Let's be honest

Kind of off topic but long ago I learned to put a little oil and salt in the bottom of the salad bowl, crushed garlic or mustard whisked in optional, toss the lettuce (make sure it's dry) very very well. All the leaves get a very light film of oil but none of it is gloppy. Then add in the acid (lemon, vinegar, etc) and toss--use much less than you think... it clings nicely to the coated leaves but doesn't pool anywhere. In my humble opinion itsthe best dressing, as it's full if flavor but not a lot of oil is used. I find most restaurants now use far too much to get the same flavor....

Yes, I measure everything (weigh solids and measure liquids). The only thing I do not weigh is if eating out or some routine packaged items that I have weighed enough times in the past to verify.

I have tried to "not log" some items but then I get lazy and lackadaisical with my logging and progress will stall. So I log as accurately as possible always.

When I get to my goal I will loosen my logging, but if I go outside the 5-lb window I will allow, back to the logging I'll go. I know it works.

There are some high calorie things I don't measure every single time, because I have measured them before and can eyeball them accurately. I check myself every once in a while to be sure my eyeballed amount hasn't crept up - the other day I did this with peanut butter, and my eyeballed 28g was exactly 28g.

Then there are some things I don't measure because I don't need to be that accurate to stay in a deficit, such as individual slices of bread. Package says 60 cal per slice? Good enough. If it's 80 cal or 50 I don't really need to know. With exercise I stay well under my deficit, and I'm losing at the speed I want to lose. Most vegetables are low enough in calories that I could eat twice the amount and it wouldn't make much difference. If my 1/4 cup dry measure oatmeal is a little off from the amount in grams, I honestly don't care. It's close enough, and will average out with other things over time. If one large peach is a certain weight, I am going to write down the other visually similar peaches from the same batch as the same weight, unless one is obviously smaller or larger.

Bodies don't digest everything perfectly, and something as small as fidgeting or not fidgeting can increase calorie burn. It might be nice in theory to know your CICO exactly. But you can't, as long as you are a living creature, so there's no point in driving yourself crazy over less than a hundred calories. Not weighing is fine if you can manage to eat close to the correct amount without weighing.

HOWEVER - and this is a big however - this isn't really the answer to the question that you raised. You seem to be asking if anyone out there really eats that small an amount of salad dressing, or eats a larger amount and then logs it honestly. You want to eat more, and then have it miraculously not count towards your calories in because reality isn't fair. And sorry, that doesn't work that way. If you eat more than two tbsp you will need to account for that in your tracking, or you will gain weight. Dressing is calorie dense and adds up. If you must have it, try reduced calorie versions or lighter options.

And personally to me, the idea of eating more than that seems excessive anyway. I eat only about 1/2 to 1 tbsp of any kind of oil or oily dressing on a salad, plus vinegar, lemon, or lime juice. The idea of spending fully a quarter of my daily calorie allotment on dressing seems insane to me. I could eat a big meal for the calories in 4 tbsp of olive oil.

By the way, ketchup is one thing I do measure, because I'm diabetic and ketchup is full of sugar. Doubling the amount of ketchup can make a substantial difference in my glucose levels, while it looks to the untrained eye like the same amount of food.

MegaMooseEsq wrote: »

Apologies if someone else mentioned this, but I was getting really annoyed with trying to measure things like sauces and condiments and toppings until someone suggested this trick: take off the lid and put the container on your food scale before you start and zero out the scale. Then as you scoop out your shredded cheese/mayo/dressing, the scale will show in negative numbers the weight of what you've used. Much easier than fiddling with measuring spoons, and much more accurate than guesstimating.

Totally agree. Thanks for typing this out.

I have to weigh and/or measure everything and track every morsel that goes into my mouth. I recently went two months without tracking and I gained a few pounds, so yesterday was my new beginning and I'm tracking everything.

Not only do I measure everything, I weigh what doesn't have a prepackaged measurement. I weigh the ham in my sandwiches, my veggies and meat before I cook them, etc. Some of us are lucky enough to not have to do that but I am not one of those people. If you are, fabulous! One less hassle for you!

As much as I love dressings ..they can add a lot of cals/fat to your diet . I usually do recommended serving sz and sometimes make it go further with salsa , fresh squeezed lemon or cottage cheese . But there are days when I cheat and have a giant salad covered in blue cheese dressing ..I'm human

Nope, I try to weigh everything. That means condiments that go on my sandwiches in grams and alcohol or drinks in ounces. I know I won't lose unless I measure everything and know exactly how many calories are in it. Helps me to eyeball certain things when I'm not near my food scale.

Besides something like mustard may be super low in calories, but if I put as much mayo on a sandwich as I did mustard, it would add up pretty quickly.

Now, there are whole days where I won't log anything because I know it's a wash and/or I'm away for a weekend camping with no way to track the food I eat. I try not to sweat those days and get back on track when I come home/the next day.

I don't measure either I eye everything

I don't measure most things regularly, but every once in a while I'll go back to measuring stuff like peanut butter or pasta just to check my serving sizes. I mean, exercise calories are approximate; nutrition labels are approximate; and our bodies all vary in our ability to extract nutrients from different sources. Measuring and recording to the calorie seems silly given the margin of error.

I say I measure 98% of the time. If I'm eating a whole container of something, for example, a protein bar, frozen meal, yogurt cup, halo top (heck yes I'm eating the whole pint!), etc I just go off the nutritional label, and don't weigh. If I'm portioning something out, I'll weigh it. I also don't weigh gum, salt, pepper, black coffee, mio and other water additives, olive oil spray or butter. Yes I know these items have some calories, but they in my opinion are negligible, and my personal rule of thumb is if the nutritional label says 0 cal, I'm gonna go with it, versus obsess over it (something I'm super prone to doing if I don't have the right mindset). Everything else, including salad fixings (yes, lettuce too), I weigh and/or measure.