condiments/cereal/chips out of a large bag.

This is all I can handle doing without making myself crazy. I figure if I'm weighing/logging most things consistently than I'm doing fine. I lost 40lbs and I've been maintaining for 6mos doing the same.