When should you start weighing your food?

You need to get a scale and use it. It is too easy to be off when estimating portion sizes.

I initially lost about ten pounds eating "intuitively" because I wasn't ready to calorie count right away. When that stalled, I started weighing and logging properly and the loss immediately started up again. If you're not losing doing it that way, time to weigh and measure.

day 1

I love my food scale. The sooner you start to use it, you may discover the same thing. Weighing food means it takes the guesswork out so your calorie counting is more accurate. Plus, it's a lot less dishes! (measuring cups, etc..)
So, yeah, I'd highly recommend using it right away.

I started out not weighing food and I lost weight just fine. Even faster than predicted. It took a lot of convincing from this community before I tried it. It turned out that my estimates of what I was eating were too high. I was able to eat more and still lose weight at a satisfactory rate when I began to weigh my food.

Thanks, you guys!

The first 6 months (100lbs to lose) I didn't weigh my food. First 3 months I lost 2lbs per week. Month 4 I lost a little over a 1lb a week and months 5-6 I lost 1/2 lb a week.

Eyeballing is ok if you have a big enough (safe) deficit BUT generally we are poor at judging as you can see from the slowing of my loss, diet fatigue sets in and the calories creep up.

Get a scale, it better to be accurate.

Ummm...the first rainy Thursday in March!

Seriously, the only way to really know your accurate calorie intake is to weigh and measure everything. Three points I'd like to make:

1) The entries in the MFP database are NOT always accurate. Learn to verify them against a couple of different sources. If you Google "nutrition food counts" you'll find a bunch of them, including the USDA's database. After a while you'll get to know when the MFP entry is off-base...if you see 'ground beef 90% - 1 oz. - 400 calories', you'll just know it's wrong.

2) After weighing and measuring everything for a while, you'll get to know what 6 ounces of chicken breast looks like, or a cup of almond milk, or a 105 gram banana as opposed to a 157 gram banana. At this point, I can pretty consistently reach into a jar of nuts and pull out an even ounce, within a gram or two. And I can tell you within a few grams about how much that braised boneless beef short rib weighs on your restaurant plate.

3) Another thing I have found extremely helpful is to bring home any takeout food I buy and deconstruct it and weigh everything. I have done this with grilled chicken salads from this great Greek place near my office. I brought home the same salad I order for lunch, maybe 3 or 4 times, and weighed the chicken, the cucumber, the tomato, the carrot, the green pepper, etc. So now I know that on average that salad is about 520 calories, with 2 Tbsp of Caesar dressing. I have done the same thing with Chipotle bowls and salads (although they have their nutrition counts online, but every server will give you different sized portions!) as well as numerous other takeout dishes, like Chinese food, etc.

So I would say that in the beginning, you should weigh and measure everything, until you get good enough at this to "eyeball it". That is, if you're not losing or losing fast enough...if what you're doing is working for you, kudos to you!

natashab61 wrote: »

I have never weighed my food and jut eyeball it.
Is that not the right thing to do in weight loss. I always try and round up when entering it into MFP. Sometimes I don't. But any suggestions?

Are you losing weight at a rate you are happy with? Some people are better at estimating than others. Some people eat less calorie dense food than others. In other words it might not matter to you right now.

But as you get closer to goal it's going to matter eventually. As you get closer to goal you won't have as much wiggle room. I sat at a "plateau" for 5 weeks once. That was me misjudging serving sizes. Save yourself the frustration, invest in a scale sooner rather than later.

If you stop losing weight or are losing significantly more slowly than projected while eyeballing portions then start weighing your food. (Give yourself a few weeks to see if eyeballing works for you.)

Most people are off while eyeballing but maybe you won't overall be off by enough to have a huge impact. Maybe you won't lose 1 lb a week but you lose 0.8 lb a week and that's fine with you.

If you want to weigh food then that's totally fine but I like to go with the simplest solution first because you're less likely to get frustrated with how time consuming it is. And yes, once you get into the habit of weighing then it's not bad at all and it's faster than measuring with cups but it's still an extra step.

dragon_girl26 wrote: »

I love my food scale. The sooner you start to use it, you may discover the same thing. Weighing food means it takes the guesswork out so your calorie counting is more accurate. Plus, it's a lot less dishes! (measuring cups, etc..)
So, yeah, I'd highly recommend using it right away.

Ya, it's just easier. I never knew how tightly or not I was supposed to pack measuring cups. Less stress, less dishes, and more accuracy with a scale.

I tried eyeballing my food at first when I wanted to lose weight. I couldn't figure out why my weight wasn't moving much. When starting up logging 6 months ago, I started weighing all of my food and have dropped 64 lbs since then...yeah I recommend weighing. The closer you get to your goal, the more accurate you need to be with your calories. I don't even know how one would log let's say a chicken breast without a weight. I mean I have no clue if a chicken breast is 4.2 oz. or 5.3 oz. That is a 51 calorie difference. It may not seem like a big deal, but enough of those mistakes though the day could close your deficit almost completely and you will not see the weight loss you would if you just weigh. Plus, if you are already taking the time to log your food, weighing really doesn't take much longer.

When you feel like it will help your progress better.

Some people are good at eyeballing portions. I've never been, so I use a scale.