The Fat Loss TroubleshootThis is your place to troubleshoot your fat loss problems from nutrition to training. This section is led by Leigh Peele, author of "The Fat Loss Troubleshoot," the ultimate fat loss manual. If your results have slowed or stalled this is the place to come for advice for all your fat loss needs.
I now have a food scale (thanks Etana) and am using it for the first time today. My question is when making a recipe do you follow the recipe do you measure each ingredient then weigh it to see how many grams you have?
Examples: I combine two kinds of cereal and some almonds for my breakfast. I'd measure out one of the cereals the weigh it to see how many grams I have, do the same with the other then again with the almonds. I'd have a more accurate picture of how many calories I'm getting with my cereal each morning.
Same with my sandwich at lunch. Weigh each ingredient as I make the sandwich.
Now when it comes to dinner I generally cook from scratch. So tonight I we're having a chicken, pasta & broccoli salad with a Thai dressing. I can measure the chicken, pasta and broccoli portions I'm having but then I get to the dressing which I'm making myself. Do I measure the ingredients then weigh them for accuracy in counting calories? Do I convert all the recipes into grams before I make it? What's your opinion?
I just weigh everything instead of using measuring cups, etc. For liquids, I set a cup or bowl on the scale and 0 out the scale before adding whatever I'm measuring.
And yes, I convert everything to grams.
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"Do you choose to simply know the path, or do you choose to walk it?"
Your body keeps an accurate journal regardless of what you write down...
Let me give you an example. I make coleslaw dressing with sour cream, mayonaise, white wine vinegar, dry mustard, splenda & celery seed. I make it by eye.
I set a bowl on the scale. Tare it. Slop in mayo, note gm, tare. Slop in sour cream, note gm, tare. Repeat for each ingredient.
Then put the actual measurements into an electronic recipe and see what comes out.
Next time, I try to make it the same gm per ingredient. If I'm sure I make it consistantly, then I might skip weighing.
If I had a recipe or volume measured my ingredients (e.g. measure 2T, 1 tsp) I'd measure, dump, note & tare. I wouldn't convert in advance.
For the cereal - I'd just put the bowl on the scale, tare it, pour in the cereal to whatever weight I wanted. I wouldn't measure 1/2C and then dump it in and then weigh it - unless I was checking my measure against the actual weight (not a bad thing to do to check yourself).
when I want a spoon/knife of pnut butter or guacamole - I put the container on the scale, tare it, then scoop out what I want and note the negative weight from the scale - if it is more than I intended (not hard) - I'll put some back - if I need more I'll take more. This helps me learn how big my unmeasured portions are and learn to control them.
right. or I might check all of my measuring cups (all 4 sets of various sizes, etc.) and then mark them where the 1 cup mark actually is so that i don't necessarily have to weigh all the time.
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"Do you choose to simply know the path, or do you choose to walk it?"
Your body keeps an accurate journal regardless of what you write down...
I'm just not good at being consistant. If a recipe calls for 1/2C onions, chopped - how much fits depends on how small or large I chop it. I'll tend to do it once and from then on weigh the veggie to get the same amount and then just chop it.
I do count things separately for "simple" meals but sometimes that is not doable, like for full fledged recipes or when making multiple servings of something. For that, I use the software program Mastercook. You enter all the ingredients, number of servings, etc and it gives you calories per serving. A free version of this is available Sparkpeople.
Then I enter the per serving info as a custom food into my Fitday.
I now have a food scale (thanks Etana) and am using it for the first time today. My question is when making a recipe do you follow the recipe do you measure each ingredient then weigh it to see how many grams you have?
Examples: I combine two kinds of cereal and some almonds for my breakfast. I'd measure out one of the cereals the weigh it to see how many grams I have, do the same with the other then again with the almonds. I'd have a more accurate picture of how many calories I'm getting with my cereal each morning.
Same with my sandwich at lunch. Weigh each ingredient as I make the sandwich.
Now when it comes to dinner I generally cook from scratch. So tonight I we're having a chicken, pasta & broccoli salad with a Thai dressing. I can measure the chicken, pasta and broccoli portions I'm having but then I get to the dressing which I'm making myself. Do I measure the ingredients then weigh them for accuracy in counting calories? Do I convert all the recipes into grams before I make it? What's your opinion?
I haven't yet read all the posts, but I am not sure that scale has a tare feature. You might just have to hit the on/off pad I think.. You could look up the features/manual on the internet. I know on the bottom it has a gm oz switch.
What I did was just hit hmmm now i can't even remember. I think I just hit on/off pad, to get it to 0 with the bowl and all on.
Etana
I haven't yet read all the posts, but I am not sure that scale has a tare feature. You might just have to hit the on/off pad I think.. You could look up the features/manual on the internet. I know on the bottom it has a gm oz switch.
What I did was just hit hmmm now i can't even remember. I think I just hit on/off pad, to get it to 0 with the bowl and all on.
Etana
It DOES have the tare function!
Thanks for all the great responses. For my salad dressing tonight I measured everything according to the recipe and weighed it as I went, making notes on the recipe. I haven't had a chance to plug it into my food diary yet to see how close the measures are but I will later or in the morning. Generally I don't want to get too anal about all this especially since I know there will be nights I simply don't have the time to be as careful. Tomorrow I'm checking my tuna against my estimate after draining the water off.
Generally I don't want to get too anal about all this especially since I know there will be nights I simply don't have the time to be as careful. Tomorrow I'm checking my tuna against my estimate after draining the water off.
you don't have to be a slave to the scale, but it is an excellent way to check your estimates and teach yourself what proper portions look like. there are somethings that i ALWAYS weigh because i could get in trouble if i don't (peanut butter comes to mind) but i rarely weigh other things because i am pretty confident in my estimates. it's just another tool in the arsenal, so don't stress out about it. use it when you can and don't sweat it when you don't have the time or energy. it's all good!
In case you freak out about being exact, it just depends.
It just doesn't make sense e.g. to cut up a chicken boob if you have decided you want exactly 150g of it. Especially not when you (like me) prefer to throw in frozen boobs and make soup.
So , I just weigh as is.. if I plan to eat chicken and have e.g. 150g in my pc, and the boob weighs 170g .. I'm not going to chop it up and make it to 150g but instead, modify the amount in my pc program to 170g.
That's what I do for most of my foods unless it's something I can be exact with like shredded coconut (mostly exactly 10 or 12g) , raisins (mostly 25g) where I add it to a bowl that gets put on 0 before I start adding.
For recipes you are used to do it by spoon/cups, just keep on doing as you were used to do, but weigh how much that was. If you really want to hit xxx grams etc. then you can see how much it amounts to for a particular recipe and then weigh it out in grams the next time.
you don't have to be a slave to the scale, but it is an excellent way to check your estimates and teach yourself what proper portions look like. there are somethings that i ALWAYS weigh because i could get in trouble if i don't (peanut butter comes to mind) but i rarely weigh other things because i am pretty confident in my estimates. it's just another tool in the arsenal, so don't stress out about it. use it when you can and don't sweat it when you don't have the time or energy. it's all good!
That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Espi
For recipes you are used to do it by spoon/cups, just keep on doing as you were used to do, but weigh how much that was. If you really want to hit xxx grams etc. then you can see how much it amounts to for a particular recipe and then weigh it out in grams the next time.
I noticed yesterday that my calorie tracking program seems to have the grams listed once I’ve created a recipe. If I double check the weights and make the necessary notes in my program I won’t have to do it each time. I’m a pretty careful cook as far as accurate measuring goes. When I first got this program I had to enter a lot of my own foods and recipes (still do to some extent) and it took a bit of extra time. I see weighing food will be the same sort of learning curve especially when cooking from scratch.
1. Chicken, steak, fish: do you weigh it raw or cooked?
2. When a recipe says 4 oz chicken, I am assuming it means 4 oz cooked chicken.
3. 2 cups of raw brocolli is diff cal than 2 cups cooked broc. In fitday, I've been either estimating it raw, then cooking it; or trying to find the cooked no fat version and weighing that
Etana, it may be different for you, but I just take 1 entire chicken (boob) in the frozen state and weigh it as it is , but subtract 5g for the extra frost.
Veggies: same thing, throw in a certain (eyeballed amount) and then weigh back, and take note of what I used. I do try to hit my pre-planned amt more or less but won't spill a tear over 25g less or more.
For what I do tonight, viz. eat an entire chicken for my cheat/free meal, I'll be weighing it twice.. once raw and then again will be weighing whats left of it and I'm not eating so I can subtract this from the total weight.
Same thing for unshelled pistachio nuts.. although I've done something more clever, viz. weigh out 100g of them, shell them, weigh the shelled nuts and then enter the caloric value as a custom weight. From then on I would be using the nutritional value for e.g. 55g of shelled nuts but those would be valid for 100g of unshelled nuts.
From then on I could e.g. weigh 30g of unshelled nuts but not go through the trouble of weighing te shells every time.
You can do the same thing for other nutrients for which there's only nutritional info in the de-shelled state: walnuts, mussels, oysters etc. while you would mostly be weighing it in the raw (unshelled) state.
1. Chicken, steak, fish: do you weigh it raw or cooked?
2. When a recipe says 4 oz chicken, I am assuming it means 4 oz cooked chicken.
3. 2 cups of raw brocolli is diff cal than 2 cups cooked broc. In fitday, I've been either estimating it raw, then cooking it; or trying to find the cooked no fat version and weighing that
thanks, Etana
I would think a recipe that says 4 oz chicken would mean raw chicken.
for veggies I measure out the raw veggies in grams before cooking and then go by that. I am so happy that now Fitday allows you to enter thigns in grams.
weighing food and recipes
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