Finding your BMR
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ShammersPink wrote: »I wouldn't bother. If a 5 calorie pouch was 20% overweight that would only be one calorie, and something machine-packaged is unlikely to be that far out.
you dont have to weigh those unless you want to, but packaged foods can be as much as 20% more than it states. so yes it can be that far out. but something small like a drink packet usually(not always) has less in it.(Ive weighed it before).0 -
And... Eye opening moment... I had leftover pasta for lunch Sunday... OMG! 1 cup of pasta I would have marked as 500 calories before... After weighing it 1000 calories?! Holy hades!! I'm never going to eat Olive Garden ever again if that 1 little cup of homemade pasta was 1000 I can only imagine olive garden sized meals are in the 3000 calorie range. For my love of pasta I fear that I may have to give it up as being too calorie dense.
Make sure you are measuring all your meats raw, all your rice and pasta dry and all your veggies raw. All your liquids via measuring cups. For condiments, best practice is weigh the bottle, tare the weight, use the condiment and reweigh it. The difference is how much you used. Similar concept for fruits like apples and peaches. Weight it, eat it and reweigh the core/leftovers and that's how much you ate.
weigh meats raw? But what if it's already cooked when you get it? And what of leftovers? I don't like waste...
I think you're starting to realize what people were saying that your claims of losing 2lbs a week at 1200 vs gaining at 1400 are due to estimate errors. Math/Science is rarely wrong in these situations, I was in the same boat, didn't realize how much I was eating until the wife bought us a food scale and we realized that our standard dinner was almost 1200 calorie servings.
well that one cup of pasta that I logged as 998 calories was already cooked. Other than that (and eating a 100 calorie salad to stay under 1400 for the day) my first 3 days of using a scale show that previously I was logging 1000 to 1100 when after weighing my intake is now between 1300 and 1400. So I was off by about 300 calories. But 300 calories times 7 days could be why I'm only losing around 1-2 pounds per week and *gasp* I gained a pound last week... But I ate 3 meals that had 2/3rds of a cup of cooked pasta... If those 300 calories were actually 800... Well... Like I said already... No more pasta for this pasta lover.
Eating out is definitely much harder to do and stay under your limit. Restaurants use so much high calorie fillers, you order a stir fry it's 90% rice, Italian is 90% pasta. Not to mention you most likely got bread sticks while you're at Olive Garden... it sucks when you realize how much your favorite restaurants are pretty terrible in the end.
yeah... This will be a battle until the end of time... Perhaps no more eating out is in order too
Oh, and have you checked the calorie count on Movie theather popcorn?
Breaks my heart, I can't go to a movie without popcorn, so we only go see a movie like once a month now, and make sure it's on a day we plan very light meals. good thing I can't stand popcorn... Love the smell of it... Taste... Bleck
My response is boldedAnd... Eye opening moment... I had leftover pasta for lunch Sunday... OMG! 1 cup of pasta I would have marked as 500 calories before... After weighing it 1000 calories?! Holy hades!! I'm never going to eat Olive Garden ever again if that 1 little cup of homemade pasta was 1000 I can only imagine olive garden sized meals are in the 3000 calorie range. For my love of pasta I fear that I may have to give it up as being too calorie dense.
Make sure you are measuring all your meats raw, all your rice and pasta dry and all your veggies raw. All your liquids via measuring cups. For condiments, best practice is weigh the bottle, tare the weight, use the condiment and reweigh it. The difference is how much you used. Similar concept for fruits like apples and peaches. Weight it, eat it and reweigh the core/leftovers and that's how much you ate.
weigh meats raw? But what if it's already cooked when you get it? And what of leftovers? I don't like waste...
I think you're starting to realize what people were saying that your claims of losing 2lbs a week at 1200 vs gaining at 1400 are due to estimate errors. Math/Science is rarely wrong in these situations, I was in the same boat, didn't realize how much I was eating until the wife bought us a food scale and we realized that our standard dinner was almost 1200 calorie servings.
well that one cup of pasta that I logged as 998 calories was already cooked. Other than that (and eating a 100 calorie salad to stay under 1400 for the day) my first 3 days of using a scale show that previously I was logging 1000 to 1100 when after weighing my intake is now between 1300 and 1400. So I was off by about 300 calories. But 300 calories times 7 days could be why I'm only losing around 1-2 pounds per week and *gasp* I gained a pound last week... But I ate 3 meals that had 2/3rds of a cup of cooked pasta... If those 300 calories were actually 800... Well... Like I said already... No more pasta for this pasta lover.
Eating out is definitely much harder to do and stay under your limit. Restaurants use so much high calorie fillers, you order a stir fry it's 90% rice, Italian is 90% pasta. Not to mention you most likely got bread sticks while you're at Olive Garden... it sucks when you realize how much your favorite restaurants are pretty terrible in the end.
yeah... This will be a battle until the end of time... Perhaps no more eating out is in order too
Oh, and have you checked the calorie count on Movie theather popcorn? Breaks my heart, I can't go to a movie without popcorn, so we only go see a movie like once a month now, and make sure it's on a day we plan very light meals. good thing I can't stand popcorn... Love the smell of it... Taste... Bleck
My response is bolded
For leftovers, the best thing to do is when you are making your dinner, input everything as a recipe. This tracks the total amount of calories you have made for the entire dish. Then you can set how many servings you're getting out of it. Then you gotta try and keep all the servings equally portioned, so just weigh a bowl, tare it out and dump your final dish in it. If you have 30oz total, set it to 3 servings, and dish out 10oz portions. Now you have 3 measured servings all easily recordable.
Also, dry pasta weighs considerably less. So 8 ounces of dry pasta might be the same amount of volume as say 4 ounces of wet pasta(just making up numbers, I don't know the exact difference). So if you're measuring using the wrong entry, you could be off by quite a large difference either in the too much or too little stage.
Also when you cook foods, are you using butter or oil to cook with? You need to count that as well.
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If this is Quaker oatmeal, I've weighed it out dry and it was spot on to the label on the package at 43 grams. My big scale moment was weighing Quaker Harvest Crunch granola. Package said 2/3 cup (45 grams). I found 1 cup weighed 97 grams. I went back to oatmeal for breakfast.
In general, unless the package says otherwise, weigh food before cooking. With the oatmeal, the difference is water and that isn't adding calories.
I hear you on pasta. I'm not cutting it all out but am really limiting how many times I eat it and how much sauce I use.0 -
I used to eat only twice a day for years. So I can't prove this mathmatically but ppl told me I need to eat throughout the day to change my metabolism. I was always tired & sluggish & never lost weight. When I started mfp, I started eating throughout the day & started loosing weight & feeling much better. I started out at 1200 but my friend, who lost 70 said that's not good, I should do 1600, but i settled for what mfp said, 1440 & now it's 13400
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I used to eat only twice a day for years. So I can't prove this mathmatically but ppl told me I need to eat throughout the day to change my metabolism. I was always tired & sluggish & never lost weight. When I started mfp, I started eating throughout the day & started loosing weight & feeling much better. I started out at 1200 but my friend, who lost 70 said that's not good, I should do 1600, but i settled for what mfp said, 1440 & now it's 1340
meal timing has nothing to do with weight loss, but it can help some people from pigging out if they get hungry which means more calories than they need in most cases and no weight loss.some people here have lost weight eating only twice a day,some just 3 meals a day. so it has no bearing on weight loss, a calorie deficit does1 -
grmckenzie wrote: »If this is Quaker oatmeal, I've weighed it out dry and it was spot on to the label on the package at 43 grams. My big scale moment was weighing Quaker Harvest Crunch granola. Package said 2/3 cup (45 grams). I found 1 cup weighed 97 grams. I went back to oatmeal for breakfast.
In general, unless the package says otherwise, weigh food before cooking. With the oatmeal, the difference is water and that isn't adding calories.
I hear you on pasta. I'm not cutting it all out but am really limiting how many times I eat it and how much sauce I use.
That's interesting, I eat Quaker oatmeal packets often and I have never had one that was 43 grams. Mine this morning was 46 grams so it was 171 calories instead of 160. I eat laughing cow cheese often too and I have never had one that wasn't spot on. My advice with prepackaged foods is just to weigh them. You will soon find which things you eat that are off and which things are spot on.0 -
If a 5 kcal sachet was 20% over every time, and you used one a day, every day, for 10 years, it would theoretically make about 1lb difference to your weight.
Realistically, you can't be that accurate.
It's worth weighing the calorie-dense stuff, if you are having difficulties finding a balance, and want to pinpoint where your calories are coming from.1 -
grmckenzie wrote: »If this is Quaker oatmeal, I've weighed it out dry and it was spot on to the label on the package at 43 grams. My big scale moment was weighing Quaker Harvest Crunch granola. Package said 2/3 cup (45 grams). I found 1 cup weighed 97 grams. I went back to oatmeal for breakfast.
In general, unless the package says otherwise, weigh food before cooking. With the oatmeal, the difference is water and that isn't adding calories.
I hear you on pasta. I'm not cutting it all out but am really limiting how many times I eat it and how much sauce I use.
I've had the same problem before. What I do is just weigh out the 45 grams and save the rest of the package for the next day.0 -
I used to eat only twice a day for years. So I can't prove this mathmatically but ppl told me I need to eat throughout the day to change my metabolism. I was always tired & sluggish & never lost weight. When I started mfp, I started eating throughout the day & started loosing weight & feeling much better. I started out at 1200 but my friend, who lost 70 said that's not good, I should do 1600, but i settled for what mfp said, 1440 & now it's 1340
Nope. How often you eat has nothing to do with metabolism or weight loss. You lose weight by eating less than you burn.
You lost weight because spreading your meals out and eating more often helped you to stick to your calorie deficit. Job well done!1 -
I used to eat only twice a day for years. So I can't prove this mathmatically but ppl told me I need to eat throughout the day to change my metabolism. I was always tired & sluggish & never lost weight. When I started mfp, I started eating throughout the day & started loosing weight & feeling much better. I started out at 1200 but my friend, who lost 70 said that's not good, I should do 1600, but i settled for what mfp said, 1440 & now it's 1340
If I let myself be a grazers I would inevitably 1. eat more than I should 2. End up not logging half of what I ate.
Now I have to figure out how to weigh food before its cooked when I'm not the one cooking.0 -
I used to eat only twice a day for years. So I can't prove this mathmatically but ppl told me I need to eat throughout the day to change my metabolism. I was always tired & sluggish & never lost weight. When I started mfp, I started eating throughout the day & started loosing weight & feeling much better. I started out at 1200 but my friend, who lost 70 said that's not good, I should do 1600, but i settled for what mfp said, 1440 & now it's 1340
If I let myself be a grazers I would inevitably 1. eat more than I should 2. End up not logging half of what I ate.
Now I have to figure out how to weigh food before its cooked when I'm not the one cooking.
If you only have the cooked version to log, then just make sure that you are choosing cooked entries. In some situations you can only do so much. I'm glad you took the advice to get a scale on board. It is usually very eye opening!0 -
Ok... Now I have a question... When I tried to enter my oatmeal packet by weight I couldn't find an entry that didn't list as "1 pouch" only. I couldn't find or change it to show by grams and of course the weight listed on the pouch was less than the weight that the oatmeal had on the scale. Grrr so for 43g listed weight on the pouch it actually weighed 115g on the scale. How do I make for a correct entry so I know how many calories over the 160 listed I've eaten?
You don't weigh with water - as others have commented.
That's why it's dry weight. Same as pasta, frozen dishes (frozen weight, not cooked), ect - anything where water can be lost or gained.
If the dry weight is indeed wrong - do the following.
Actual weight / serving weight = servings eaten.
Now find the entry in database that is correct - and there is your # of servings eaten. May be 1.2, could be 0.75.
But I'll bet you find they hit the weight correctly in the pouch for the serving size.
You have the right idea for dishes where you prepare ALL the servings that are listed as dry, but then once cooked remove a water logged amount.
So total weight of the dry going in / serving size weight = servings in the dish.
Then serving weight you took / total weight of prepared food = % of all those servings eaten. (for this - weigh your dish before that the food will end up in for easier math)
Servings total x % = servings eaten.0 -
So far so good... Weighing each item takes a bit of time but it's been good to see the things I was grossly overestimating versus things I was underestimating on. Overall since Friday I realize that when I thought I was routinely eating around 1000 calories those days were actually 1400. I did eat 1460 yesterday which was the highest calorie day while today was 1326. Which was my lowest. So it seems that it's my normal calorie range. Higher than I thought I was eating but still way below what that website states my intake would be.
Of note... Everyone talks about how peanut butter is such a shocking moment when weighing... It was opposite for me. Turns out that all these years when I thought I was using a whole tablespoon(32g) of pb when making a sandwich I actually use about half that. So I was overestimating my calories on that. However... Butter and olive oil, on the other hand... Wow... The calories involved in making sure food doesn't stick to the pan... I'm sad now. Over 100 calories just to cook chicken in a skillet...or saute veggies... Here I thought EVOO was soo good for you... Well not for those kinds of calories! LoL again thank you all for all the advice and suggestions. I'm looking forward to weighing this Sunday. Hopefully I will be down a couple more pounds...0 -
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grmckenzie wrote: »If this is Quaker oatmeal, I've weighed it out dry and it was spot on to the label on the package at 43 grams. My big scale moment was weighing Quaker Harvest Crunch granola. Package said 2/3 cup (45 grams). I found 1 cup weighed 97 grams. I went back to oatmeal for breakfast.
In general, unless the package says otherwise, weigh food before cooking. With the oatmeal, the difference is water and that isn't adding calories.
I hear you on pasta. I'm not cutting it all out but am really limiting how many times I eat it and how much sauce I use.
I've had the same problem before. What I do is just weigh out the 45 grams and save the rest of the package for the next day.
I'm talking about 2 different things. I found the oatmeal is fine (but am checking tomorrow) but the granola is way off.0 -
That site you suggested just said my BMR is 1400 >.< And my TDEE is 16-1700 thats depressing XD And im pretty sure wrong since iv been losing weight faster than those numbers would allow for :P0
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Turns out that all these years when I thought I was using a whole tablespoon(32g) of pb when making a sandwich I actually use about half that.
You might want to recheck that number. 1 tablespoon of peanut butter is only 15 grams not 32 grams. Are you sure the jar doesn't say that *two* tablespoons of peanut butter are 32 grams?2 -
when I thought I was using a whole tablespoon(32g) of pb when making a sandwich I actually use about half that. So I was overestimating my calories on that.
1TB of PB is ~15 to 16g and ~90 to 100 Cal (depending on whether there are any additions to the ground peanuts!)
About the second or third day of using MFP it "delivered the goods". I looked through my log and realised that the healthy olive oil I had just sprinkled on my salad had as many calories as the whole can of salmon I had also mixed in. I sort of decided right there and then that I would rather have 2 cans of salmon with lemon than 1 can of salmon with olive oil and lemon
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SusanMFindlay wrote: »Turns out that all these years when I thought I was using a whole tablespoon(32g) of pb when making a sandwich I actually use about half that.
You might want to recheck that number. 1 tablespoon of peanut butter is only 15 grams not 32 grams. Are you sure the jar doesn't say that *two* tablespoons of peanut butter are 32 grams?
OK double checked... Yes it's 1 serving is 32g but it is 2 tablespoons not 1. But it is still less calories used than I was actually using. Which was a nice surprise.1 -
JaydedMiss wrote: »That site you suggested just said my BMR is 1400 >.< And my TDEE is 16-1700 thats depressing XD And im pretty sure wrong since iv been losing weight faster than those numbers would allow for :P
That site (if it's the one I think it was) is great -- if you input a body fat %, otherwise, it really low-balls things.0
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