You don't use a food scale?

dlhatch67 wrote: »

I weigh my calorie-dense foods and use measuring cups for my liquids. For example, today at bfast, I weighed my shredded wheat at 70g and my banana was 120g, but I measured one cup of milk. At lunch, I made a salad, but the only ingredients I actually weighed were the feta cheese and avocado. I can eyeball my cucumber, tomatoes, spinach, and kale. They don't add very many calories to my lunch. And even if I'm slightly off, it takes too much time to prepare the salad if I weigh them too.
Honestly, you can get carried away with all this weighing, and if you've been doing it for months, it will get tedious. If it becomes a fixation, there's a chance you won't enjoy eating out from time to time or sharing a meal at someone else's house.
Don't let it rule you.
If you do a reasonable job of logging your food (and weighing the high calorie stuff) and you don't eat back ALL your exercise calories, you probably won't need to worry about being a few grams off here and there. The only problem I can see is if you maximize your calorie allotment every day without weighing anything and you also overestimate your exercise.

I'm only responding to this because this thread is geared towards new members.

If the above, regarding weighing high calorie stuff and not eating all your exercise calories, works for a person, great. However, a salad is ridiculously easy to weigh. Place plate/bowl on scale and tare, add kale and write down weight and tare, add spinach and write down weight and tare, add tomatoes and write down weight and tare, etc. How could it possibly be easier?! That hardly adds tons of time to prepping a salad.

Also, I really dislike it when others label those who weigh most of their food as "fixated" or "obsessed." A scale is an incredibly easy tool to use. If you're logging already, using a scale doesn't add a big complication. Again, if reducing portion sizes or weighing only high-calorie stuff works for someone, good for them, but it doesn't make everyone else obsessed.

Having used a scale for years now, I'm very happy to have it. It's simple and I know I'm being more accurate than if I eye-balled. It's actually very freeing for me, and I've seen others say the same. I don't eat out regularly, mostly because I think most restaurants around here are mediocre and I don't fancy paying for food that's just so-so, but I don't panic if I eat out. I've been logging long enough that I feel comfortable estimating meals out. I've been on MFP on and off since 2011 (I think, maybe 2012), but very consistently over the past several years. It becomes easier and easier for me, not tedious.

Just to reiterate the importance of weighing packaged products, the flat bread I eat for lunch often is packaged as 1 bread = 56g = 100 calories. Today's weighed 66g, a difference of 18 calories. No, not much but over time and multiplied throughout the day, it can add up, particularly if you've got a small deficit to begin with.

Not sure why the pics are sideways. Sorry

pamfin wrote: »

lucerorojo wrote: »

I have one but I hadn't been using it for everything. Today I weighed a banana (unpeeled) for the first time. This was an average size banana (definitely have eaten bigger and smaller ones) and it was 40 calories more (once I weighed it and took the USDA value) than the banana that is "medium" in the database. So for 6 months I've been using that "medium" and underestimating most of the time for a banana.

I also weighed a thick slice of bacon for the first time. (First time weighing my bacon at all). For thick slices I had been using the calorie equivalent of "2 slices" in the database. In the first place, I had no idea how big those slices were. I was just lazy. Sometimes I'd look on the package but the bacon I have this week has no information--it was fresh from a butcher. Anyway, ONE thick slice was 70 calories more than the "two slices" in the database. So had I not weighed the bacon and the banana today, I would have eaten 110 calories extra that I didn't realize. I'm weighing everything today!!

I can't bear those database entries that jus say '1 piece' or '1 slice' etc. That tells me nothing without a reference point of how big the piece or slice is. They're just useless really.

I agree. Also "bowl." A bowl can range in size from a half cup dessert bowl to a cereal type bowl to a much larger soup bowl and even those distinctions vary!!!

I got a digital kitchen scale recently and it really makes a huge difference. I love it.

I've wanted to get a scale for a long time but never did. I personally always found success using measuring cups and simply overestimating rather then underestimating calories in general.

Two cups of flour leveled off in a measuring cup = two very different weights.

image credit: http://www.pbs.org/food/fresh-tastes/five-reasons-to-use-a-kitchen-scale/

veganbaum wrote: »

dlhatch67 wrote: »

I weigh my calorie-dense foods and use measuring cups for my liquids. For example, today at bfast, I weighed my shredded wheat at 70g and my banana was 120g, but I measured one cup of milk. At lunch, I made a salad, but the only ingredients I actually weighed were the feta cheese and avocado. I can eyeball my cucumber, tomatoes, spinach, and kale. They don't add very many calories to my lunch. And even if I'm slightly off, it takes too much time to prepare the salad if I weigh them too.
Honestly, you can get carried away with all this weighing, and if you've been doing it for months, it will get tedious. If it becomes a fixation, there's a chance you won't enjoy eating out from time to time or sharing a meal at someone else's house.
Don't let it rule you.
If you do a reasonable job of logging your food (and weighing the high calorie stuff) and you don't eat back ALL your exercise calories, you probably won't need to worry about being a few grams off here and there. The only problem I can see is if you maximize your calorie allotment every day without weighing anything and you also overestimate your exercise.

I'm only responding to this because this thread is geared towards new members.

If the above, regarding weighing high calorie stuff and not eating all your exercise calories, works for a person, great. However, a salad is ridiculously easy to weigh. Place plate/bowl on scale and tare, add kale and write down weight and tare, add spinach and write down weight and tare, add tomatoes and write down weight and tare, etc. How could it possibly be easier?! That hardly adds tons of time to prepping a salad.

Also, I really dislike it when others label those who weigh most of their food as "fixated" or "obsessed." A scale is an incredibly easy tool to use. If you're logging already, using a scale doesn't add a big complication. Again, if reducing portion sizes or weighing only high-calorie stuff works for someone, good for them, but it doesn't make everyone else obsessed.

Having used a scale for years now, I'm very happy to have it. It's simple and I know I'm being more accurate than if I eye-balled. It's actually very freeing for me, and I've seen others say the same. I don't eat out regularly, mostly because I think most restaurants around here are mediocre and I don't fancy paying for food that's just so-so, but I don't panic if I eat out. I've been logging long enough that I feel comfortable estimating meals out. I've been on MFP on and off since 2011 (I think, maybe 2012), but very consistently over the past several years. It becomes easier and easier for me, not tedious.

i wanted to add to this a little bit to include a strategy that works really well for me when i want to add things quickly and painlessly. the example i'll stick with is salad, but i do this for a lot of recipes that i use a lot. i eat chopped salad really often. and i make it in several variations. so i started by creating a recipe in the recipe builder.

i put a large salad bowl on the food scale, chopped the first ingredient and added it to the bowl. then i searched the database for the ingredient as follows "baby spinach usda 100 grams" when i find the correct entry i adjust for the weight of what's in the bowl and move onto the next ingredient. when all is said and done, this gives me my base for chopped salad.

now the next time i make it i may use slightly different stuff depending on what i have on hand. i may add feta cheese. use a different brand of spiced nuts (for crunch), i may be out of red peppers but have a ripe avocado that needs to be used. i use the same recipe. zero out anything i'm not using in the quantity and add any new items. different brands i swap out using the "find replacement" function. if you just zero out the quantities the calories adjust correctly but the ingredient remains in the recipe.

by the time i've made a few variations pretty much every ingredient will be in the recipe so i don't have to search the database anymore. i just scroll through and adjust my quantities as i toss ingredients in. the whole process is painless and i find it pretty useful in any recipe that has a standard base. i eat greek yogurt based quiche pretty frequently as well and so the crust and filling are pre-entered along with most of my standard add ins and the weighing and logging takes virtually no extra time.

One of the things I'm loving about weighing everything (I've measured for years, but finally broke down and bought a scale) is that I'm pretty sure my "eat out eye-ball amounts" are getting a LOT more accurate. I try to guess what my food will weigh before I put it on the scale, and am finding pretty quickly that I'm getting fairly accurate (not to the gram, but enough where we're not talking huge calorie differences).

Overall I think it's not only far more accurate, but at least with my pre-guessimate I'm a lot more honest when estimating that [enter Meal Pal meal here] actually contains.

Wow, never even thought of the scale vs. measuring cups! Thanks for all the info and videos guys. I use both but will try to use scale only. I have to check if my food scale does grams.