The Basics of Accurate Logging

I feel a bit presumptuous making a post about logging accuracy with so many other more knowledgeable, experienced users on here. There are, in fact, several “most helpful posts” on the topic. But I was looking for something very basic to share with new users that hits the main points without getting too involved. This is my lame attempt, but please feel free to chime in if I’ve overlooked something important or if you have other useful tips.

I feel that there are 4 basic elements to accurate logging:

1) Measuring food accurately
2) Choosing accurate database entries
3) Calculating homemade dishes and portions accurately
4) Accuracy when eating out

Measuring food accurately:
Weighing your food with an inexpensive digital food scale is simply the easiest and most accurate means of measuring your food. If you are logging foods in quantities of “1 cup”, “1 TB”, “1 serving”, or “1 piece”, you are not being accurate (unless those measures in your log are based on the corresponding gram weight), and if you are eyeballing or guesstimating, you are doing yourself a real disservice. Not to say that people can’t lose weight by doing these things- many do. Particularly if you have a lot of weight to lose, you have a lot of room for error. But many find that, at least at some point, the inherent inaccuracy of these methods either slows their weight loss or stops it altogether. If so, a person needs to be open to spending the $10 and making an effort to be more precise.

Using a food scale is pretty straightforward and most find it easier, faster, and cleaner than using measuring cups & spoons. Put a plate on the scale, turn it on, weigh your food, and note the number. For things like peanut butter and other things a person normally scoops out of a container, you can place the container on the scale, hit the tare button, scoop out what you want, and note the (negative) weight.

How off can measuring cups really be? I’m sure someone can link a nice video about that, but basically a lot. Or it might just be a little here & there that adds up. Test it out with a few things. Measure out a TB of peanut butter, or ½ cup of oatmeal, and see if it matches the serving weight listed on the package. Also, you may want to consider weighing prepackaged or single-serving foods. These things are allowed by law to be off by as much as 20%, which may or may not make a significant dent in your personal calorie allowance. Personally, I don’t weigh things like granola bars, eggs, yogurt cups, or slices of bread. But if you have a very low calorie allowance, or are not seeing the weight loss results you expect, it’s something to consider.

When it comes to things like rice and pasta, weigh out the dry weight of what you are cooking. If it is a multiple-serving batch, weigh it, cook it, and re-weigh it. Divide the final weight by the number of servings in the pre-cooked batch to arrive at the cooked, single-serving weight. My experience has been that cooked pasta pretty reliably tends to be about 3X the dry weight, but that varies sometimes based on type of pasta and cooking time.

Choosing accurate database entries:
Search the exact name of the product you are using, not the general item. For example, “Prego Traditional Pasta Sauce” not “spaghetti sauce”. By adding the term “grams” to your description (because of course you have now weighed said pasta sauce ), entries listed in grams should come up at the top of the list. Don’t just take the first thing that pops up… check to make sure the info in the entry matches the info on the packaging for your particular food item. I looked up something recently and got 5 possible returns, all different and none of them matching the particular info on my package. In theory, the green check marks are supposed to be verified entries, but even these are often inaccurate.

For fresh meat, fruits, and vegetables, the best bet is to do a search prefaced with “USDA”. For example, “USDA boneless skinless chicken breast”. Also, search for the condition the item was in when you weighed it- raw, grilled, boiled, etc.

Never choose entries with “homemade” or “generic” in the description. Those entries are pretty much guaranteed to be completely different than what you ate.

One final note, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and choosing the entry with the lowest calories unfortunately does not make it so. Your body knows exactly how many calories it really had.

Calculating homemade dishes and portions accurately:
There are two ways to go about this. The first is to log each ingredient separately in your diary and save it as a meal. The next time you have that particular meal, you can add it from your saved meals and simply tweak the weights, or add or delete ingredients.

The second way is to use the recipe builder. You can either import a recipe from a URL or enter your own recipe item by item. MFP will provide possible matches to the listed ingredients and calculate the calories per serving size. Note the *possible* part. It doesn’t always select accurate entries, and often has bizarre glitches. I regularly get “chicken breast cooked in olive oil” for “olive oil”, which again can be remedied by being as specific as possible- “Crisco Extra Virgin Olive Oil”, for example.

Now since many recipes are given in cup and spoon measurements, when you actually prepare the recipe, you’ll want to weigh your quantities as you go and adjust the recipe to reflect that. It sounds like a bit of a hassle, but as someone who is quite lazy but whose recipe database is full, I assure you it’s not that bad! Don’t forget- once you’ve logged any food item or recipe, it’s much easier to pull up & tweak the next time. The worst part is that the recipe database isn’t alphabetized.

The next step here involves portion sizes. You will need to know the weight of your finished dish. I keep a list of the weights of all my pots, pans, and baking dishes on the fridge, weigh the finished dish, and subtract the weight of that particular pan. If you want to know the designated serving weight, divide by the number of servings the recipe states. Others prefer to use a serving size of 1 g and then simply log the weight of their portion.

Accuracy when eating out:
Strictly speaking, this is not possible. Unless you were in the kitchen making something yourself, you really have no idea. You can find basic nutrition info for chain restaurants online, but much of the time you just need to do your best estimating based on experience and similar items listed in the database. Obviously, the more a person chooses to eat out, the greater challenge accuracy will be, and this could interfere with one’s results. On the other hand, we want to enjoy life and don't want to skip out on meals with family & friends for the sake of accuracy.


Striving for accuracy in your logging is probably the single most important thing a person can do towards achieving consistent results. No one is 100% accurate, and that’s OK, because perfection is not required. But by observing a few basic guidelines, a person is in a much better position to accomplish his/her weight loss goals.