Measuring and Weighing

When you announce “weighing” as one of your healthy eating habits you are probably referring to weighing yourself regularly to make sure there are no surprise upward trends, but there is another type of weighing that can be a helpful part of your personal health regime. 

Take for example the story of a friend that wasn’t extremely overweight but was carrying some extra pounds that were causing knee pain (1 extra pound of weight exerts 4 additional pounds of pressure on your knees!)  She spent her mornings running the canyon trails near her home, but because of knee pain she thought losing a few pounds would make running more enjoyable. After getting advice from a nutritionist, she began weighing and measuring his food to get an accurate idea of how many calories she was eating. She was surprised to discover it was a lot more than he realized.

So here I was thinking I’m eating 200 calories, but I’m really eating 600.

This woman had the same lunch every day- a protein shake with an apple and peanut butter and it’s like, “Oh that’s totally a healthy lunch — this is a great lunch.” But when she measured the peanut butter for the first time she discovered she was taking about three servings when she thought it was only one.

“So here I was thinking I’m eating 200 calories, but I’m really eating 600,” she said.

Weighing Food Gives You a More Accurate Understanding of Portion Sizes

A small kitchen scale (If you don’t yet have one you still have time to purchase one on Amazon in time for Wednesday’s challenge) is an important tool in guiding your healthy eating choices . Your best strategy is to get out the scale and measuring spoons and weigh or measure all of your food, from the apple you have for a morning snack  to the chicken you eat at dinner. And then input this accurate information into the MyFitnessPal app on your phone, which calculates the exact number of calories in your food. 

Besides giving you a more accurate record of your food choices for the day this will eventually lead you to more clearly understand the portion sizes you are eating, especially when it came to calorie-dense foods.

A lot of times we make assumptions. For example, if you were to list a banana — generic banana — in a calorie counting app, [the results] could be more than what you  actually ate or it could be less. But weighing the banana gives you an exact calorie count. This clear measurement is even more important with calorie dense foods like nuts. Weigh them to be completely sure how much you are eating. 

I also find weighing foods helpful when eating crackers or chips that are often broken making counting the total number difficult. Simply piling them on the scale measures exactly how much you are eating and can also shut down any habit of deciding to eat 8 and then maybe just 2 more and then 2 more and now you have lost count and eaten too many.

Skinny pop is one of my personal favorite snacks and no one in my family is surprised to find me (always) eating it out of a glass pyrex measuring cup.

One other tip from my healthy living challenge partner Gail is that to accurately measure your snacks and also help in controlling your portion choices buy them already pre-packaged and weighed. Gail always buys her skinny pop, chips etc. in individual packets.

And while we are promoting measuring let’s include our water consumption this week. Don’t just grab a cup here or a glass there. Let’s measure the clear clean water we drink and make sure we are meeting the daily requirement of our challenge. (at least 48 ounces)

To earn this week’s  bonus challenge points

• Purchase or borrow a kitchen scale.
• Weigh or measure (measuring spoons and cups) all of your food and input the results into Myfitnesspal this week. This will tell you the real number of calories you are consuming.
• Note: No you don’t have to take measuring cups, spoons and your scale along with you for fine dining or a dinner party at a friends home. You will have to use on-line dietary information to make your best estimate on these meals. But consistent weighing and measuring of food at home will eventually lead you to some solid skills in estimating portion size.