The Honor Code?

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24

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  • shannonwaters2395
    shannonwaters2395 Posts: 44 Member
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    /quote]
    Oh c'mon this isn't rocket science. If you want to cook a new recipe and want to know what the nutritional value is just weigh everything in grams and then look it up, I do it for any new recipe and takes a few mins not two hours.

    [/quote]

    Ouch. Soz if my post came off nasty. I'll be the first to say I am not tech savvy, and it takes me ages. Kudos to those who have the techy skills :)
  • Meghanebk
    Meghanebk Posts: 321 Member
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    I weigh as much as I can if I need to track closely. If my weight's coming off as expected, I slack on the weighing, but it's the first thing I do if weight starts to creep up again. You may not be able to weigh cooking oil absorbed in food easily, but it's simple to toss the chicken or sweet potato on a scale as you cook. I keep a notepad and a pen by my scale and note as I cook.

    Then I weigh the finished entree and my portion to figure out what percentage of the dish I'm eating.

    Heck, using the tare function it's really easy to weigh even things like how much peanut butter you put on your sandwich (funnily, I'd been OVER estimating that one).

    It doesn't have to be all or nothing, just do what you can.
  • bweath2
    bweath2 Posts: 147 Member
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    I found the "recipes" tab in the food calculator to be helpful when making a large dish like your sweet potatoes. For example, I made a large bowl of guacamole. I weighed each ingredient on my digital scale (in grams). Then I weighed the whole bowl when I was done(minus the weight of the bowl). The recipe calculator let's you divide the whole recipe into number of servings. So my 408g bowl of guac has 4x 102g servings, and MFP did all the calorie and macro calculations for me. I just weighed my portions. Hope that helps a little.
  • ashlava71
    ashlava71 Posts: 14 Member
    edited September 2017
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    I don't even bother logging marinades. It's not like you're chugging it. Most of it cooks out.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
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    Yup, weigh anything that isn't liquid.

    I always find it bizarre (and kind of hysterical) that people imply that weighing everything will take hours and is some big imposition. It adds literally seconds.
  • texteach66
    texteach66 Posts: 92 Member
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    Alatariel75 wrote: »
    Yup, weigh anything that isn't liquid.

    I always find it bizarre (and kind of hysterical) that people imply that weighing everything will take hours and is some big imposition. It adds literally seconds.

    I think weighing is easier and faster than getting out measuring cups/spoons.

    Not a knock on the OP - I think it's OK to estimate sometimes. People are always kind of harsh about that.
  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
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    spiriteagle99 wrote: »
    I never weigh anything. I just do my best to estimate what I actually eat. It can work if you are as honest with yourself as possible and especially if you go on the high side rather than lowballing the amounts. I cook for two. My husband usually gets a somewhat larger portion, but I still just split the total calories in two. That gives me a bit of wiggle room for errors.

    With this method you're always guessing and you never truly know how much you're eating and what is actually working for you. When you get down to the last few pounds, precision is needed and you haven't set yourself up for that by high-balling and guessing. And you won't know your macros and other nutrients either. Why count calories if you're not actually going to count them accurately?

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,981 Member
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    andihwc wrote: »
    I never understand on these posts why no one seems to share my reason that I weigh my food. I can't be the only one who finds this to be true . . . When I guess/eyeball/choose the highest entry I lose faster than expected but end up REALLY hungry and miserable. For me, weighing my food takes the guesswork out and means I get to eat MORE so I am less hungry. Just another reason to use the scale (although OP I know you are already going to do so).

    Yes, using measuring cups stressed me out because I never knew how tightly I was supposed to pack them. With weighing, there's no guesswork. Or cups to wash.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,994 Member
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    texteach66 wrote: »
    Alatariel75 wrote: »
    Yup, weigh anything that isn't liquid.

    I always find it bizarre (and kind of hysterical) that people imply that weighing everything will take hours and is some big imposition. It adds literally seconds.

    I think weighing is easier and faster than getting out measuring cups/spoons.

    Not a knock on the OP - I think it's OK to estimate sometimes. People are always kind of harsh about that.

    But the original post at least appeared to be about the problem of estimating -- although we've come to find out it was secretly mainly about the shortest sentence in the whole post. ("The marinade included oil." It's like finding out the real message of the Bible is that Jesus wept.)

    OP said "it's almost impossible to know exactly how many calories I'm consuming." OP then gave examples that all seemed to involve eyeballing and estimating. OP then described this as an "issue" and asked how the rest of us keep "the 'honor code'."

    I don't see how it is "harsh" for people to explain that they don't have a problem because they a scale. Would it be better if we all said "don't worry about it" or "unlike the vast majority of people, your eyeballing of food is probably spot on"?

    I don't see people on MFP criticizing others for not using scale just out of the blue -- it's generally in the context of people asking for help figuring out why they're not losing weight when they're supposedly eating at a deficit. This was a little different. OP was asking for help dealing with the "impossibility" of knowing how much you're eating.
  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
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    If you've been using a manual scale, you're going to be pleasantly surprised by how much easier it is with a nice digital one. You can hit the "tare" button to reset your scale to zero, so you can weigh multiple foods by simply putting your plate (or bowl, or pan) on the scale, adding one food, logging it, tare, add second food, and so on. Combined with the recipe builder in MFP it makes complex recipes very easy to calculate.

    For something like a marinade where you don't really know how much of it you are consuming, I just guess.
  • Rebirth08
    Rebirth08 Posts: 174 Member
    edited September 2017
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    Thank you all for your input.
  • ryenday
    ryenday Posts: 1,540 Member
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    Pot Roast, what the devil do I do for pot roast. Yes, I can weigh the raw chuck roast, raw potato, raw onion, raw carrots, and the amount of olive oil and stock I use can be measured. But, that makes between 4 and 6 servings, I usually never eat the 'gravy' and can't weigh a serving because it's all mixed up ingredients. How to measure a serving of pot roast is my question. I just add up all the ingredients and divide by four. Even if it is six meals, each meal is logged as a 1/4 portion of whole. Is there a better or more accurate way?
  • CynthiasChoice
    CynthiasChoice Posts: 1,047 Member
    edited September 2017
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    I get your concern about the marinade. Weighing the marinade before and after could give incorrect results. If there is salt in the marinade, it will likely draw out juices from the chicken. And while the chicken cooks, it will leave some oily residue in the pan. How much oil is that? Should you weigh the pan before and after? And how do you know all that residue is oil and not other liquid? You really do just have to guess sometimes.

    For instance: You start with 1T of oil for 2 pieces of chicken. Some oil gets left behind in the marinade and some gets left behind in the pan. I would guess each piece of cooked chicken has about 1 tsp oil on it.

    (edited for spelling error)

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