Need weighing food tips

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leelee_lani
leelee_lani Posts: 25 Member
in Getting Started
Just starting again on MFP. Have 60 lbs to lose this time after years of yo-yo dieting. I’m reading on multiple forums that weighing everything is the most accurate. I bought a food scale but am confused how to weigh multiple ingredient dishes. I’m one of those “a little of this, a little of that” kind of cooks and do the cooking for my family. Do I weigh each ingredient and portion it out, or weight the serving? I made poached thai curry halibut with greens beans tonight which was all in one pot. How would I measure that??

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  • harper16
    harper16 Posts: 2,564 Member
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    I don't have insight on the weighing, but what you made sounds amazing.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,147 Member
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    Despite the joke-y clickbait title, this thread is about tips for using a food scale efficiently:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10498882/weighing-food-takes-too-long-and-is-obsessive
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,147 Member
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    Despite the joke-y clickbait title, this thread is about tips for using a food scale efficiently:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10498882/weighing-food-takes-too-long-and-is-obsessive
  • scope2277
    scope2277 Posts: 1 Member
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    I would weigh both the ingredients and the serving.
    If its liquid and you made 4 cups and the total calories in the dish was 1000 you know on average 1 cup will be ~250 calories. This is not going to be 100% accurate but it's a good way to quickly portion out your meal.

    It is important to know the entire dishes calorie value so you can split it up as evenly as possible but again it is not 100% accurate and is a good base for just portion control.

    As a tip, I found spices and such are used in such small amounts "a little here and a little there" is so small in calorie value I would not sink time in weighing that stuff. If you are adding, for example, preminced garlic in oil, then yes that is higher in calories and I would measure out the item at the very least to get an estimate on your calorie intake.

    This is just my opinion and how I weigh stuff day to day. Hope it helps.
  • leelee_lani
    leelee_lani Posts: 25 Member
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    harper16 wrote: »
    I don't have insight on the weighing, but what you made sounds amazing.

    It was delish!

  • leelee_lani
    leelee_lani Posts: 25 Member
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  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,114 Member
    edited March 2020
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    - weigh the individual ingredients and log them in a recipe (or meal) to know the total amount of calories. Use the tare function on the scale for easier weighing.
    - weigh the pot it will be cooked in.
    - weigh the total cooked meal. I usually weigh the pot and food together before putting it on the dinner table and then subtract the weight of the pot to know the total weight of the cooked food.
    - weigh the portion(s) you eat and you'll know how much of the total meal you've eaten and therefore how many calories.

    For your dish, this method is a bit trickier: when serving you would have to be sure that the amount of fish you eat is more or less proportionate to the amount of sauce and vegetables. I might be tempted to log the fish separately from the rest.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,390 Member
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    It depends on how good you are with estimating (I know, we're all bad, otherwise we'd not have weight problems). In the past when I wasn't solo I'd do the following as I didn't want to annoy my significant other: I'd weigh all ingredients before they went into the pot. After a while this is really fast because you don't need to search for the right entries anymore as they just pop up at the top of the list if you've used them before. Don't forget the cooking oil; it really ads up massively! Now you have the complete calories within the pot. If you serve the food to people you're in control: count the more or less equal sized serving spoons for everyone.
    A = 2
    B = 2
    C = 4
    D = 3 (that's you for example)
    Now the pot is empty and you had 3/11 of the dish. Or 27%. So sometime later in the evening multiply all the ingredients in your diary by 0.27 and you have a fairly good estimate of your calories.
  • gbarringer4
    gbarringer4 Posts: 5 Member
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    On my Taylor - Tarei scale, you can place a bowl on the scale and zero it out.
    Add ingredients and zero it each time to know how much each one weighs.
  • fdlewenstein
    fdlewenstein Posts: 231 Member
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    To be accurate you won't be able to use the "add a little of this and a little of that" method. Use the recipe function on MFP. Measure everything before you put it into the pan. You will need to determine how many servings to get calorie and macro amounts. Once you have a recipe you can use it again, measuring the same as before. To be accurate in measuring...you do have to be consistent. Hope that helps.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,390 Member
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    fdlewenstein wrote: »
    To be accurate you won't be able to use the "add a little of this and a little of that" method. Use the recipe function on MFP. Measure everything before you put it into the pan. You will need to determine how many servings to get calorie and macro amounts. Once you have a recipe you can use it again, measuring the same as before. To be accurate in measuring...you do have to be consistent. Hope that helps.

    It really depends on what 'a little bit of this or that' means. If it means an extra pinch of a ground spice then it's probably negligible. On the other hand, a whole pile of extra veggies will add up. I usually just start cooking and add everything as I go along. Logging while cooking doesn't take long. When done I consider the whole pot plus whatever I want to eat with it (rice, pasta, etc), and then decide on how big my serving will be and on how much rice I'll add.
  • leelee_lani
    leelee_lani Posts: 25 Member
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    What a pain in the a**. I know, I know, it’s necessary for accuracy. I just had to say that to get it off my chest. I’ll start working on it slowly. I’m just getting used to actually using measuring cups for now and portioning out meals. I’m realizing weight loss and a healthy lifestyle is a learning curve and thankful for the support on this forum.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,147 Member
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    leelee_lani wrote: »
    What a pain in the a**. I know, I know, it’s necessary for accuracy. I just had to say that to get it off my chest. I’ll start working on it slowly. I’m just getting used to actually using measuring cups for now and portioning out meals. I’m realizing weight loss and a healthy lifestyle is a learning curve and thankful for the support on this forum.

    WIth a moderate amount of practice, and the tips in these posts and the thread I linked, I think you'll find weighing to be easier and quicker than cups - truly.

    Keep in mind that if you find it annoying, and you are able to confidently achieve your goals without it, you can be more approximate, or - once you have a general idea of what's calorie-dense and what's not - focus effort on the calorie-dense things.

    Hang in there!
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
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    It does get easier and quicker. There's just a bit of up front work required to get set up.

    Once you have the recipes saved (and assuming you don't deviate too much) then you'll only need to do it once. I found it helpful to set the serving size to 1g. This way when serving up I don't have to worry about mathing or fractions or percentages. I just dished up a serving, weighed it and entered a number of servings that matched the weight in grams.

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