I was reading Leigh Peele’s Fat Loss Troubleshoot (GREAT book by the way), and she talks about how weighing your food is a much more accurate method of counting calories and how people can GROSSLY underestimate how much they are actually eating even if they diligently measure their food. I decided to try a little experiment and weigh every single thing I ate for a couple days and see what big discrepancies I find. Let me tell you, I was totally surprised!
I did a little experiment with my go-to breakfast as of late, chocolate overnight oats. I thought this meal was 270 calories. Let me break down for you how many it really was:
Here is what I thought was 1/3 cup of oats for 100 calories. But when I weigh this amount of oats it is 36 grams and 36 grams is 135 calories.
What I want is 100 calories and it looks like this.
Far cry from 1/3 cup, right? Bummer? The real bummer is coming in just a minute.
My yogurt was ok. A “measured” 1/3 cup of greek yogurt was pretty close to the weight of the calories I thought I was consuming. Here is my measured 1/3 c. Weighed it is 80 grams. 80 grams has 46 calories.
1/3 of a 1 cup serving though should only be 76 grams and it should have 43 calories.
So, 3 calories. No biggie. Add 1/3 c. Calorie Countdown Chocolate Milk and throw it in the fridge overnight.
In the morning is when the real bummer arises. Out comes the peanut butter and I am afraid I’m in for a big disapointment. Here is my tablespoon of peanut butter. (Don’t even try to tell me yours doesn’t look like this too!)
Weighed this is 25 grams and 156 calories. Yeah. Your 100 calorie “tablespoon” of peanut butter has 1.5 x the caloric value you thought it had. HERE is a 100 calorie portion (16g):
So sad. It doesn’t spread nearly as far as what I was using for a tablespoon.
DRUM ROLL PLEASE….. The breakfast that I thought had 270 calories really had 363 calories. A difference of 93 calories in just one meal. Imagine if you are making these kinds of mistakes in every meal you eat. You could easily be eating 300-500 more calories than you think you are no matter how good your intentions are.
Want to know another depressing fact? Using the gram weight on your food label is more accurate than using the serving size. Here is an example. My family loves those uncooked tortillas. According to the label a serving is one tortilla (100g). Ok, I actually can’t remember how many grams and I don’t have a label close by so we’re just using 100 as an example. The “100 g” is a more accurate serving size than the “one tortilla” is. This serving is supposed to have 140 calories.
The other day I weighed one tortilla. You ready for this? It weighed a lot more than 100 grams. Ok, so I can’t remember the exact weight but I DO remember than for a 140 calorie portion it was LESS than 3/4 of the tortilla. I’ve had this same issue with breads and many other packaged items.
Am I saying that everyone should weigh everything they eat? No. Do I even think that everyone needs to count calories? No. I am a believer in the idea that one should do the LEAST amount of work to get the results they are after. Then when they plateau there is an obvious next step to get a little bit stricter.
Are you plateaued counting portions? Maybe you need to count your calories. Have you plateaued counting calories? Maybe you need to take a couple days and weigh your food to remember proper portion sizes. You could easily be taking in a lot more food than you think you are!
