The Honor Code?
Replies
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Why aren't you weighing these things? Why guess when you can weigh and know?
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Yea I should've weighed. I was being lazy. After reading the responses, I need to weigh as much as possible. I guess with the oil is what I was questioning. I need a digital scale too to become more accurate. No excuses.[/quote]
Hooray for OP! Seriously! Sometimes people take tough love as rudeness- It's not. Every one of us want you to succeed.
FWIW, I usually input my marinade recipe but will only log a small amount (5-15 mls). It's not perfect, but that's okay.6 -
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).10
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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.0 -
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?
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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.3 -
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.2 -
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.3 -
Thank you all for your input.0
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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?0
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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)0 -
CynthiasChoice wrote: »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)
Why use a marinade that's going to dry out your chicken?
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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?
Use the recipe builder. Weigh the total amount of the finished dish in grams. Enter that number as the number of servings. When you dish up, weight your serving in grams. Enter that as the number of servings you had.6 -
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?
Why would one not eat the gravy!?!?!
BTW, in my opinion, you should weight the olive oil as it is caloricaly dense. While, olive oil is less dense than water and the conversion from grams to ml is temperature dependent, I would assume that at normal house temperatures the conversion error would be less than the eyeball error of trying to estimate the ml as opposed to weighing. I personally use a figure of 13.6g per 15ml and 120 Cal
As to your roast with fixing you are potentially logging 6 meals of 0.25 roasts, i.e. 1.5 roasts when in actual fact you're not even consuming 1x the roast since you're discarding the gravy!
It would be more accurate to weigh your finished product and assign it to your log in the actual proportion (by weight) that you eat.
Since you're throwing some unknown % of the calories away it can only be an approximate calculation. But at least it is unlikely to be off by 50% which is guaranteed by your method!1 -
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.
What makes you think that it takes hours for something to become an imposition. The imposition is that it interrupts the flow of food preparation.4 -
TimothyFish 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.
What makes you think that it takes hours for something to become an imposition. The imposition is that it interrupts the flow of food preparation.
The fact that a poster literally said she didn't want to "spend 2 hrs logging a meal" as a reason for not weighing?8 -
Weighing and measuring is so very helpful!0
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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?
What is wrong with the user using MFP the way she wants to? Especially if she is progressing with desirable results. Even getting down to the last few lbs, while accurate calorie counting can help.. it is not needed. People use MFP in a number of ways to reach their goal. They use it and weigh everything and be as accurate as possible. Some people use it as a food diary to simply enter their food, some don't log their food at all.2 -
I don't weigh my food. If I question amounts I get out the measuring cups. But most of the time I try to pick out and register most of the food in the recipe. Like.....SALADS!!!! I make "kitchen sink" salads to clean out my fridge of veggies and protein.....SO much stuff in it, it would take me forever to get it all on paper. I guesstimate it...go high in the calories....and call it good!0
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TimothyFish 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.
What makes you think that it takes hours for something to become an imposition. The imposition is that it interrupts the flow of food preparation.
No more than using a measuring cup does.3 -
janejellyroll wrote: »TimothyFish 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.
What makes you think that it takes hours for something to become an imposition. The imposition is that it interrupts the flow of food preparation.
No more than using a measuring cup does.
So when I'm making a sandwich or salad, or anything else for which I wouldn't use measuring cups, it adds 5-30 seconds per ingredient. That adds up.1 -
clicketykeys wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »TimothyFish 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.
What makes you think that it takes hours for something to become an imposition. The imposition is that it interrupts the flow of food preparation.
No more than using a measuring cup does.
So when I'm making a sandwich or salad, or anything else for which I wouldn't use measuring cups, it adds 5-30 seconds per ingredient. That adds up.
Not if you stick the plate you're making the sandwich on on the scale, and build it with the tare function, or stick the things you're putting on the scale and tare it and note the negative weight... seconds. Literally seconds, in total.4 -
For a lot of things I put my prep bowl right on the scale. Add ingredient tare add next tare so that this means less dishes3
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clicketykeys wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »TimothyFish 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.
What makes you think that it takes hours for something to become an imposition. The imposition is that it interrupts the flow of food preparation.
No more than using a measuring cup does.
So when I'm making a sandwich or salad, or anything else for which I wouldn't use measuring cups, it adds 5-30 seconds per ingredient. That adds up.
I see it as a choice. I can use a couple extra minutes during meal prep to use the food scale and weigh my portions, which adds up but is very effective. Or I can guesstimate and make ad hoc adjustments which means I have to eat less to still make less progress over the same period of time.
It seems the more effective use of my time over weeks and months of a plan is to measure intake accurately whenever possible, and actually see the results. And if I don't see the results I want, I have a reasonably accurate record to review. I'd rather have that then trying to figure out where my guesswork was off.6 -
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?
Weigh all vegetables and meat. Create recipe with this.
Measure/weigh gravy ingredients. Create separate entry.
When meal is cooked, weigh the entire meal, then divide the total weight by 6 or 8. Boom, you have your serving size in grams.2 -
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?
Why would one not eat the gravy!?!?!
Because I’m crazy. Everyone says so.
Honestly I don’t eat the gravy b/c I like the gravy the least of everything in my pot roast dish. The gravy that sticks to the cooked food I don’t remove or scrape off or anything, but I usually end up with around 8oz of oily liquid you call gravy that does not get consumed. I have refrigerated the gravy and removed the fat to use to cook onions and spinach in tho.
My husband thinks I’m certifiable - it isn’t just pot roast gravy, I don’t eat ANY gravy, and very few sauces. Just weird that way.1 -
clicketykeys wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »TimothyFish 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.
What makes you think that it takes hours for something to become an imposition. The imposition is that it interrupts the flow of food preparation.
No more than using a measuring cup does.
So when I'm making a sandwich or salad, or anything else for which I wouldn't use measuring cups, it adds 5-30 seconds per ingredient. That adds up.
When I make a sandwich or a salad, I'm typically serving it on a plate or bowl and the tare function on the scale works really well for this.
Again, I'm not saying that someone *has* has to weigh food if their current method is working for them, but the whole "it takes too much time" thing doesn't really make sense to me.2 -
In the beginning of my weight loss I would do the same thing. Since I had more to lose, simply changing my diet and eating less (and gym) showed some pretty sweet results. I didn't like guessing though, just due to the fact that there are SO many entries that vary way too much. By going the scale route as opposed to cups (that ALSO vary greatly) you have less guess work and the database is more accurate.
Perhaps make a recipe for the marinade and do what others have suggested in weighing what's left.0 -
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?
Why would one not eat the gravy!?!?!
BTW, in my opinion, you should weight the olive oil as it is caloricaly dense. While, olive oil is less dense than water and the conversion from grams to ml is temperature dependent, I would assume that at normal house temperatures the conversion error would be less than the eyeball error of trying to estimate the ml as opposed to weighing. I personally use a figure of 13.6g per 15ml and 120 Cal
As to your roast with fixing you are potentially logging 6 meals of 0.25 roasts, i.e. 1.5 roasts when in actual fact you're not even consuming 1x the roast since you're discarding the gravy!
It would be more accurate to weigh your finished product and assign it to your log in the actual proportion (by weight) that you eat.
Since you're throwing some unknown % of the calories away it can only be an approximate calculation. But at least it is unlikely(qto be off by 50% which is guaranteed by your method!
I was so going to agree with you, then I noticed that it was "gravy" (quotes in the original), not real gravy that the person you're quoting doesn't eat. So maybe talking about just pan drippings, or some awful fake stuff made from a dry mix. In which case, Why aren't you serving gravy instead of "gravy"!?!?!1 -
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?
What is wrong with the user using MFP the way she wants to? Especially if she is progressing with desirable results. Even getting down to the last few lbs, while accurate calorie counting can help.. it is not needed. People use MFP in a number of ways to reach their goal. They use it and weigh everything and be as accurate as possible. Some people use it as a food diary to simply enter their food, some don't log their food at all.
Was going to post the same thing. I didn't see in the OP where they weren't losing weight, so why the fuss on weighing? I have a scale and use it sometimes. Other times I estimate. Right now I'm losing between 1.5 and 2 lbs per week, so it's working (I'm ~225). I know the value of the scale, I know if I'm doing something new I will use it until I get a feel for the food item, but at the same time I do estimate a fair bit.
When I stop losing as expected, I'll get more diligent. I'm just surprised with the instant rush to "use a scale" posts.1 -
I just got my new digital scale! What an eye-opener! I usually have cereal and almond milk for breakfast; a cup of cereal and a cup of the almond milk. This morning I weighed out in grams my cup of cereal. It was way over the weight the box said was in a one-cup serving. So I have not been logging the proper amount of calories. I'm still going to have my cup of cereal; I'm just going to have to spend more of my daily calorie allotment on it. If it was that different for cereal, I'm weighing everything I can in grams. I've lost 31 pound in 4 months, but I'm sure I would have lost at least a couple more pounds had I been logging correctly. I don't find it a problem to log my foods.2
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