Portion Control

Always weigh solids.

Not only is it more accurate to weigh food but it makes life a lot easier. You don't dirty measuring cups. The tare button, which sets the scale back to zero is a boon. Want a bowl of cereal? You could dirty a measuring cup or two (one dry measure, one wet) or you could just put your bowl on the scale and tare to zero. Then add the cereal. Then tare to zero. Then add the milk. Bingo. You have two separate measurements for what you want to eat.

You can do this for all sorts of things. Want to toss a chopped veggie in a tablespoon of olive oil? Don't dirty a measuring spoon, just pour 15g of olive oil into the bowl. Want to eat a 1/2 cup of yogurt that lists a cup as a serving on the container? Look at the gram listing for that cup, e.g. my favorite full fat yogurt lists a serving as "1 cup (227 g). Cut the number of grams in half, and plop that much into your bowl. 114g of that yogurt is close enough to a 1/2 cup serving to me.

Want to eat the rest of the yogurt in the container? Weigh it, scribble down how many grams it weighs. Weigh the empty container when you are done and subtract. That's how many grams you ate. Now, whip out your calculator. Divide the number of grams you ate by the number of grams in a serving and that's how many servings you ate.

Let's say I ate 97 grams of that yogurt. A 1-cup serving is 227 grams. I ate 97/227ths of a serving or about 0.43 servings. I just put 0.43 in MFP as the number of servings I ate.

Works great for veggies, too. Let's say I'm dividing a monster sweet potato between the two of us. I just weight it and figure I'm going to eat 1/2 of it. Last night, for example, the potato weighed 420 grams after I peeled it. Therefore, my portion of the potato was 210 grams. I found the listing for 100 grams and just put that I had 2.1 100-gram servings of potato. If I could only find a listing with 30 gram servings, I'd divide 210 by 30 and put that I had 7 30-gram servings.

I find I use measuring cups and spoons much less as I became more adept at using the scale.

I'm starting to weigh more and more now as I get very close to maintenance. I eat the same foods mostly so it's pretty easy. The tare button is great.

I also suggest weighing in grams, even if you have to create new entries. I have things like sweet potatoes in my list by gram (1 gram = XX calories), so if it weighs 112 or 230 you can add the exact calorie count.

cwolfman13 wrote: »

What does a cup of chicken look like?

Or a scoop of protein powder...

kommodevaran wrote: »

jdlobb wrote: »

I just realized that I am an idiot. Using the tare button to re-zero as you add things, or to subtract the weight of a container after you finish the contents, is genius super simple stuff I have literally never even considered.

Then just imagine how you will feel after you've learnt to use negative weight: Put container on scale. Scoop out until you see the desired number of grams with a minus in front. Be sure to lick spoon.

congrats. You managed to double down on how stupid and narrow sighted i am. This is brilliant.

What is the weight of 1 cup cooked brown rice?

I use measuring cups. I also use containers and snack size ziploc bags to put my food in. Since I do not eat my exercise calories, this helps if I over measure something, but I try to be accurate majority of the time.

I haven't advanced far enough to do it at home... but when I saw the title "Portion Size".... I thought I'd tell you what I do when we go out to eat. I think part of the problem in America is that when we go out to eat the portion sizes are far to large.... hence... a large population (myself included lol) When they bring my plate out to me, first thing I do is ask for a to-go box, then I divide everything in half and put it in the box. This does two things... #1. Smaller portion #2 I get two meals for one price.