How to best utilize food scale?
lightenup2016
Posts: 1,055 Member
Hi--I resisted for a while, but I finally bought a food scale, and it arrived today! Of course I had to try it out immediately, and it's great--very easy to just take out of the box and get to weighing things! But I'm wondering how to best utilize this thing. For instance, I got it mostly for those things that say a serving is 40g, or 1/14th of the bag. A scale makes that pretty easy to figure out. But it seems that a lot of people here advocate for weighing EVERYTHING. Sooo, if I'm making a salad, I can weigh all of the individual ingredients, but then I'm going to serve it to our 5 family members. I don't really want to have to set aside MY portion of everything so I can weigh it all out, ingredient by ingredient. How do people do this?
I realize a salad is a low-calorie example, but this could apply to any recipe. If I make a lasagna, I can't really weigh out my portion accurately, since I might have gotten more sauce and less cheese, etc when people talk about weighing and logging everything and tightening up their logging, how do you use the food scale to do this? Agh, help!
As a side note, I've found that for some food items (raw vegetables, for example) I've been overestimating without the scale, so now I would actually eat MORE than I have been if I go by the scale. So I'm coming up with my own estimate first, weighing, and logging it as the higher number of calories.
I realize a salad is a low-calorie example, but this could apply to any recipe. If I make a lasagna, I can't really weigh out my portion accurately, since I might have gotten more sauce and less cheese, etc when people talk about weighing and logging everything and tightening up their logging, how do you use the food scale to do this? Agh, help!
As a side note, I've found that for some food items (raw vegetables, for example) I've been overestimating without the scale, so now I would actually eat MORE than I have been if I go by the scale. So I'm coming up with my own estimate first, weighing, and logging it as the higher number of calories.
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Replies
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Maths.
If I'm going at a homemade recipe, I either weigh individual ingredients or add the recipe to MFP recipes and portion it out. Thereafter, I know hey- I'm making this soup... it serves 10 at 1 cup per serving. I dip 1 cup. Done and done.
In all, sounds like you're doing it right as you work into using it as part of your routine. Next thing you know, you'll be carrying that thing into restaurants.1 -
I weigh ingredients individually, as part of building the recipe on MFP. Then I weigh the finished product and enter the number of grams as the number of servings. That way I just dip what I want to eat, weigh it, and enter the weight as the number of servings. I roasted up a butternut squash (around 800 grams), 2 eggplant (around 600 grams), and 2 onions (around 300 grams) as an example. After roasting it weighed 1423 grams. I've been eating around 250 grams at a time, so I enter 250 servings.5
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I weigh ingredients individually, as part of building the recipe on MFP. Then I weigh the finished product and enter the number of grams as the number of servings. That way I just dip what I want to eat, weigh it, and enter the weight as the number of servings. I roasted up a butternut squash (around 800 grams), 2 eggplant (around 600 grams), and 2 onions (around 300 grams) as an example. After roasting it weighed 1423 grams. I've been eating around 250 grams at a time, so I enter 250 servings.
I've always weighed my individual ingredients, but never the final product & then entering the weight as the number of servings. This is brilliant!0 -
GothamVeggie wrote: »I weigh ingredients individually, as part of building the recipe on MFP. Then I weigh the finished product and enter the number of grams as the number of servings. That way I just dip what I want to eat, weigh it, and enter the weight as the number of servings. I roasted up a butternut squash (around 800 grams), 2 eggplant (around 600 grams), and 2 onions (around 300 grams) as an example. After roasting it weighed 1423 grams. I've been eating around 250 grams at a time, so I enter 250 servings.
I've always weighed my individual ingredients, but never the final product & then entering the weight as the number of servings. This is brilliant!
It's what I do too. It will never be completely accurate if you end up with more meat and less noodles, but it's the best you can do.1 -
GothamVeggie wrote: »I weigh ingredients individually, as part of building the recipe on MFP. Then I weigh the finished product and enter the number of grams as the number of servings. That way I just dip what I want to eat, weigh it, and enter the weight as the number of servings. I roasted up a butternut squash (around 800 grams), 2 eggplant (around 600 grams), and 2 onions (around 300 grams) as an example. After roasting it weighed 1423 grams. I've been eating around 250 grams at a time, so I enter 250 servings.
I've always weighed my individual ingredients, but never the final product & then entering the weight as the number of servings. This is brilliant!
It's what I do too. It will never be completely accurate if you end up with more meat and less noodles, but it's the best you can do.
Indeed. Also, it ends up evening out over time.0 -
GothamVeggie wrote: »I weigh ingredients individually, as part of building the recipe on MFP. Then I weigh the finished product and enter the number of grams as the number of servings. That way I just dip what I want to eat, weigh it, and enter the weight as the number of servings. I roasted up a butternut squash (around 800 grams), 2 eggplant (around 600 grams), and 2 onions (around 300 grams) as an example. After roasting it weighed 1423 grams. I've been eating around 250 grams at a time, so I enter 250 servings.
I've always weighed my individual ingredients, but never the final product & then entering the weight as the number of servings. This is brilliant!
It's what I do too. It will never be completely accurate if you end up with more meat and less noodles, but it's the best you can do.
Indeed. Also, it ends up evening out over time.
Also not an issue when you're just cooking for yourself. When I make my protein cheesecake, that nobody else eats, I just log 1/4 each time and don't sweat it, lol.1 -
GothamVeggie wrote: »I weigh ingredients individually, as part of building the recipe on MFP. Then I weigh the finished product and enter the number of grams as the number of servings. That way I just dip what I want to eat, weigh it, and enter the weight as the number of servings. I roasted up a butternut squash (around 800 grams), 2 eggplant (around 600 grams), and 2 onions (around 300 grams) as an example. After roasting it weighed 1423 grams. I've been eating around 250 grams at a time, so I enter 250 servings.
I've always weighed my individual ingredients, but never the final product & then entering the weight as the number of servings. This is brilliant!
It's what I do too. It will never be completely accurate if you end up with more meat and less noodles, but it's the best you can do.
Indeed. Also, it ends up evening out over time.
I do this also...not only does it end up evening out over time...but when I'm particularly concerned about sticking to my calories that day I'll make sure I serve a better proportioned serving (eg. meat and less of the sauce). That way it still helps me to make a healthy choice at that point.1 -
Okay, thank you all. As far as weighing the final recipe dish--I'm cooking for 5, so my final 9x13 dish of shepherd's Pie is going to be pretty heavy. Should I really put this on my little food scale? It says maximum of 11lb/5 kg, and the glass dish alone is 1.6 kg. Also, for weighing out your individual portion, do you just plop it right into the weighing bowl and then scrape it all back out onto your plate? Or I guess zero out your plate and weigh it with your serving in it makes more sense? I'm sure either way I'm going to get some smirks from my hubby! I mean he's supportive, and losing weight himself, but I think he'll find it comical (or obsessive?).
I know this is getting down to being pretty specific, but since I've never used one of these I'm just trying to figure out the logistics. I've been doing okay with my weight loss so far without a scale, so my guestimations have been okay so far, but I'm sure as I get closer to goal it could become more important to be more accurate.0 -
lightenup2016 wrote: »Okay, thank you all. As far as weighing the final recipe dish--I'm cooking for 5, so my final 9x13 dish of shepherd's Pie is going to be pretty heavy. Should I really put this on my little food scale? It says maximum of 11lb/5 kg, and the glass dish alone is 1.6 kg. Also, for weighing out your individual portion, do you just plop it right into the weighing bowl and then scrape it all back out onto your plate? Or I guess zero out your plate and weigh it with your serving in it makes more sense? I'm sure either way I'm going to get some smirks from my hubby! I mean he's supportive, and losing weight himself, but I think he'll find it comical (or obsessive?).
I know this is getting down to being pretty specific, but since I've never used one of these I'm just trying to figure out the logistics. I've been doing okay with my weight loss so far without a scale, so my guestimations have been okay so far, but I'm sure as I get closer to goal it could become more important to be more accurate.
I never put any food directly on the scale. Just stick your plate on, zero it, then add the food. No mess, no math.
My scale goes up approximately twice as high as yours so I never have an issue weighing a full dish, though, so I can't help you too much there. I do weigh large recipes on it all the time though (like a full 5 quarts of cookie dough in my glass stand mixer bowl.)1 -
lightenup2016 wrote: »Okay, thank you all. As far as weighing the final recipe dish--I'm cooking for 5, so my final 9x13 dish of shepherd's Pie is going to be pretty heavy. Should I really put this on my little food scale? It says maximum of 11lb/5 kg, and the glass dish alone is 1.6 kg. Also, for weighing out your individual portion, do you just plop it right into the weighing bowl and then scrape it all back out onto your plate? Or I guess zero out your plate and weigh it with your serving in it makes more sense? I'm sure either way I'm going to get some smirks from my hubby! I mean he's supportive, and losing weight himself, but I think he'll find it comical (or obsessive?).
I know this is getting down to being pretty specific, but since I've never used one of these I'm just trying to figure out the logistics. I've been doing okay with my weight loss so far without a scale, so my guestimations have been okay so far, but I'm sure as I get closer to goal it could become more important to be more accurate.
Hubby will only look at you funny for a short amount of time...and the good thing is, once you've made and entered a recipe, you save it to your "meals". That way you don't have to go thru all that next time!0 -
lightenup2016 wrote: »Okay, thank you all. As far as weighing the final recipe dish--I'm cooking for 5, so my final 9x13 dish of shepherd's Pie is going to be pretty heavy. Should I really put this on my little food scale? It says maximum of 11lb/5 kg, and the glass dish alone is 1.6 kg. Also, for weighing out your individual portion, do you just plop it right into the weighing bowl and then scrape it all back out onto your plate? Or I guess zero out your plate and weigh it with your serving in it makes more sense? I'm sure either way I'm going to get some smirks from my hubby! I mean he's supportive, and losing weight himself, but I think he'll find it comical (or obsessive?).
I know this is getting down to being pretty specific, but since I've never used one of these I'm just trying to figure out the logistics. I've been doing okay with my weight loss so far without a scale, so my guestimations have been okay so far, but I'm sure as I get closer to goal it could become more important to be more accurate.
I've had issues with some dishes being too heavy for the scale, but it's usually big pots and I can just transfer the food in other dishes and weigh it that way - casserole dishes have been fine so far.
Otherwise, yeah, put plate on scale, zero it, add food, zero it, add more food, zero it... very easy (or just turn the scale on with the plate on and it will be at 0 already).1 -
lightenup2016 wrote: »Okay, thank you all. As far as weighing the final recipe dish--I'm cooking for 5, so my final 9x13 dish of shepherd's Pie is going to be pretty heavy. Should I really put this on my little food scale? It says maximum of 11lb/5 kg, and the glass dish alone is 1.6 kg. Also, for weighing out your individual portion, do you just plop it right into the weighing bowl and then scrape it all back out onto your plate? Or I guess zero out your plate and weigh it with your serving in it makes more sense? I'm sure either way I'm going to get some smirks from my hubby! I mean he's supportive, and losing weight himself, but I think he'll find it comical (or obsessive?).
I know this is getting down to being pretty specific, but since I've never used one of these I'm just trying to figure out the logistics. I've been doing okay with my weight loss so far without a scale, so my guestimations have been okay so far, but I'm sure as I get closer to goal it could become more important to be more accurate.
add up the weight for the ingredients used. Then divide it by the number of family members and that's ur portion size.
Example:
Chicken 40g
peas 10g
crust 30g
Carrots 10g
Sauce 30g
Total 120g
120 divided by 4 family members
30g per servings.......add more or less portions if necessary. Left overs r ur friend !! This will help not only u, but ur family get healthy !!
I actually didnt know Wat I was eating till I started seeing those macro numbers go up haha
Also, if any protein is involved in my meal I always make sure to weigh it, so if I'm eating chicken salad I pick out the chicken n weigh it before tossing the salad :P get that protein in !
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I enter the whole recipe in MFP in order to get the calories for the whole dish. I then weigh to see how many total oz or grams the whole dish is. I use that # as the servings number, which gives me the calories by oz or by gram. That is nice for when your serving size may vary.0
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The people here are smart cookies. I'd been puzzled about how to do this myself because I'm new to the whole weighing things on a scale lifestyle and can't believe I didn't think of this. Thank you so much for posting this!0
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lightenup2016 wrote: »Okay, thank you all. As far as weighing the final recipe dish--I'm cooking for 5, so my final 9x13 dish of shepherd's Pie is going to be pretty heavy. Should I really put this on my little food scale? It says maximum of 11lb/5 kg, and the glass dish alone is 1.6 kg. Also, for weighing out your individual portion, do you just plop it right into the weighing bowl and then scrape it all back out onto your plate? Or I guess zero out your plate and weigh it with your serving in it makes more sense? I'm sure either way I'm going to get some smirks from my hubby! I mean he's supportive, and losing weight himself, but I think he'll find it comical (or obsessive?).
I know this is getting down to being pretty specific, but since I've never used one of these I'm just trying to figure out the logistics. I've been doing okay with my weight loss so far without a scale, so my guestimations have been okay so far, but I'm sure as I get closer to goal it could become more important to be more accurate.
My scale is an 11 lb scale, and I have yet to encounter a situation where the combined weight of a pan, pot, casserole dish, etc. and the food exceeded 11 lbs.
I don't put the food directly on the scale (mine didn't come with a "weighing bowl"). I put my plate or bowl or whatever I'm going to eat my individual portion from on the scale, zero it out, and add the food. For some individual ingredients (peanut butter, quarts of plain yogurt, honey, or anything else that I'm going to lick the spoon clean after I serve myself), I put the food container on the scale, zero it out, and remove the portion I want. I do that with bags of flour and sugar, etc., when I'm baking, because it's easier to return the flour to the bag before you add it to your mixing bowl if you take too much than to try to remove it from the mixing bowl if you add too much. In fact, I originally bought my food scale for baking, long before I started using it for tracking calories.
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Okay, these help--thank you! That does make sense to count 1g as a serving. That way I don't have to do a separate calculation each time I log it, just enter 235 servings or whatever. Also, that makes sense to weigh the package and see how much you remove from it--I do lick the spoon!! :-)0
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