How To Use a Food Scale To Lose Weight • A Sweet Pea Chef

One of the biggest struggles that people face during their weight loss journey is portion control. A great solution is the food scale! This post will show you how to use a food scale to lose weight and why it makes a difference.

First off, counting calories is not the same as counting sheep at night. No, my friends, it’s way more complicated than that!

When I first started tracking macros, I thought it would be as easy as opening the app, eyeballing the weight of the food,  and logging it in.

And I kept telling people how this method not only kept me healthy but also gave me the freedom to eat whatever I wanted.

But then…I stepped on the scale and realized boy was I doing it wrong!

Lesson learned: Shortcuts aren’t always the best route.

Then and there, I decided to do it right and got this food scale that I still use up to this day: Etekcity Food Kitchen Scale.

I’m not exaggerating when I say weighing my food has literally changed my life and my body for the better! I firmly believe that weighing your food is helpful to living a healthy yet unrestrictive lifestyle.

After years of practice, I’ve finally found the perfect methodology on how to use a food scale. And you know, counting calories and measuring portion sizes does have a learning curve….but never fear!

I’ve got plenty of tips for y’all that will surely help you lose weight, so read on!

Do I Need A Food Scale To Count Calories?

If you want accurate numbers then yes, you do. Although most food items have labels already (which you can use as basis for calculating your calories), I personally don’t think it is enough.

Why? It is almost nearly impossible to remember how much you are consuming with complete accuracy!

And because guesswork gets you nowhere fast, it can lead to false progress (where you think you’re eating in line with your goals when you really aren’t).

Having a regular process of weighing your food and recording this information in a food journal will set you up for success!

You can also check out these 15 Weightloss Hacks That Actually Work which you can easily adapt into your lifestyle.

Do Food Scales Help You Lose Weight?

YES, YES, and HELL YES!! If you’re trying to lose weight and you struggle with eating a calorie deficit, a scale will guarantee better accuracy. 

Studies show that many processed foods contain way more calories than their labels claim. This is a prime example of why I like food scales.

Just like with counting macros, food scales provide solid and accurate data that we can use to track progress…and make changes accordingly.

Plus, I’ve found that it helps me set a more focused intention and stick to my goals. 

In a sense, it acts as “speed bump” and reminds us, “hey, you’re eating half your calorie requirement for breakfast, you may want to slow down?”

If you want to know more about overcoming overeating, read my blog on 8  Simple Ways To Stop Overeating On Weekends.

Why Should I Weigh My Food?

I absolutely advocate for weighing your food because as I mentioned before, this process will help lead to weight loss. 

Here’s exactly why and how a food scale can help you lose weight:

• It teaches your portion control: Once you start weighing your food, you’ll finally gain a better understanding on how many calories you are really consuming. You may be surprised but those granola cereals you have in the morning actually contain 400-500 calories per bowl…and a small bowl at that. A lot of time we make assumptions, so adding a scale gives you the accuracy you need to know portion sizes.
• It creates a healthy-eating pattern: By sticking to a certain amount of calories per day, your stomach gets accustomed to only eating that amount. Soon, you’ll fall into a healthy-eating pattern without much effort at all. Especially when you use Meal Prep Containers, next thing you know you won’t need the scale anymore because you’ll find that sweet spot (how much you need to eat for max satisfaction and health).

How Do I Choose The Best Food Scale For Weight Loss?

There are various types of food scales and here’s what you need to keep in mind when choosing the best scale for you:

• Is it within your budget?
• Can you easily read the numbers?
• Is it big enough to hold the food you plan to weigh?
• Is it easy to clean and store?
• Is it waterproof?

I don’t recommend that you overspend for a food scale, especially when you’re starting out. Buy one that will suit your current needs (so that you’ll actually use it rather than stuffing it away in the cupboard).

Even if you stop using it for your weight loss journey, getting a food scale is a good investment because you can also use it for baking!

Should I Measure My Food In Grams Or Ounces?

You can measure your food in either grams or ounces. Keep this in mind: 1 ounce = 28 grams and 28 grams = 1 ounce.

Don’t freak out! It might seem confusing at first but as long as you remember those figures above, you’ll be good. Before you start measuring, take a look at the serving size of the food you want to weigh. If the packaging is labeled in grams, then measure it in grams, and vice versa.

If you are measuring different ingredients where some are given in grams and others in ounces, convert them to the measurement that’s most common.

Is It Better To Weigh Food Cooked Or Raw?

Based on my weight loss journey, the best way to get the most accurate data is to weigh and log your food before cooking. (When you weigh your food after it has been cooked, it leaves room for a lot of discrepancies in the numbers).

The state of raw ingredients usually changes when cooked and so does their weight. For example, a boiled potato is heavier than a raw one because it has absorbed liquid. Whereas when you air fry your potatoes…they get lighter.

At the end of the day, it’s your choice whether you want to weigh your food or just simply try eyeballing the portions. Remember that what works for others might not work for you.

But if you plan to join the food scale bandwagon, remember that weighing may increase accuracy but there is no such thing as a perfect measurement. If at any point you feel stressed out and overwhelmed with weighing your food, then you can try it out every other day instead.

I assure you, taking this route made me realize that I don’t need to give up my unhealthy favorites (yes I still have them, I’m only a human after all)!

And that, for me made it totally worth it!

More Healthy Meal Prep For Weight Loss:

I hope you found this post on how to use a food scale to lose weight helpful! If you want to know more about portion control and meal planning, you might want to check these blogs out!

1. 7-Day Meal Prep For Weight Loss
2. How To Portion Control For Weight Loss (Without Starving!)
3. $75 Whole Foods Meal Plan Challenge
4. How to Meal Prep – Chicken (7 Meals/Under $5)
5. How to Meal Prep – Salmon

This post contains affiliate links for products I use regularly and highly recommend.

How to Weigh Food Without a Scale: 4 Life Hacks to Try

Whether you’re a college student who’s short on space, a minimalist who doesn’t need all the kitchen gadgets, or just a shelf cooking newbie, learn how to weigh food without a scale. We’ve got four tried-and-true genius hacks that will make meal prep a breeze!

So you’ve got a recipe that calls for a pound of green beans but no food scale in sight. How in the world are you supposed to weigh those beans? Fair question, and one we’re going to answer for you today.

*Note: When you click the links in this post, we may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Here’s the good news: you don’t need any fancy equipment to shelf cook! In fact, we don’t even think you need a food scale at all. These hacks, tips, and tricks will show you how to weigh food without a scale. Score!

USE MEASURING CUPS & SPOONS TO WEIGH YOUR FOOD

Let’s go back to science class (or math, maybe?) for a few minutes. While you may not have a scale in your kitchen, we bet you have a measuring cup and some spoons. So, here’s how to convert those recipe instructions and use what you’ve got:

• Ounces to Cups – Each cup contains eight ounces, so do the math! While the ratio isn’t always perfect with cooked foods like meats, you don’t need to aim for perfection! For example, if your recipe calls for one pound of shredded chicken, try using two cups.
• Ounces to Tablespoons – One fluid ounce is equal to two tablespoons. This is a super simple conversion! If your recipe calls for four ounces, use eight tablespoons.
• Ounces to Teaspoons – One fluid ounce is equal to six teaspoons. So, if you have a recipe that calls for two ounces of a certain liquid, you could use twelve teaspoons instead.

That’s kinda fun, right? Okay, maybe we just love hacks, but we think so! Looking for another trick to try if you need to weigh food without a scale? This next one won’t cost you a dime!

Pro Tip: If you’re looking for more recipe conversion tips, be sure to grab a copy of this free kitchen conversion chart printable!

USE HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS TO GUESSTIMATE

Okay, let’s pretend you don’t have any measuring cups or spoons handy. What can you do? Well, you can reach for what you do have and use it as a guide! Here are a few examples:

• 1/4 cup is roughly the same size as an egg
• A tennis ball is about 1/2 cup
• A softball is around 2 cups
• A three-ounce steak is around the same size as a deck of cards
• One ounce of cheese is three dice
• A baseball is around the same size as 1/2 cup of pasta or rice
• Ping pong balls are about 2 tablespoons each

Jot them down, print them off, do what ya gotta do! Those are just a few examples. If you have others to share, please stop by our Shelf Cooking Facebook group and fill us in on your best secrets!

USE YOUR HANDS TO WEIGH FOOD WITHOUT A SCALE

This is the ultimate Swiss Army knife kind of hack. You don’t anything other than your hand to guesstimate the weight of your food! So, the next time your Airbnb doesn’t have a food scale, here are some rules of thumb:

• Measuring Meat & Fish – Your palm can fit about three ounces of protein, including chicken, fish, and beef. Heads up: three ounces of meat is the normal serving size for an adult!
• How to Measure Fresh Produce – Eight ounces of veggies or fruit is usually around the same size as your balled-up fist.
• Measuring Cheese – Sorry to share this news, but one serving size of cheese is roughly the size of your thumb. That’s about one ounce!

It doesn’t get much easier than this method! And remember, when you’re shelf cooking, you can use the recipe as a guide. Using what you have means modifying the portions, too, if you need to. So don’t sweat it if you’re off by an ounce or two!

USE YOUR PLATE TO WEIGH FOOD WITHOUT A SCALE

Here’s another fun trick! Place your food on a normal-sized dinner plate to estimate its weight. For this example, we’re using a 10.5-inch plate to guide our measurements. (That’s the average.) Assuming you have a dish that’s the same size, here are some guidelines to follow:

• 1/4 of a Plate – If your food takes up 1/4 of the plate, it’s safe to guess it’s around 1 to 1 1/2 cups or 8-12 ounces.
• 1/2 of a Plate: Does your food fill up half the plate? Then you’ve got 3 cups, which equals 1.5 pounds.

If you don’t want to guess at it, you can also buy portion-controlled plates on Amazon. They have a set of four plates for under $25. If healthy eating is your goal, it could be worth it!

DO YOU USE A SCALE OR MEASURE WITH YOUR HEART?

If none of these options float your boat, you can buy a food scale on Amazon for around $10. Not too shabby! There are fancier options for way more, but we say go for the budget-friendly option. A scale’s a scale, right?

Now we’re curious! How do you weigh your food? Do you prefer to use a scale or measure with your heart? Drop a comment below and let us know!

Looking for a few more clever tips and tricks?

Scale away!

How to Weigh Food

Build muscle, lose fat, maintain your weight

Whether your goal is to build muscle, lose fat, maintain your weight or just lose weight in general, accurately tracking your macros is key. You would be surprised how different a serving measured in grams is compared to a serving measured with a measuring cup.

For example, take dry pancake mix. A serving of XYZ pancake mix is 53 grams. The nutrition label estimates that is about a 1/2 cup. The problem is the amount of dry pancake mix you pack in your measuring cup will be different every time. Meaning sometimes you are consuming more calories and others less.

This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but if you do this for every meal it adds up and could be the reason you aren’t hitting your goals.

Contrarily, 53 grams will be the same amount of pancake mix every time. 53 grams will always be 1 serving. 52 of whatever is all 53 of whatever, Get IT! A half cup of cake mix can weigh out to be 1 serving and also it can be as much as 1 1/2 servings other times. That’s a difference of 95 calories (1 g fat, 15 g carbs, 7 g protein). That may not make a big difference if you only do that once, BUT if you measure inaccurately several times a day you could be going over your calories by as much as 400 or 500 calories a day.

You do not need to eat essential and nonessential amino acids at every meal, but getting a balance of them over the whole day is important. A diet based on a single plant item will not be adequate, but we no longer worry about pairing proteins (such as beans with rice) at a single meal. Instead we look at the adequacy of the diet overall throughout the day.

Bottom line: If you’re not using a food scale, you’re not hitting your macros.

If you want to be successful, invest in a food scale. They’re not very expensive, but they are so essential. Food scales are in expensive, and can measure in ounces & grams and has the “tare” function so it gets the job done. The “tare” function is a way of zeroing out the cup you are using to weight the food.

What types of food to weigh:

You want to weigh almost everything. This includes protein powder, pancake mix, flour, sugar, ketchup, rotisserie chicken, drumsticks, ribs, tortilla chips, cheese, cereal, fruit, etc.

The exception: you do not weigh liquids. The general consensus is that it is not accurate. Instead, just use a measuring cup that measures in Oz or a normal measuring cup if you know how to convert cups to ounces.

“Wet” food that you do weigh: ketchup, honey, any nut butter, sauces, dressings, basically if the serving size on the nutrition label is listed in grams, you should weigh it, if it’s listed in Oz or mL you should measure it.

Prepackaged foods:

When it comes to prepackaged foods, it’s up to you. There are a lot of differing opinions on this. I personally don’t like to be overly “strict” on my macro counting and will just trust the label on any prepackaged single serving foods. However, I do know of a lot of people who have noticed discrepancies between the actual weight of food in the single serving package and what the nutrition facts say it should weigh. Most notice that there is less than a full serving in the package. So, it’s up to you. I personally don’t think it’s something that you need to worry about UNLESS you are participating in a fitness competition of some sort where it is necessary to be extra strict.

Do you weigh before or after cooking?

It is more accurate to weigh meats & veggies raw. However, it really just depends on how you’re logging your food. You can use an app like MyFitnessPal to track our macros. MyFitnessPal (and probably other tracking apps) have food entries for both raw and cooked foods.

So, if you forgot to weigh your chicken before you cooked it, just make sure you’re logging the cooked weight as “cooked chicken.” MyFitnessPal usually has specific entries for the way you cooked your food as well (steamed, grilled, etc.) so be sure to choose the right one.

Veggies are the same deal. Track them as raw if you can (preferably using USDA entries) or steamed if they were steamed before you weighed them, etc.

How to weigh food with bones:

Simple, weigh it before you eat it and then again after you’re done. Now subtract the weight of the bones from the original weight and log that (make sure to log this entry as fully cooked, not raw).

How to weigh fruit:

It’s really tempting to just log your fruit as 1 small banana or 1 avocado without actually weighing. BUT this is just not accurate at all. When tracking macros, you want to be as accurate as you can be. This means you need to weigh your fruit. If you don’t eat the core, pit, or peel don’t count that in your weight. The easiest way to do this is to weigh your fruit as a whole, eat it and then weigh the portion you didn’t eat. Now subtract that from the original weight and you have the amount you did eat.

What if I’m cooking for my family?

Lets say you need to make 4 servings of rice. Using a food scale, weigh out 4 servings of rice (in grams) BEFORE you cook it. Next, cook it as you normally would. Weigh the cooked rice and divide that by 4. You now know how many grams are in a single serving of cooked rice so you can dish out the correct portion size for yourself.

It’s a little tricky to be super accurate when making large batches of food with multiple ingredients. The best-case scenario is that you cook all ingredients separately and dish them out on your plate one by one. But this isn’t always possible.

Reverse weighing your food:

If you eat things straight out of the container? I might have! In order to accurately track every random spoonful, you eat, you need to reverse weigh your food. This means put the container directly onto the food scale and zero it out by pressing the “tare” button.
Next, eat however many spoonful’s you’d like and watch your scale go into the negative. Just convert that negative number into a positive and you now know how much you ate. No more excuses for not tracking small bites and licks.

The Take-Away.

Benefits of weighing your food:
• Hit your macros and break through diet plateaus. (BIGGEST BENEFIT)

• Less dishes. You are not dirtying any measuring cups, etc. when you weigh your food. I just pour directly into the bowl on the food scale until I hit the number of grams I’m aiming for. Same goes for shakes. I just put the blender directly onto the food scale, and add ingredients, zero-ing out the scale after every new ingredient.

• No variation when making the same recipe. Ever make a recipe and it turns out different every time? That’s usually due to human error when measuring. You won’t have that problem anymore.

• At some point you will be an expert and will NOT need to weigh your food.

Why weighing your food can make a difference for your health

It’s easy to think that you’re eating correct portion sizes. You measure a salmon filet by the size of your palm and judge the peanut butter you spread on toast to be no more than a teaspoon.

Yet, studies have found that most people underestimate their portion sizes, especially for high-calorie foods such as peanut butter, nuts, sauces and salad dressings. And if you’re hungry, research suggests that you’ll miscalculate portion sizes to a greater degree than you would after eating a meal.

Studies have also revealed that dieters who measure their food are more successful at losing weight compared to those who don’t.

Enter the food scale, a tool I often recommend to my clients.

If you’re embarking on a meal plan to lose weight, using a digital food scale will ensure you’re not consuming more calories than you think you are. If you’re logging your food intake on an app, weighing food portions will allow you to accurately track your calorie intake.

The food scale advantage

Unless you’re really good at it, the eyeball method of sizing up portions can be off, sometimes by more than 100 calories.

No doubt you’ve heard that three ounces of chicken, fish or meat is the size of your palm. Yet we don’t all have the same hand size.

A palm’s worth of salmon could weigh three ounces, but it could also be six ounces, delivering an extra 155 calories that you don’t account for.

When it comes to whole fruits and vegetables, terms like small, medium and large are subjective. A medium-sized sweet potato weighs 114 grams and has 100 calories while a large sweet potato weighs 180 grams and contains 160 calories.

Measuring cups are quicker and more convenient than a food scale. Keep in mind, though, that the amount of food that fits into one cup can vary, especially for calorie-dense foods like cooked grains, nuts and fruit.

The calories in one cup of quinoa, for instance, will depend on how much of it you pack down in the measuring cup. One cup of diced avocado will likely have more calories than one cup of larger chunks.

These calorie differences may seem small, but they can add up over the course of three meals, day after day, enough to slow down – or stall – weight loss.

A digital food scale isn’t just a weight-loss tool. Weighing protein-rich foods can ensure you’re eating enough of the nutrient to help build muscle in the gym.

Learning portion sizes by weighing foods will also make it easier to recognize right-sized portions when eating in restaurants.

What to weigh, what to measure

If you’re starting a weight-loss plan, weigh calorie-dense foods (e.g., meat, fish, cheese, nuts, pasta, grains) at least initially. Get to know what three ounces of cooked chicken (85 g), one cup of cooked penne (107 g) or spaghetti (124 g, not packed) and one-quarter cup of whole almonds (35 g) looks like.

Keep the food scale on the kitchen counter so you’ll be reminded to weigh your meals.

Use measuring cups and spoons for liquids such as milk and juice, cooking oils, salad dressings and nut butters.

After weighing and measuring foods for a few weeks you’ll be able to eyeball portion sizes more accurately. Pull out the food scale every so often, though, to make sure your portion sizes haven’t crept up, which can happen over time.

Portion control tips

Not everyone wants, or needs, to weigh the foods they eat. And let’s face it, overestimating by half an ounce of chicken or 2 tablespoons of rice isn’t going to prevent you from achieving results.

Another approach: Serve meals on smaller luncheon-sized plates (8 to 9 inches in diameter). The plate will look full and you’ll end up eating less.

Divide your plate into quarters. Fill one-quarter with protein, one-quarter with whole grain or potato and the remaining half with cooked vegetables and salad.

In some cases, weighing foods isn’t recommended. Weighing and measuring foods can become an unhealthy obsession for people with disordered eating.

I also don’t recommend that parents weigh and measure foods in front of their children. Doing so can influence a child’s perceptions about food and healthy eating.

Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based private practice dietitian, is Director of Food and Nutrition at Medcan.

Should You Weigh Food Raw or Cooked?

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Feb 11, 2021

When tracking macros and calories or gauging portion sizes, whether you should be weighing food raw or cooked is important to consider. The nutrient content of 4 ounces of raw beef and 4 ounces of cooked beef is NOT the same and can cause some large discrepancies in perceived calorie and nutrient intake, especially with foods that are consumed fairly frequently.

In most cases, it’s absolutely going to be best and the most accurate to weigh food raw. Depending on the food, food will change density pretty drastically during the cooking process. Exactly how much it changes will depend on the cooking method, cooking time, temperature, etc. so it’s difficult to come up with an exact general conversion for what a given raw amount of food should weigh when it’s cooked, every time. It will vary from case to case.

Unless otherwise specified, nutrition labels will yield the nutrition information for the weight of the food as is. If you are buying food in a pre-cooked package, you don’t have to worry about the weight before it was prepared and cooked. You would weigh it straight out of the package and eat it. If you’re preparing your own food, however, there are some other things to consider. Let’s take meat, for example. Most of the time, you are buying your meat raw (or frozen) in a package. The nutrition information listed on the package is for the indicated weight of the meat as is (raw). It’s very common for people to cook their meat and THEN weigh out their desired portion, for example, 4 ounces. But the nutrition information entered is usually going to be for 4 ounces of the raw meat, which will yield much less (weight wise) once the meat is cooked. If the meat yields 4 ounces cooked, it’s actually probably closer to 5 or 6 ounces (raw weight). This difference of a few hundred calories will certainly add up over the course of the day, week and month across all of your meals. This could easily create a problem and lead to one thinking they are eating less than they actually are. So, weigh your meat raw for accurate portion sizing. That’s great, if you are only cooking one portion. But what if you are cooking in bulk or making a meal for multiple people at once? You have a few options here.

First, let’s go over the most accurate (though a bit more tedious and time consuming) way to calculate the weight of cooked meat; to weigh before and after. For example, if you have a 2lb (24 ounce) package of chicken that you’re baking all at once, you weight the meat before cooking (yielding 24 ounces). Then, once the meat is done cooking, weigh the meat again. Let’s say it weighs 16 ounces after it’s cooked. Now, you want to find out how much of the cooked meat you should measure out if you want an ounce (raw/true weight) of meat. To do this, you would take 16 (ounces cooked) and divide it by 24 (ounces raw). This comes out to about .67. This means that for every one ounce of meat you want to dish up, you should weigh out .67 ounces of cooked meat (a 4 ounce serving of meat would then be 2.68 ounces. See why it matters?). Remember that cooked weight will vary on an individual basis, so it wouldn’t be accurate to say that 2.68 ounces of cooked meat will always yield 4 ounces of raw (true weight) meat. This process should be repeated each time you cook for the most accurate results. The above would be the ideal way to get the most accurate results. However, sometimes it may not be feasible for whatever reason. If this is the case, you can also estimate. As a rule of thumb, meat usually loses about 25-30% of its weight in the cooking process. If you are eating meat that you didn’t cook (so couldn’t weigh raw), or you couldn’t weigh and generate the exact calculations for whatever reason, you can assume that every ounce of meat you want should yield about 0.7-0.75 ounces of cooked meat.

There are some foods that will actually increase in weight during the cooking process such as pasta, rice and other grains. Again, it will be the most accurate to weigh these foods raw.

Let’s use rice as our example here. A serving on the package is indicated as 1/4 cup or 47 grams (dry weight). If you’re cooking for one, you can simply cook this amount of rice to yield one serving. If you’re cooking in a larger batch, you can weigh the total amount of rice before and after cooking again. Let’s say you are cooking 235 grams (raw) of rice, or 5 servings. After you cook the rice, it weighs about 660 grams. So, to yield one 1/4 cup (raw measurement) serving of rice as per the nutrition label, you would need to take 660 and divide it by 5, which is 132 grams of cooked rice per serving.

It’s far more common for things that absorb water in the cooking process, like grains and legumes, to be measured by volume vs weight. This may be more acceptable for these food items as there isn’t quite as much of a discrepancy in weight or volume across cooking methods. If you were to look up the nutrition information for 1 cup of rice, that’s typically going to be for 1 cup of cooked rice unless otherwise specified. The same would apply to most other foods that absorb water when cooked. This is a perfectly fine way to measure portions for these foods as well. It won’t be quite as exact or accurate as the aforementioned method, but the discrepancies will be far less than that of meat (and other foods that lose water in the cooking process) and oftentimes it may be more practical to measure this way for these foods. As you can see, the cooking process can drastically change the weight or volume of foods in a variety of ways. For this reason, it’s going to be the most accurate and standardized to weigh and calculate nutrition information based on the raw weight of foods. If you aren’t able to do that, there are some general formulas you can use to make fairly educated estimates about your portion sizes, even if they aren’t perfect. The most important thing is that you stay consistent and try to be as accurate as you can be whenever you can be.

CrossFit South Bend | How to Weigh and Measure Your Food

In this video we give a practical demonstration of how to weigh and measure your food, with our guest star Lila the puppy.

Do you need to weigh and measure your food to be healthy? Definitely not.

As we’ve said in many other videos, health can be achieved by focusing on food quality and adequate micronutrients (zinc, magnesium, Vitamins C, D, B12, etc.)

However, weighing and measuring your food can be useful for things like getting lean, gaining size and strength, and for athletic performance. Also, while weighing and measuring your food isn’t strictly speaking necessary for health, there are some cool things you can find out that directly relate to your health like how much fiber, sugar, carbs, protein, and fat you’re consuming on a daily basis. It can also tell you whether you are over-eating or under-eating relative to your goals.

What do you need to weigh and measure your food? Two things:
-A food scale (pretty much any food scale will do)
-An app for like MyFitness Pal to enter the weights in (there are other apps as well)

How do you weigh and measure your food? For most foods there are three steps.
-Step 1: Put raw food that you want to measure on top of the scale (usually on top of parchment paper, aluminum foil, a plate, etc. so the food isn’t directly on the scale for safe food prep)
-Step 2: Check the number on the scale (this could be in grams or ounces, grams are usually more precise)
-Step 3: Enter that number in the food amount section of your calorie counting app like MyFitnessPal.

Repeat these steps for all foods.

Do you need to weigh and measure foods for the rest of your life? Absolutely not. But taking a 3-4 week period to get data on your most common 80-90% of meals can be a super useful exercise.

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Transcript

Robby here from CFSB Nutrition and Crossfit South Bend. Today, I’m here with Lilah, our new addition to the family. She wanted to do a video on weighing and measuring food, so I’m going to do that for her. But I’m going to put her down for now because she’ll want to be held for too long. So she’ll be wondering around while we’re doing the video. Say “hi” Lilah. Cool. Alright. Let’s get to it. So people have been asking me for a video on how to actually, practically weigh and measure your food. So let’s talk about how to do this. So the first thing we’re going to start with is protein, and then we’ll move onto the vegetables. Which I’ve already pre-prepared. So it might be surprising that I’d start with protein you actually don’t need to weigh or measure, but I mention this because this is actually going to make things a lot easier for you. This is one pound of ground pork, just split up, on a sheet pan with parchment paper. I have half of this for breakfast and half of this for lunch. I don’t need to weigh and measure it because it’s already measured as one pound. If I were going to have quarters, I could just easily enter it as quarters. So, that’s a really easy way where you don’t actually need to put it on the scale and measure it. So that’s ready to go. Put it in the oven. On here, on your My Fitness Pal what you would do is, so I’ve already preloaded this so you guys didn’t have to watch me search for it. I’d click my all fresh natural ground pork, and my serving size is one ounce and I have eight ounces of it. If you measured it out on a scale, that would be 227 grams, but again, if you know it’s a one pound brick, you don’t need to weigh and measure it out. Okay. So. That was protein that was pretty easy to know how to split up. What would you do about a chicken breast? So, let me show you here with this. So I’ve got my scale over here that you can come around and see, and you’ll notice is says 738 on it right now. I’m going to zero that out. And then, normally I would just use my hands to do this, but since I’m going to be handling vegetables, and I don’t wanna have to have you guys watch me wash my hands. I’m just going to put this on here with the tong. Hopefully it doesn’t slide down for Lilah to eat. And then I put it on the scale. And that says 242 grams, so I would do here in My Fitness Pal for dinner, is my boneless skinless chicken breast. The serving size is one gram. I change that to 242, and it automatically tells me that’s 55.5 grams of protein, 3.2 grams of fat, so on and so forth. Check, that’s all set. Okay. What if I were doing multiple chicken breasts? All I do is I just zero this out, and then I just add the other chicken breast, just like I added the first one. Okay. So, just put it on there. 224. Zero it out again. And I can do the same thing with this third one. So it’s saying that’s 134. So if you are doing a meal for bunch of you know if you’re doing meal prep for a bunch of different meals or for a family or something like that that can be a good way to just do things all at once. Another important point here guys that I want to make is when you are measuring food specifically protein but also vegetables you want to weigh and measure them raw. That is what the macronutrients values will be listed for on the back of your food, that’s what you find in My Fitness Pal. It’s going to shrink after you cook it, so you want to weigh and measure it raw. Okay. I’m going to pop this right here, in this oven. Right there I guess. Okay. So that is, the protein. So this is going to be my protein basically for the day. Now let’s talk about produce. So. Got another sheet pan here ready. And what we’re going to do is the following. So you’ll see over here, I’ve chopped up basically all my veggies for the day. My starch is in the former Japanese sweet potatoes, my kale, my red cabbage. And what I’m going to do now is I’m going to saute this kale. So I’ve got my stove top preheated here. I’m going to put the kale on the sheet pan, and it’s telling me that it’s 150 grams, so all I would do here is I would go to my kale and it’s one gram measurement and I would change that to 150. And I’m good to go. Do you need to weigh and measure your kale? Not really. Do you really need to weigh and measure anything? No, not really. From a health prospective, you can be perfectly healthy without weighing and measuring anything. But for performance, aesthetics, for certain things in health, like the among of fiber you’re having per day, or the amount of sugar, it can be useful. But just to have consistency with weighing and measuring everything I like to just do that. Now, what I’m going to do here is I’m not actually going to weigh the fat of course, but I am going to measure it. I’m going to put a tablespoon of oil into this tablespoon right here. I’m going to drop it into the pan. You can do this with ghee. You can do it with coconut oil. You can do it with whatever it is you’d like to do. And then I’m just going to take this parchment paper toss it in here and that’s going to start sauteing. And I’m going to put a couple of scoops in here of some salt. Oh, Lilah you like the Kale? Yeah? Lilah likes to hang around and wait for someone to drop them so she can eat them. Alright. So while that’s heating up, I’m going to show you guys the next thing. So the next thing is gong to be my starch for the day. So, in this case, I’m gonna use Japanese sweet potatoes. So I’m gonna to zero my scale out. I’m gonna put one set over there other set over here. Okay. So, that’s roughly you know, it’s saying 376, so that’s, you know, basically a little over one eighty per. So what I do here this is kinda a useful thing I do to just make it so I know, ya know, the rough amount for each portion. You take one tablespoon of oil, for this breakfast portion here, drop it right over that. Do another one for this right here. And then get your salt amounts. You don’t have to weigh and measure your salt. I actually do. Not because I am trying to get too little, but because I wanna make sure I get an adequate amount. Salt is very important for overall health, performance, and electrolytes, and a whole bunch of other things. And then, I just mix it up over here. Mix it up over there. And I’m good to go. So what I’m going to do here. Just get a paper towel for my hands real quick. And I’m going to make sure I’ve got Lilah in check. And then just going to put this in the oven like so. And that’s good to go. So, one other one I wanted to show you is. What would you do if you had two vegetables on the same sheet pan? How would you do that? So, I’m just gonna grab this other sheet pan over here. And then and zero it out. I put this set of Japanese sweet potatoes on, I put that set and that’s telling me about 212, so that’s kinda my dinner amount for the carbs. And then for dinner, I could just go in here, and you know, enter 212 right in there. And then that’s telling me that it’s 44 grams of carbs for those sweet potatoes. And then, I zero it out again. And. Put this on here. And you can come around and see that this is saying about 323. And again all I do with that is I would just put that in right here in my My Fitness Pal. Okay. So in that case it’s 100 grams of, I’m just doing three point two three, but it’s the same exact thing. Now for this, since I’ve got two sets of vegetables I just put two tablespoons of oil. So one tablespoon. Two tablespoons. Put the amount of salt I would typically put on two different vegetables. And then just toss it all up. So it’s ready to go. So you don’t have ta individualize it like I did the other set of sweet potatoes. You can make it where you’re doing bulk vegetables for a number of different people. If you were doing this in a saute pan, you can just drop this into the saute pan. If you were doing it in an Instapot, you can drop it into an Instapot. You don’t need to use a sheet pan and parchment paper. But that happens to be what I use for a lot of this stuff. Just because it tends to be easy. Okay. I’m just going to throw that in there. So as you can probably tell this is not all for one meal. This is just me prepping meals basically for the day, so that I’m ready to go. Last thing I’m going to show you guys is how to do this with your fruit. Okay. For this, I’m just going to use a bowl. I’m gonna put the bowl on top of the scale. And. I typically have about 125 grams of blueberries. When I have blueberries. So, all I do here is, you could use your hands, I just like to kinda slide it in there like so. And you can just see that the scale is goin’ up as I’m doing it. And then right as I get to right around 125. It’s a little bit higher. So all I just do is I just take a couple out. And basically around 125. So. Hopefully that gives you a good sense of how to weigh and measure stuff. Now again, you do not need to do this for health, but a lot of people are getting interested because they want to optimize their performance, or the aesthetics, and there are certain things for health, like your fiber consumption, or your sugar consumption, or your protein amount that can be useful to optimize your health. But you don’t, strictly speaking, need to do it for health. But hopefully now, you guys have a good sense of how to weigh and measure things. Thanks so much for tuning in. And we’ll see you guys next time.

Nutrition Strategies for Clients Who Don’t Want to Weigh or Track Food

Weighing and tracking food (in an app like MyFitnessPal or MyMacros) can be really useful for anyone trying to achieve health and body composition goals. 

Here are a few of the ways weighing and tracking can be helpful:

• Can build awareness and understanding of true portion sizes 
• Can create a deeper understanding of how your body responds to different levels of calories and macronutrients
• When working with a coach, it allows the coach to see exactly what you’re eating each day

But—not everyone feels comfortable using these tools. 

In fact, not everyone should use these tools.

And this is okay! Weighing and tracking food aren’t the only ways to help clients make progress toward their goals.

With some creativity, you can come up with effective, individualized nutrition strategies that both you and your client will enjoy. 

Below, we’ll outline the type of clients who dislike weighing/tracking food as well as those who probably should avoid these practices. We’ll also outline different strategies for how to coach these clients. 

Some Clients Won’t Want to Weigh & Track Food—And That’s Okay

As mentioned above, food scales and tracking apps are excellent tools for making progress toward health and body composition goals.

But they’re just that—tools. They aren’t the “be-all, end-all”.

Each of your clients is unique, and sometimes they will straight-up tell you that they feel uncomfortable with, or resistant to, weighing and tracking food.

This doesn’t mean they are a ‘lost cause’ or that you cannot help them—you absolutely can! 

It’s also worth noting that some personality types naturally resist feeling restricted.

For example, check out the book The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. You can have your clients take a free quiz to determine which ‘tendency’ they fall under.

Oftentimes, “Rebel” clients will be particularly resistant to weighing and tracking their food. “Questioner” clients might question the usefulness of it.

This doesn’t mean anything is wrong with these clients. A skilled nutrition coach will work with this information rather than fighting against it.

Some Clients Aren’t Quite Ready for Weighing & Tracking

Some clients will tell you they don’t want to weigh or track food. And with some clients, you will get a gut sense that they are not quite ready for it.

For example, perhaps you have a client who is brand new to any kind of nutritional information. They’ve never heard of the different macronutrients. They’ve never monitored their food intake in any way before.

Many of these clients absolutely can learn how to weigh and track food, given the right support and guidance.

But if you work with a client for a period of time and get the sense that weighing and tracking food is causing them a great deal of stress, frustration and discouragement, it’s worth having a conversation with them about trying different methods aside from weighing and tracking.

You want your clients to feel like they are having small victories each week.

So if your client seems defeated and disappointed each week due to struggles with weighing and tracking, it’s up to you to step in and come up with a creative alternative.

Weighing & Tracking Food Isn’t a Great Idea for Certain Clients

Some clients probably shouldn’t weigh or track food. It’s up to you as the coach to closely monitor your client’s language and behavior around weighing and tracking to determine whether your client might be better off trying a different route.

Here are some ‘red flags’ to watch out for that may suggest weighing and tracking food could cause more harm than good:

• Your client has a history of an eating disorder.
• Your client seems extremely focused on hitting their macros perfectly. They may even insist on having exactly zero grams of each macro left at the end of each day.
• Upon having an ‘off’ day with macros, your client exhibits a negative response that feels disproportionate to the mistake they made (in other words, they completely fall apart or beat themselves up after what appears to you as a small mistake).

It’s important to really get to know these clients. Listen to them deeply. Read between the lines of what they tell you. Your goal is to understand their relationship with food.

There is a risk that these clients will become very attached to their food scale and tracking app—to the point where they feel they cannot function without them.

Chances are they will be very attached to other numbers, too, including their scale weight. This type of client is frequently a perfectionist.

The best way to handle this kind of situation is to be transparent and honest with your client.

Gently let them know that you’ve noticed that weighing and tracking food seems to be causing them a lot of stress. Recommend working together to add a bit of flexibility into their routine.

For example, you may ask them to have one estimated meal per week (where they do not use their food scale).

Clients like this might initially be resistant to your recommendations. These reactions tend to be based in fear. Just continue to listen to them, validate their concerns, be compassionate, and take things slowly.

Alternative methods for monitoring intake without weighing or tracking

Now that you have determined your client will not be strictly weighing or tracking their food, the question becomes: how can you help them make progress without the food scale or tracking app?

Below, we’ll outline several different options. The right choice will depend on your specific client’s preferences, goals and circumstances.

You can even combine two or more of the methods below to come up with the plan that best fits your client’s needs.

1. The balanced plate method

Rather than having them weigh and track their food, you can help clients learn how to build a balanced plate for each of their meals. 

This method is effective and useful because you can customize your instructions and recommendations for each individual client. 

For example, if your client is not very active, you might encourage them to minimize starchy carbs until after exercise so their body will use them most effectively. 

On the other hand, if your client is extremely active, you might recommend carbs in every meal throughout the day, especially before and after training. 

Some recommendations that tend to work for most clients when building balanced plates include: 

• Devote the biggest section of your plate to nutrient-dense, high fiber, low-calorie vegetables.  
• Make sure one-quarter of your plate is made up of protein. You can explain that protein helps with appetite control and maintaining lean mass.
• Recommend that they include some healthy fats (perhaps ⅛ of their plate, or you can explain it using your client’s thumb for reference—more on that below). 
• Encourage your client to select their plate size based on their body size (smaller plates if they are a smaller person and larger plates if they are a larger person).
• Suggest putting down their fork when they are 80 percent full, not when the plate is empty.
• Suggest choosing whole (less-processed) foods, with local and organic selections when possible.

You can even draw a picture of your recommended balanced plate that has been personalized for your client.

2. Using hands to measure portion sizes 

You can help your client become familiar with appropriate portion sizes for their body and their goals by using their hands.  

Your client may not always have access to a food scale, but they’ll always have their hands available, so this method is convenient and useful for the rest of their lives. 

Here how it works:

• Your client’s palm determines their protein portions.
• Your client’s fist determines their veggie portions.
• Your client’s cupped hand determines their carb portions.
• Your client’s thumb determines their fat portions.

You can customize the specific recommendations for your clients in terms of their portion sizes at each meal. 

For example: for most men, a sufficient protein portion size might be two palm-sized portions. (But if your client is very active with a lot of muscle mass, they might need more.) 

This is where you can use your coaching experience and expertise to set up the right plan for your client’s body type and goals.

3. Ask your client to take pictures of their meals to send to you 

This is a very useful method that can be combined with either (or both!) of the methods listed above.

When coaching clients using an online/remote format, seeing photos of their plates can be very helpful in ensuring you two are on the same page.

Ask your client to take photos of each of their meals (and snacks) for one full day. They can email or text them to you.

You can offer feedback, suggestions and tips based on their meal photos (and, of course, make sure to offer positive encouragement that they’re on the right track!).

4. Focus on other habits like drinking more water, getting more sleep, activity, managing stress

There are many important health habits that will help your clients feel better and live healthier lives. Weighing & tracking food is just one habit you can work on together.

Have a conversation with your client about other health habits they’d like to focus on.

For example, how much water are they drinking each day? Could you help them work up to drinking half their bodyweight in ounces of water daily?

How much sleep is your client getting? Do they have a consistent bedtime? What adjustments could you help them make to their nighttime routine?

Is your client stressed? Can you suggest some stress management techniques? For example, they could try a guided meditation app or sign up for a yoga class.  

You get the idea! There are many habits you and your client can focus on beyond weighing and tracking food.

5. Create your own customized guidelines

When it comes to weighing and tracking food, the choices don’t have to be ‘all or nothing’. You can work together with your client to come up with your own individualized guidelines and program.

For example, perhaps a client feels comfortable tracking their food but they don’t love using the food scale. You could give them tools for how to estimate their portion sizes and log those into their tracking app. 

Another idea: your client could weigh and track food on some days but not every day.

This can be a great strategy for clients who are getting burnt out on weighing and tracking food. You could encourage them to eat “as if” they were tracking on the non-tracked days.

Positives of Not Weighing & Tracking Food

As a coach, it’s worth acknowledging the reality that not having your client weigh and track their food has pros and cons.

There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to coach your clients—it’s all about using your experience (and intuition) to determine the best path for each individual client. 

Let’s lay out some of the pros for skipping the food scale and tracking app.

One positive: using the alternative methods above may help your client build more sustainable lifelong habits.

They may be inclined to place more focus on high-quality, nutrient-dense foods as opposed to simply trying to hit certain macro targets.

This may help your client adopt the mindset of building healthy habits vs. being totally focused on numbers.

Another positive of not weighing & tracking food: it may allow you and your client to look at their lifestyle from a ‘bigger picture perspective’.

You can work together to select habits to focus on each week rather than directing the majority of your time and attention in each check-in to macros and food logs.

In addition, it’s worth remembering that you and your client can shift the game plan at any time. 

If you and your client determine that it’s the right course of action, they can begin tracking their food.

That is the beauty of 1-on-1 personalized coaching—you’re never ‘tied down’ to a single approach. You can experiment and try new things!

Drawbacks of Not Weighing & Tracking Food

Now let’s outline some of the drawbacks around not weighing and tracking food.

One potential drawback: your clients may not see results as efficiently as they would if you could see their total daily intake and the macronutrient breakdown.

As a coach, it can be hard to know what is going on with your client’s body and progress if you don’t have data to work with.

Most clients have body composition goals like gaining muscle or losing body fat, and it’s very helpful to have data letting you know whether your client is in a caloric deficit, surplus or close to maintenance levels.

This slower rate of progress or lack of results may cause your clients to become frustrated. Most clients really hope to see some evidence of physical progress and change.

In conclusion, we encourage you to get creative with your clients and remember that one method of achieving results won’t work for everybody. Don’t be afraid to ‘think outside the box’ and experiment—you never know what might end up being the perfect solution for your client!

If you enjoyed these coaching tips, we know you will love the WAG Nutrition Coach Certification Program.

How to properly weigh cereals, pasta and meat when calculating calories | Sports Tips

Just started counting calories, and do not understand how to count cereals, pasta and meat? Now I will explain everything in a short and accessible way!

By and large, products can be taken into account both raw and cooked. But there is one BUT. The manufacturer does not know how you will prepare this product, therefore, on the packaging, he writes the energy value of what is currently in the package.If this is cereal, then KBZHU is written for 100 g of dry cereal. If it is canned food, then KBZHU is written on 100 g of EVERYTHING inside, that is, for example, together with butter, which you are unlikely to eat. If it is legs, then it is meat and skin with bones and hair.

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Consider the example of cereals

The manufacturer indicated that 100 g of cereal contains, for example, 330 kcal.But when we cook 100 g of cereal, then the finished porridge turns out several times more. Let’s say 200 g of porridge came out of 100 g of cereal. Does this mean that the calorie content has doubled? No! This means that all the same 330 kcal were “spread” on 200 g of porridge. That is, in our case, 100 g of cereal = 200 g of porridge. Because the manufacturer does not know in what proportion of water you will cook cereals. 1/2 or 1/3, or maybe you just think of frying cereals without water. Or cook it in milk or wine …

The same story with pasta.The manufacturer does not know how much water you used, how you prepared it, etc. It indicates the calorie content of the dry product. And in an amicable way, take into account the calorie content of a dry product. But if space laziness haunts you, you can choose not such and such groats in the program for calculating calories, but porridge. Only from the list of possible methods of cooking porridge, choose the average calorie.

Dear subscribers, Yandex.Zen works in such a way that even if an article is useful and there are few likes, it is not shown.I am grateful to everyone who does not forget to put a thumbs up and help us become better!

Either if you are not so lazy a priest, or cook porridge for the whole family, then do this:

– weigh the cereal before cooking, for example, 300 g;

– cooked and weighed all the ready-made porridge, for example, it turned out 860 g;

– 860 we divide by 300 and a certain coefficient of “swelling” is obtained, which in our case will be 2. 9;

– We weigh our portion of ready-made porridge, for example, 100 g, and divide them by our coefficient 2.9, we get 35 g.That is, for 100 g of porridge, we needed 35 g of dry cereal;

– we look at the package for the calorie content of cereals per 100 g, and calculate the calorie content for our 35 g.

Gotovchenko!

Exactly the same story with meat and fish. Weigh in a thawed and uncooked form in an amicable way. We took 100 g of chicken fillet, boiled (fried, steamed), and, for example, 65 g of meat remained. But the calories did not dissolve, KBZhU in these 65 g is the same as in 100 g of raw meat. Yes, perhaps some part got fried, evaporated and lost, but we will not take this into account, and this is not such a big error.Therefore, KBZHU from 100 g “shrank” in 65 g.

Because the manufacturer, again, does not know how you will cook – fry, steam, eat raw, and so on. Therefore, the manufacturer’s task is to maximize the weight, hence the frost, which gives excess weight. Fully thawed, then weighed!

Conclusions:

– for good, weigh all products raw, defrosted and uncooked. And it is better to weigh yourself before eating, after going to the toilet.

Good to everyone and appreciate each other!

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Learn how to weigh products without weights at home?

Every day in the kitchen we prepare everyday meals and do not even think about the correct proportion of the ingredients to be poured, but as soon as we decide to try a new recipe, everything becomes much more complicated. To get the result exactly the taste and consistency described in the recommendations, it is necessary to cook, strictly observing the weight and ratio of each ingredient.It is at this moment that the question often becomes relevant, how to weigh products without scales at home? A kitchen scale is a very convenient thing, but not every home has it, so housewives often have to use certain tricks to determine the weight of ingredients for a recipe.

Important Information

Every kitchen has a glass, teaspoon and tablespoon. It is with their help that you most often have to measure products. It is only important to know in advance the volume of the glass, since they are 200 or 250 ml.New dishes, as a rule, have a larger size, and the faceted glass known for generations holds strictly 200 ml to the rim.

How to weigh food without scales with spoons? In this case, liquids should be poured strictly to the brim, viscous products should be collected with a “slide”, and bulk products should be collected with a small top. The following standard weights apply only to those dry substances that are freely placed in spoons and glasses, without tamping.

It should also be remembered that cereals and any loose materials must be dry before weighing.Vegetables – washed and peeled, also chopped, and, if necessary, measure out an amount equal to the pieces. The same recommendations apply to fruits. Before weighing meat without scales, the product must not be washed so that it is not saturated with water. If the recipe uses only pulp, without fat and bones, then it is only necessary to weigh it, after separating the desired piece, rinsing and be sure to blot it with a napkin.

The secret for a large volume

If the weight of liquids and bulk ingredients can be easily determined using spoons or a glass, then how to weigh large products without scales remains a question.In this case, pots or bowls should be used as measuring containers, the volume of which is known and measured in liters.

Having tightly packed the necessary ingredients into them, you can approximately determine their weight by comparing with the volume of the container.

If a more accurate measurement is required, prepare 2 saucepans of such a size that one fits freely into the other. Pour water into a large container and place it in the sink. Pour exactly one kilogram of sugar, salt or other product that is in the kitchen in exact weight into a smaller saucepan.Now the small container must be lowered into the large one so that the water from the lower pan reaches the edges of the upper one. So how to weigh products without scales from scrap materials and what does sugar have to do with it? Now it should be poured, put in a small container what, in fact, needs to be weighed, and also lowered into a saucepan with the same water. As soon as the liquid reaches the edges, it means that there is exactly a kilogram of the required product in the upper container.

Volume of liquids

In this case, weighing is not even necessary, since all pouring ingredients are indicated in recipes in milliliters, not grams.To determine their required volume, you will need a measuring cup. If you can’t find it in the kitchen either, then an ordinary faceted one, a tablespoon or a teaspoon for small scales will do.

It is important to remember that the same volume of different liquids will always weigh differently. For example, in a glass of water there will always be as many milliliters as corresponds to its volume, but there is necessarily less vegetable oil, since its density is less.

Approximate standards

If you have no time to delve into such nuances, then you can be guided by approximate recommendations on how to weigh products without scales.According to them, 5 g of liquids, 4 g of cereals, 10 g of salt or sugar and 3 g of flour are placed in a teaspoon. A tablespoon holds 20 g of liquids, the same amount of cereals, 15 g of salt or sugar and 25 g of flour. This applies only to a spoon with a medium slide, and if, when collecting bulk, the excess easily rolls off by itself, then with flour everything is more complicated. You can also pick up a spoon with a slide of 5-7 cm, since its powder consistency simply will not allow the compacted product to crumble. Having typed such an amount, it should be understood that the flour will weigh 35-40 g.

In a standard glass of water or milk there will be 200 grams, vegetable oil 250 grams, cereals and other bulk materials – 200 grams, and flour to the rim – 180 grams.

Determining the weight of vegetables

Sometimes all the above recommendations do not help to approximately weigh the food without scales. How can vegetables be placed in a glass or saucepan? After all, an empty space is necessarily formed between them, distorting the final result. To determine the weight of such products, the standard for their gramming is often used.So, a head of white cabbage weighs on average 1.1-1.5 kg, although in the cold season you can also find heads of cabbage weighing 4-5 kg ​​on the shelves. One potato tuber on average takes 100 g, onion – 70 g, carrot – 75 g, beet – 100-150 g, tomato – 75-100 g, cucumber 50-100 g, eggplant – 150-200 g, celery root – 40 -60 g, cauliflower – 800 g, radish – 70-100 g, parsley root – 50 g

Standards for fruits and berries

Recommendations on how to weigh products without scales at home contain approximate values ​​for popular berries and fruits.So:

• medium apple – 100-150 g;
• pear – 120-150 g;
• quince – 150-200 g;
• banana – 100-200 g;
• orange – 100-150 g;
• lemon – up to 100 g;
• figs – 40 g;
• plum – 30 g;
• apricot – 20-30 g.

As for berries, it is better to measure their weight with a glass or spoon. A standard glass container with a volume of 200 ml will fit:

• strawberries – 120 g;
• raspberries – 150 g;
• cherries or cherries – 130 g;
• blueberries – 160 g;
• blackberries – 150 g;
• cranberries – 120 g;
• blueberries – 160 g;
• lingonberries – 110 g;
• currants – 120-140 g;
• mulberries – 150 g;
• gooseberries – 170 g.

Liquids and viscous products

How to weigh products without scales that can completely fill the container space? This shouldn’t be a problem at all. Measured containers, spoons or glasses are used. A teaspoon holds:

• 5 g of water, vinegar, cream, milk, any juice and melted butter;
• 3 g vegetable oil;
• 4 g margarine, melted;
• 7 g berry puree or liqueur;
• 8 g tomato sauce;
• 9 g of liquid honey;
• 10 g sour cream, tomato paste;
• 12 g of condensed milk or jam;
• 15 g jam;
• 20 g honey or jam.

The same products in the same order will take 18 g, 20 g, 15 g, 20 g, 25 g, 30 g, 25 g, 30 g, 40 g and 45 g in a tablespoon, respectively. and the same products in a new container take up the weight no longer in ascending order. With the measurement in glasses, a similar situation develops, therefore, it is definitely impossible to calculate how many grams in a large container, relying on the data of teaspoons, the result will be only approximate.

So, in a faceted glass, the full volume up to the rim is 200 ml and it will take exactly water, milk, cream, vinegar and juice.Sour cream in the same container will already be 210 g. Vegetable oil, melted margarine or butter – 180-190 g, tomato sauce – 180 g, jam – 185 g, melted fat – 245 g, jam – 280 g, berry puree – 300 g, and honey – 330 g.

Loose

For cereals and other products, there are also certain weights according to the volumes of containers used for measuring.

A teaspoon holds 10 g of salt, sugar, egg powder, starch and flour. In the same spoon, you can measure 7 g of coffee or citric acid, 9 g of cocoa, 12 g of baking soda, 5 g of dry gelatin or poppy seeds.

A tablespoon will respectively measure the weight of the same products in the same order: 30 g, 25 g, 25 g, 30 g, 30 g, 20 g, 25 g, 28 g, 15 g and 18 g.

Cereals as as a rule, they take 4 grams in a teaspoon, in a dining room 20-25 g, and in a glass 150-170 g.

In general, a glass of 200 g can hold only 150 g of salt and starch, 180 g of sugar, 135 g of poppy seeds, ground nuts 140 g, and powdered sugar – 160 g.

Spices, spices and seasonings

It is very important when preparing a new dish to weigh the herbs correctly, as their excess can completely ruin the final result.So, 1 gram of bay leaves is about 10 medium leaves. A gram of pepper is 25 peas, and 1 gram of a clove is equal to 15 of its heads. Powdered spices should be measured out with a teaspoon. It will contain 8 g of cinnamon, 3 g of mustard, 4 g of cloves, 2 g of ginger, 4-5 g of allspice, 3 g of red and black

Products for a diet

The question of how to weigh products without scales for a diet is very relevant … In order to correctly calculate the calories consumed, they have to determine the weight of not only raw materials, but also prepared meals or products that are immediately ready to eat.Allowing yourself to snack on cookies in a package, you can easily calculate the weight of one treat by dividing the total weight of the pack by the number of cookies. The average weight of marshmallows is 42 g, marmalade is 20 g, gingerbread is 30 g, and biscuit biscuits are 10 g. A slice of bread takes on average 20 g, the crust will be heavier and weighs about 50-80 g.

Purchased buns are always labeled and weighed not necessary. A circle of sausage weighs on average 5 g, a finished cutlet – 80-100 g, and a chop – 200 g.

It should be remembered that during cooking cereals increase in volume depending on the addition of water, pasta – 2 times, meat, on the contrary, it decreases by about 50%.And it’s actually not difficult to weigh food without scales. Curd as a ready-to-eat product can be measured with a glass. In a faceted container, it will take no more than 130 g, depending on the fat content. Dried fruits and other dietary sweets should also be measured in glasses. It will contain 130 g of raisins, and 50 g of dryers.

A medium-sized chicken egg without a shell weighs 40 g, and a large one – 60 g. only protein weight changes.It can be 20-40 g, and the yolk always weighs 20 g.

How to count calories and BJU is easy. Food diary in smartphone

Let’s continue with the topic of nutrition. Today I will tell you how I learned to count calories and why all this is needed.

And you need this in order not to be afraid of food … Or, on the contrary, not to overeat.

You have noticed that I am in no hurry to showcase my workouts or give recommendations for workouts in the gym. There are two reasons.

First.I am convinced that in order to obtain the fastest possible result, which will help not only to come to sports, but also to stay in it, you still need to start with nutrition. Because our appearance depends on him most of all. And if you do not tune this instrument, then the sport will not give progress. So, you are likely to be blown away for a week or so on the third or fourth.

Second. Now I am at the so-called mass-gaining stage in order to increase muscle mass, then delicately lose weight and achieve a beautiful chiseled relief for the spring, summer and autumn.Mass collection is always accompanied by typed kege, which I don’t really want to “shine”.

I have already told you what my diet looks like and what mistakes in proper nutrition should be avoided. Today I will tell you about the total calorie content of the daily diet and how to calculate it.

To achieve your weight goal (lose weight or gain weight), you need to create either a calorie deficit or a surplus every day. If there are not enough calories, the body takes them from its reserves and loses weight.If calories are in excess, he gets better.

Something tells me that everyone is interested in losing weight …

So, first you need to start a food diary . Where we will bring everything, without exception, the products that we eat in a day. Milk in cappuccino and candy in the afternoon also counts. Moreover, it is obligatory. Because it is precisely because of such “ghosts” that we most often make mistakes and move away from the cherished goal. It may seem to us that we are not eating enough.Just think, three chocolates a day with tea. Sheer trifle … And he, by the way, can easily pull 20-25% of the average daily calorie intake for a normal female body 🙂

I do not use moleskin or a notebook. A child of the 21st century prefers to use a smartphone app. There are several smart calorie counting apps out there, but my favorite is FatSecret – it’s the simplest and most intuitive in my opinion. And there is the widest selection of products, including Belarusian ones.

Important addition. It is impossible to keep a food diary without a kitchen scale. Here it is important to determine the amount of food not by eye, but with an accuracy of the gram. In untrained people, the eye usually works downward. It seems to us that there is only 100 g of chicken on the plate. And her there – 250! Or: how many pears are there – 150 grams … But in reality, it pulls for all 400! Until I started weighing food, I did not understand how 100, 200, 300 grams LOOK. Therefore, buy a scale for your kitchen.

So FatSecret. This is how its main mobile page looks like

We go into the menu and begin to customize for ourselves in the “RSK” line: height, weight, goal, all cases. Based on these data, the program will calculate the recommended daily calorie intake. Most likely you will see it, get scared and go to reduce it – we want to lose weight …

Just do not put this figure below 1400 kcal / day.

Why not 1200 or 1000? Because no healthy organism can feel normal with an underestimated calorie intake.No, he will, of course, adjust, but by slowing down the metabolism. And we are not aiming to kill metabolism. In addition, do not forget about training – they “make” the indicator “heavier”, because they require additional energy consumption.

And in general, all manipulations are needed so far in order to learn to understand and see foods from the point of view of their nutritional value. And also train yourself to eat consciously. Roughly speaking, at first we start the processes in our head, we train ourselves to think.

Self-discipline will be the hardest part here.I regularly entered data into the application for two months. Then this option disappeared as unnecessary. I can calculate in my head the final daily figure with an error of maximum 100 kcal.

In the application, you can monitor weight, calorie intake, enter all physical activity and see how many calories they “eat”. But I don’t go into the jungle. And I only use a food diary.

To see your food in calories and BJU, let’s start filling.

Press “Add product” on the main page.We get here:

For example, my breakfast today is oatmeal with flaxseeds in milk, nuts, pears and agave syrup. Two pieces of sugar-free chocolate. Coffee with milk.

I click “+” in front of breakfast and go to the product search page. I start to enter all the products in turn in the “Search for food” line. Below this line are my recent searches.

Oat flakes -> select the most appropriate line -> select flakes (click on the circle on the right) -> then click on the line itself.A field for entering the quantity of the product will open (and without weights, as we remember, it is almost impossible to determine it). In my case, it is 50 g.

Be careful not to get lost in setting the weight … Otherwise, you can get a completely crooked picture 🙂

By analogy, I introduce bran and flax seeds, nuts, agave syrup, milk, pear. And this is what I get:

Not all the products fit on the screen. But pay attention to the top line. You can see the amount of fat, protein and carbohydrates, as well as the calories and percentage of the daily value.

Lunch, dinner and all snacks are fixed according to the same principle (section “Snacks”). At the end of the day, you can analyze.

This app also allows you to manage your diet throughout the day. For example, I see that I am not gaining protein in a day. So I’ll make up for dinner. So are carbohydrates and fats. But it is advisable to compensate them before or during the second snack – not later.

There are many Belarusian brands in the application product base.

There is also such a useful option as barcode identification.You need to bring the packaging barcode to your smartphone, scan and quickly enter this particular product. This is especially true for imported goods. Barcode – in the lower right corner:

In two months you will be able to determine your diet by eye with pinpoint accuracy.

There are similar applications, but this is what I liked the most. By the way, it also has a regular web version, which is sometimes very convenient. So I recommend it!

How to calculate the calorie content of foods ?? Ready or raw?

Surprisingly, this is a fairly common question.Count food raw or cooked?
I have always counted and count in raw, because I trust few people in cooking)))) And about myself, I know exactly what part of the chicken I took into this dish, how much oil I poured, what kind of oil it was, how long I cooked, how much water I poured it into the porridge … In general, it was much more interesting to me, because it seemed more reliable. After all, all the same, these calculations are only a guideline, and not an exact indicator, but I decided that it should be as close to the truth as possible.

All my thoughts on this matter were very competently typed into the text by Tatiana Prokofieva.
I quote:
“For an accurate and uniform order, it is better to count as follows:

1. Meat must be considered RAW!

Previously, I considered everything ready, but after visiting Moscow at home, I was convinced that I was living in illusions. In Australia, it is not customary to cook food for a long time to the state of rubber. Throw it on the grill and after 5 minutes it’s ready. Accordingly, a lot of moisture does not have time to evaporate. And at home it is customary for me to fry meat for about 40 minutes, if the chicken is baked, then about 3 hours. In general, from the original 150g of chicken remained 100 grams.The question is, how many calories did you eat? Have you eaten calories from 100g of chicken or 150?

2. Vegetables are also best weighed RAW!

For example, from a kilogram of mushrooms, only 700 g of mushroom gravy is obtained. The same thing – the moisture evaporated and the weight turned out to be less.

3. The groats should also be weighed RAW.

We took 100g of buckwheat. One loves half-baked buckwheat, and he got 200g of the finished product. someone loves boiled porridge, and he got 350g of the finished product.Who boiled buckwheat correctly?

You can weigh the raw product, and then the finished product and make up the proportion. That, it turns out, was why mathematics was needed at school!

And now ATTENTION!

You still won’t get the exact result.

Firstly, chickens are also fat and overweight, and there are slender ones. In general, each individual tomato can contain a different amount of sugar. The calorie tables show the calorie content for an average chicken and an average tomato.

Secondly, notice, in the calculator, calories are given for a raw product? for cooked? and by whom? how?

Third, the values ​​in different calorie calculators differ significantly.

That is, the calories you COUNT APPROXIMATE whatever one may say.

If you hate counting calories, there is an easy way. (* from me personally – I have not tried this method, I did not really understand it, so if you choose it, then at your own peril and risk.I can’t explain or suggest anything on it *)

Consider your main exchange. Consider the daily calorie requirement. Then write down a diet for yourself based on your goal, with or without deficits. Follow it for 2 weeks. There is no progress – we vary the AMOUNT of FOOD, not the calorie content. “

Source https://vk.com/bikinigirlproject1

Valuev urged Usik to weigh the pros and cons before going to Crimea – Gazeta.Ru

28 September 2021, 16:55

Listen to news

Stop listening

Former world champion according to the World Boxing Association (WBA) Nikolai Valuev called on the Ukrainian boxer Alexander Usik to weigh all the circumstances before going to Crimea.

Recall that the world champion according to the International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Organization (WBO) and the International Boxing Organization (IBO), the holder of the World Boxing Association (WBA, Super) belt, Ukrainian Alexander Usik announced his intention to visit his native Simferopol and bring your belts there. This statement caused a wave of criticism against the athlete in Ukraine.

“To be honest, I don’t know how much Sasha Usyk is attached to Ukraine. As far as I know, he spends a lot of time abroad, but at the same time he represents Ukraine itself and often travels there.Humanly, he probably needs to compare all the pros and cons and make a decision. I understand him, but there are life circumstances that will either allow him to do this, or will not allow him. And all this barking, politicians do not even want to discuss, “- said Valuev” Gazeta.Ru “.

He noted that in Ukraine the attitude of politicians to athletes who glorify the country leaves much to be desired. At the same time, Valuev emphasized, Usyk himself should act much more maturely than representatives of the Ukrainian nomenklatura.

“Such a policy of Ukraine, such a conditional maturity, such approaches there and, accordingly, the same power. All one comes from the other. Let them live with it. We are so worried about it, we write about it all the time, and they do it all the time in their own way. Let them live as they want, so long as it does not affect us.

Alexander Usik, like any person, will have to make a decision: either take these circumstances into account, or not take into account. How many percent do they affect his life.If they do, then how dear it is to him. He’s an adult, and you need to approach in an adult way.

If Ukrainian politicians have immaturity in everything, this does not mean that Oleksandr Usyk should be just as immature. He will give a million points ahead to every Ukrainian politician, and not only to a Ukrainian one. Why nod at them and look at them, pay attention, “- concluded Valuev.

Usik defeated Anthony Joshua in a 12-round duel that took place on the night of September 26 at the Tottenham Football Club stadium in London.

Earlier Usik spoke about the criticism of Ukrainian athletes who are photographed with athletes from Russia.

90,000 Weigh everything! Three reasons to know the weight of a portion | Women’s magazine “Lisa”

August 16, 2016, 09:00

One of the most popular reasons for being overweight is the habit of overeating and eating every last crumb. After all, I really don’t want to count calories and grams. In fact, in order for the weight to return to normal, it is enough to understand which foods and in what quantity should be consumed.

Shutterstock

READ ALSO: Ideal before and after cardio workout

Many nutritionists and fitness trainers recommend weighing food in order to understand portion size and make it a habit so that it can be determined by eye later on. Therefore, kitchen scales, measuring spoons or glasses should come to the rescue in the struggle for harmony and health.

For example, one serving of cooked meat or fish is about 30 g. This is a steak, cutlet or other meat product the size and thickness of a palm (fingers do not count) or a deck of cards.But a person usually eats about 60-90 grams, experts say. Nutritionists recommend eating 2-3 servings or 150-200 g. By the way, one serving of meat is equivalent to half a small cup of beans or one egg.

One serving contains:

• 250 ml milk or one glass
• 175 ml yogurt
• 60 g cottage cheese
• 30 g cheese
• 3/4 cup cereal or bran
• 30 g bread
• 125 g boiled pasta
• 140 gr buckwheat porridge
• 100 gr boiled rice
• 100 gr cooked starchy vegetables (potatoes, sweet corn, beets, carrots, onions, green peas, pumpkin, turnips)
• 200 gr cooked vegetables with less starch ( asparagus, green beans, cabbage, zucchini, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, spinach, lettuce, bell peppers, radishes, tomatoes)
• 200 gr vinaigrette
• 250 gr soup 1 soup ladle
• 300 gr borscht
• 200 ml glass of vegetable or fruit juice
• 15 g of any nuts
• 125 g cottage cheese cake

If it is not possible to weigh food constantly, you should use the palm of your hand b as a measure of weights.

As a measure of weight

• vegetables and vegetable dishes: a portion of the size of two fists;
• fresh fruit: fist-sized portion;
• meat: palm-sized portion;
• cereals, bread, grain products, pasta: fist-sized portion;
• legumes: fist-sized portion;
• Light Dairy Products: Palm-sized portion.

Shutterstock

It is important not to confuse serving and portion sizes! Serving sizes are indicated on the labels.Many people make the mistake of thinking that, for example, a bag of nuts (no salt and sugar) is a serving. In fact, only a fourth is a serving!

How to stick to portions?

It is also very important to train your body to feel full with smaller portions. First, it is worth serving food already on the plates. This will make you think twice before taking a supplement. Secondly, it is better to use small plates, then smaller portions will appear large. Eat slowly and enjoy the process of absorbing food.When you eat fast, the brain does not signal satiety on time and you cannot stop in time.

It takes 20 minutes for our brain to receive a signal of saturation.

.

Nutritionists recommend that you first eat foods that are low in calories and that are healthy. These healthy foods will fill you up even before you move on to higher-calorie foods.

For example, you can eat vegetables first, then fish or chicken breast.While eating, you should concentrate on the food. TV, books, work are distracting, and before you have time to look back, you eat more than you need. Also, do not eat every last crumb. Oh, and sometimes it’s hard to do it! After all, my mother taught that you need to eat everything! But in this case, the correct portion of food on the plate will help with this bad habit.

If you feel hungry after eating everything on your plate, chew on something low in calories, such as fresh vegetables or tea.Chewing gum may help. Controlling your food takes dedication and perseverance, but you can easily control portion sizes by listening to your body and making the necessary changes to your diet, and it will become a good habit for you.

By Everything will be good

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The editorial opinion may not coincide with the opinion of the author of the article.

9 steps to stop counting calories and PJU and stay slim: shantramora – LiveJournal

Why you need to take breaks in keeping a food diary
Keeping a food diary and calculating KBJU (calories-protein-fat-carbohydrates) – the most effective method for weight loss. This works . But this does not mean that you have to count the rest of your life to stay in good shape.

With prolonged use, calorie counting can lead to problems.

1 It becomes difficult to consciously eat when you are hungry, and stop eating when you are full .
If you count long enough, or limit yourself too hard, the connection between hunger and the amount of food you feel you need to eat is lost.
In other words, you pay more attention to the targeted CBFL than to your own feelings (hunger and satiety).

2. A number of social restrictions may arise.
Of course, it is quite possible to estimate the calorie content and composition of food at parties, etc.etc., but this is not always easy and simple. If you keep thinking “How can I calculate all this ?!”, then the party can turn into stress.
It is very annoying and frustrating when, before ordering something while sitting with friends in a restaurant, you have to think about calories and BJU. Plus, making the math can be a huge challenge, especially if you’re not traveling alone.

3. Keeping a food diary contributes to the emergence of obsession with food.
Obsessive thoughts about food are one of the most important reasons why you should take breaks from counting.When you realize during the day that you have fewer and fewer calories left, you tend to think more about food. All for the same reasons that people value any resource that comes to an end so highly.

4. For most people, constant calculations are not at all necessary.
In theory, you need to look for a diet that will be easy for you to adhere to, and that will achieve the desired results with minimal effort .
Calories are always important, as are macronutrients, but you don’t have to keep track of them all your life.Many, when they are tired of constantly counting, drop everything and stop thinking about their diet. (and gaining everything dropped back … In order to maintain the result earned by such hard efforts after a diet, you need to partially preserve the habits with which you achieved it).

But the best solution would be to gradually make your diet more flexible so that you find the perfect (for you) balance between freedom and precision.
Here’s a nine-step system.The more of the proposed methods you introduce into your practice, the more flexible your diet will become. You don’t have to take all of these steps, just go through the list and decide what level of flexibility is right for you.

Step 1: Stop weighing food.
If you’ve been keeping a food diary long enough, you probably already have a rough idea of ​​how many calories are in your servings. And, probably, you already have some kind of familiar diet.
By this point, you’ve probably developed the skill of judging portion size by eye.If you are not quite sure you can handle it, practice for a few days. Try to guess how much a particular food weighs before putting it on the scale. I bet your eye will be much more accurate than you imagine.

Step 2: Stop counting low-calorie vegetables.
Vegetables such as spinach, kale, peppers, tomatoes and courgettes are so low in calories that there is usually no point in counting them at all. It’s almost impossible to create a calorie surplus by overeating, say, spinach.
Vegetables are very nourishing due to fiber and water. But, of course, at this stage, you still need to count what you use them with, say, butter, mayonnaise, sauces, etc.

Step 3: Stop counting fresh fruit.
After vegetables, fruits have the lowest calories.
In strawberries, blueberries, watermelon, oranges and grapes, as a rule, no more than 50-100 kcal per serving. They also fill the stomach quite well and are rich in vitamins. High-calorie fruits like bananas, mangoes, etc.it is still worth counting. Well, do not forget that the calorie content of dried fruits, as well as the sugar content in them, is much higher than in fruits, so they must also be counted.

Step 4: Stop counting starchy vegetables and grains.
Starchy vegetables are good filling and relatively low in calories. Potatoes, bananas, rice and oatmeal, while higher in calories than fruits, also contain a lot of fiber. In addition, due to the fact that they do not have significant palatability, they are not easy to overeat.

Step 5: Stop counting carbs.
Now you can stop counting all carbohydrates, in any form, including sweet cereals, sugar, drinks, etc. Indeed, if you have a fairly balanced healthy diet, you do not get so many calories from these products.
If you notice that you are eating a lot of refined carbs during the day, you may need to monitor this aspect for a while.

Step 6: Stop counting fats.
It is usually much easier to go over fat than protein or carbohydrates. Their calorie content is higher, and, depending on the form, they are less satiating. One gram of fat contains 9 kcal, while proteins and carbohydrates contain only 4. However, if you already know the fat content in your usual diet well, you can not count them. You will probably eat about as much of them as you are used to.

Step 7: Stop counting proteins.
The main reason to control protein is because people tend to eat too little of it.And a lack of protein makes you feel hungry and increases the chances that you overeat fat or carbs.
In addition, if you undergo protein deficiency, you will lose muscle. But once you have developed and established the habit of consuming enough protein, you can stop counting every gram.

Step 8: Stop counting calories .
Continue looking at portions and recording what you eat, but stop adding up calories and summing up at the end of the day.
If you like, you can continue to set the calorie limit and target BJUs for each meal, but this is not necessary.

Step 9: Stop keeping a food diary.
This is the final stage – you stop recording what you eat in any form. No diaries, no logs on the site, nothing.
It only makes sense to continue evaluating portions by eye and targeting BJUs for each meal, but this can be done in a purely speculative way.

But what if, using the flexible diet, you start to notice the numbers creeping up on the scales?

Consider conducting a periodic “nutrition audit”.
For example, you can weigh and count again every 6-12 weeks for 2-3 days. Your tastes could change, you could start eating differently, different foods, the calorie content and BJU of which are not accustomed to assessing by eye. It’s pretty easy to overlook how portion sizes gradually grow over time.

Gradually, you could start eating less protein and more fat and carbohydrates.
Or your activity level may have changed, maybe you need fewer calories now.

All that is required in this case is to continue to eat as usual and weigh, measure and record everything you eat for 2-3 days.Then, you can make small changes to your meals as needed.