Should You Weigh Your Food?
While counting calories may seem like enough to reach your goal weight, many are deciding if weighing their food will be the added weapon they need to win the battle of the bulge. It seems fitting that as you look to lose weight, you weigh what you take in, but is it worth the time and energy it takes? As you weigh your options, consider how weighing your food may differ from other food tracking strategies.
The theory behind weighing your food has everything to do with what Calorie Count stands for. By staying within prescribed calorie and macronutrient guidelines, reaching a healthy weight and body fat percentage becomes easier. By tracking what you eat on Calorie Count, you are doubling your chance of losing weight. A study by Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research found those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. Keeping a food journal is one thing, but weighing food is a different animal, one that most people have yet to tame.
The opposition most people have to weighing food is the lack of convenience. There is no shortcut to purchasing a food scale and weighing every item you eat. While most will call it a hassle, some may say it’s impossible, and since pre-planning meals is usually a part of weighing your food, and you may feel like you don’t have the time. But even if you’re a Mom with three kids to make lunches for or a full-time worker with a long commute, you can stick to the regimen. The key is in weighing it as you purchase it and then labeling your food. For example, after buying groceries, come home and weigh fresh meat in serving-size portions and secure each in a freezer bag. Keep a permanent marker handy to write the weight of the serving on the bag. Fresh fruits and veggies should be easy to weigh just before you eat them, but by keeping the small sticker on the fruit you purchase, you can write the weight on the sticker. Before you wash it off and take a bite, you’ll see the sticker, and voila!
The case for weighing food is accuracy. Weighing your food would prevent all the guesswork that comes with tracking your calories. Have you ever logged a food item according to what you think it weighed? Some may think their measuring cup is enough, but the density of food is different for each item. For example, a cup of pineapple is 5.5 ounces, while a cup of brown rice is 6.9 ounces. Thanks to Calorie Count, you may be able to measure some things and convert them, but to get the number right the first time, use a food scale. Check out how this little experiment on a sample of one revealed discrepancies in calorie counts when foods were measured instead of weighed.
So you’re sold and you want to find the best kitchen scale for your buck. But is weighing food cost-effective? The answer may surprise you. ConsumerSearch.com (disclaimer: owned by our parent company, About, Inc.) rated a slew of kitchen scales for accuracy, price and ease of use, and they recommend the best scales to buy depending on your specific needs. If you consider that weighing your food and logging it may make you to eat less, and that buying groceries as oppose to eating out will save money too, then your food scale may be paid for in a couple weeks. Your good health related to your weight loss will pay you back for the rest of your life.
Do you weigh your food?
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