Possibly silly question... Do I *have* to weigh my food?

2»

Replies

  • powered85
    powered85 Posts: 297 Member
    edited September 2016
    I find using one really brings awareness to how much a serving actually is compared to guessing.

    I never used one until I got pretty lean and managed to lose a lot of weight prior to that. However wished I used one sooner and it's really helped dial in the last 10lbs of leaning out. As I got thinner the margin of error with guessing calories became evident at least for me.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    You don't have to weight your food, but a scale is a nice tool to have to troubleshoot your intake if you stop losing for an extended period.

    Personally, I like to weigh my food because I tend to stress about the portions of higher calorie foods and deliberately restrict them or log them at twice the calories "just to be safe". Weighing food gives me the freedom to eat whatever I want without worrying about it breaking my budget. Plus I like numbers.
  • ma5y
    ma5y Posts: 47 Member
    I find that weighing my food keeps me honest. If I don't weigh it, I tend to eat just a little more cheese or a few more cashews. Pretty soon I have consumed multiple servings. It also makes me more conscious about portion size.
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    As a baker, weighing solids is really not that odd. Do what you want, but don't make a post about not being able to lose the weight until you start weighing your solids and measuring your liquids.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    Chef_Barbell wrote: »
    As a baker, weighing solids is really not that odd. Do what you want, but don't make a post about not being able to lose the weight until you start weighing your solids and measuring your liquids.

    This. I use my scale all the time when baking anyway...

    But I started MFP without weighing my food.. lost weight faster than I thought.. but I had a big deficit and wasn't eating exercise calories back. When I got my food scale, I realized that for a lot of things, I didn't really use much (spreads, nut butters etc), but for others (pasta, bread etc)... ouch.

    But keeping a big deficit and not eating exercise calories back works fine for a lot of people when they join MFP. It's just after a while when you have less to lose (and/or get hungrier) that it might be a good idea to make sure you're not underestimating your calories.
This discussion has been closed.

Categories