How I stopped kidding myself

sarahlucindac wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

sarahlucindac wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

I've never used a food scale at a restaurant nor at anyone's house.

Let us know how that works out for you. I can just hear your mom.

I don't know, I lost almost 50 pounds without a food scale at all and eating away from home quite frequently. I bought a food scale when I was 30 pounds from goal - and I didn't even use it all the time. It was getting more difficult to lose by that point. However, I didn't have a body-weight scale and was only weighing myself once a month so I needed some control.

There are three things I'm tracking: food, exercise and my own body weight. If I keep up my exercise and keep weighing myself a couple times per week I think now I could easily estimate my food eaten away from home BUT that's because I have used my food scale so long and so regularly. I can pretty much dissect any dish I eat and get close enough. You'll get there in time, too.

For about four or five years after I got to maintenance I didn't use my food scale. I also didn't own a body weight scale. That made it tough! I was trying the intuitive-how-do-my-pants-fit thing. The scales are so much easier. Now it's just habit.

Lol yup my mom’s going to think I’m crazy. I already get all kinds of judgement for how much I use my food scale (my boyfriends father rolls his eyes at me while I carefully weigh out the mayo that’s going on my burger, for example).
I know I have a much better idea of portion sizes now that I’ve been using a food scale, which comes in handy when I eat out. For now though, I’m still learning and will continue to religiously weigh everything I eat at home. I’m still astonished at the discrepancy in the weight of even pre-packaged food (I bought some cookies that were supposed to be around 30g each— those suckers ranged from 25-40g/cookie in reality).
It’s a pain in the *kitten* sometimes (it takes me like 30 minutes just to put together a simple salad due to weighing every little thing)...but the results I’ve seen since adopting this new habit of being absolutely meticulous have really paid off.

The bolded makes me worried that you're not using this methodology: Put the plate or bowl on the scale, tare (zero) the scale, add the lettuce, note the weight, tare the scale, add the cucumbers, note the weight, tare the scale . . . etc. (I prefer to note on a junk-mail envelope and log in one swoop when my hands are clean/dry).

Also works for soup/stew ingredients going into a pan, sandwich being built, etc.

For your mayo, I hope you're putting the jar on the scale, hitting tare, scooping some out with a knife, and reading the negative on the scale (it's the amount you took out). Ditto for peanut butter, pickles, yogurt from a tub, a piece of cheese being cut off a bigger hunk, etc.

I purchased too small of a scale to be able to put my plate on it. I go through the hassle of using various small cups - zero out the cup, put the ingredient I’m measuring into the cup, put it on my plate - repeat for all ingredients. Maybe it would be worth investing in a large scale that would accommodate the quicker approach.
As for the way you suggested weighing the mayo, etc - I have not been doing it that way (again, my small scale won’t allow for placing an entire jar of mayo on it). I realize I lose a very small amount of residue in my various small glasses that I transfer the weighed mayo in and out of. As I’m typing this out - I realize how silly my approach sounds. A lot of extra work and losing a touch of accuracy (at least I’m shorting myself rather than giving myself too much).
Aw, dang. Thanks, @AnnPT77. Another eye opener for me. Time to invest in a larger scale! 😭 😂

sarahlucindac wrote: »

IdLikeToLoseItLoseIt wrote: »

This post is a great reminder on the importance of using a food scale!

For the first time in about a week, I pulled my food scale out of the drawer to weigh some pickles... and there was Doritos dust on it. I was thinking, how did Doritos dust get on my scale? Then I remembered, oh yeah, that was me weighing Doritos last week.

So yes, whether it’s 10 calories of pickles or 140 calories of Doritos, I appreciate the accuracy of using a food scale. It was a PITA at first, especially having to add a bunch of entries to my own diary so that I would have an entry in grams instead of oz (or worse, when “11 chips” or something similar was listed as the only serving size after scanning a barcode of a product).

But, it turns out I’m a creature of habit and after a few months I didn’t have to add many custom entries that corrected for grams.

I actually find weighing out 28 grams of chips much faster than counting out 11 would ever be! Plus how do people account for broken chips if they think 11 is a serving? Besides that, a perfect serving is closer to 40 grams for me, ha!

I love my OXO scale, it was expensive though, but it has held up well for years. I happen to have a 1 gram scientific weight and it’s perfectly accurate to boot.

Lol I feel ya with the whole chip serving thing!! Before using a food scale, I would count out the chips and end up piecing together what I thought was a fair chip size with the broken ones...I’m certain I was fooling myself and my little pile of broken chips that were supposed to equal one probably added up to more than that. Funny how our brains work against us sometimes lol