Adding Food in Grams

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durkinm
durkinm Posts: 6
in Food and Nutrition
All, I have found it is much easier to monitor my intake by weighing my servings. To do that I have purchase a small, albeit, accurate scale that weighs in ounces and grams. What I have found though, is that most of your enter in your serving sizes in tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, etc. Let me tell you how much more accurate it is when you use grams - a LOT! Almost every packaged food has the amount of grams per serving and you can break it down much easier. For example, today I added Peter Pan Creamy Peanut Butter by the gram - a serving is 32 grams or 2 tbsp for 210 calories, but I only had 25 grams and had I not added it in grams to the database, there is no way I would have been able to figure out that it was only 164 calories. Trust me - add food to the database in grams...

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  • brucedelaney
    brucedelaney Posts: 433 Member
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    While it is more accurate, and I do agree with you. Not everyone has a digital scale and therefore measuring by volume is the only way it can be done.

    That being said, you can add anything you want to the database in your own form of measurement and I have found this to be the best way to make sure I reach the degree of accuracy I wish to achieve me getting to my goals.
  • LisaMariaCallow
    LisaMariaCallow Posts: 170
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    I agree! And I purchased a small scale at Target for $5.99!!
  • kyle4jem
    kyle4jem Posts: 1,400 Member
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    When I see posts from folks saying they haven't lost any weight and wonder why... invariably you'll see either gaps in their food diary or measurements like a cup of this a tbs of that. I've never understood how you can accurately weigh solids by volume :noway:

    Everybody on a calorie controlled diet should own a digital scale and weigh their food in grams because that is the industry standard for food and nutrition.

    I especially despair of "1 portion" listings, because one person's portion size is another's food for 3 weeks :laugh:

    Now, after three months, I'm getting to the stage where I can guesstimate without being so anal about weighing things, which is just as well because I only do about 40% of the cooking in our house. I always have about 300-400kc to play with of a day most days so that works well for me.

    But it would be so much easier if the database entries were in standard format... you see 101 listings for the same thing entered in cups or grams or portions.
  • ackeebee
    ackeebee Posts: 1,042 Member
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    i agree that it is essential to have a digital scale. i have owned one for the past 4 months and it has made alot of difference. i am always abit skeptical of any cup servings as i blv i can fit any amount of food in a cup if i want to lol
  • ElizabethRoad
    ElizabethRoad Posts: 5,138 Member
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    How about YOU add food to the database in grams, and I'll use what's convenient for ME.
  • Dinah22
    Dinah22 Posts: 69 Member
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    How about YOU add food to the database in grams, and I'll use what's convenient for ME.
    But you can't always do this can you? It's the one and only thing about this wonderful sight that drives me mad, so If there IS a way of doing that please tell me how?
  • durkinm
    durkinm Posts: 6
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    How about YOU add food to the database in grams, and I'll use what's convenient for ME.

    I DO add food to the database in grams. I'm just saying I think everyone should consider it since we don’t always have a "serving" size of a product every time. Let me give you an example: This morning I had a bowl of cereal. A serving size is 1 cup or 53 grams for 190 calories, but I was hungry and wanted a little more and stopped pouring cereal in my bowl at the 69 gram point. The only way to know how many calories that is, is to know how many calories per gram the product contains. This frees you from having the "serving" size every time. Sometimes I want less than a serving and sometimes I want more, but I don't want to struggle with logging my calorie intake. The way you do it is simple: Instead of putting the 1 cup or 1 bar or whatever in the serving size field when adding a food to the database, you simply use the grams in parenthesis.
  • pdworkman
    pdworkman Posts: 1,342 Member
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    My food scale is not digital, but it still works! It may not be accurate to a hundredth of a gram, but it is still more accurate than volume or eyeballing.

    Pam

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