Ode to My Food Scale

Most people who know me personally know that at this point in my weight loss journey, I choose to count calories over any sort of weight loss program.  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against these programs.  I've had success with Weight Watchers and have known numerous people with success with WW and many other programs.  It works for them and that's great! 

For me, I need ultimate control over what and how much I choose to eat.  I find that if I just eat what I'm told to eat, I get pretty unhappy and start to rebel and then gain back whatever weight I had lost in the first place.  For the first ~25 lbs I lost, I focused on eating healthy and controlled my portion sizes.  It worked well and it wasn't until I plateaued from about September-February last year that I realized that I need to take this a step further to be successful.

So the second half of the weight that I've lost thus far (up to 57lbs gone now!), has been shed using a food journal, food scale, and calorie counting.  My original food scale was analog and a hand me down.  It was fine for keeping control of things like portion sizes, but it had a pretty low weight limit and my new dishes were a little too heavy to weigh out an entire meal on it.  I decided this summer that it was time to step it up a notch and really get serious!  I am now the proud owner of this guy:


Precision Digital Food Scale



Isn't he cute?  He may be small, without a lot of frills, and inexpensive but he sure gets the job done and is displayed proudly on my counter top.  My food scale is very possibly my favorite kitchen tool, which says a lot considering I am an avid cook and have every possible kitchen tool out there (okay, not every kitchen tool, but I have quite the collection!).  So, now I weigh everything, calculate out the calories, and then add it all up in my food journal to reach where ever I have my calorie limit set for the day.  This also helps me to not go below 1200-1300 calories a day.  That's just too few calories for me to survive on and I'll wake up in the middle of the night and raid my fridge.  Not cool.

When you start weighing your food some things come as a shock.  For instance, I always used things like ketchup as a "free food" (one that I never considered worth many calories), but in actuality, I was eating 50-100 calories of ketchup sometimes!  No wonder I got to the weight that I used to be so easily!

As for the source of where I find calorie information, prepackaged food will list it on the package of course.  But, since I mostly try to eat foods without nutrition info listed (fruits, veggies, etc.) I typically use CalorieKing.com to find calories per ounce.  CalorieKing is a weight loss program in and of itself, but you can search calories of everything for free.  You can look at SparkPeople.com too.  Spark People is a free weight loss program that you can use to create an online food journal.  I really prefer pen and paper myself though.  When I'm on the go, or away from a computer, I use Jillian Michael's Master Your Metabolism Calorie Counter book.

While I wouldn't say this book has the most thorough coverage of food choices, for instance she does not list mushrooms, it works in a pinch.  I'm sure there are better books out there but since I use CalorieKing, I don't worry about it.

So, I'm always asked, "Isn't counting calories tedious?"  To that I say, yes.  It can be.  BUT, is it any more tedious than counting carbs or points?  No.  It's something you just have to get used to.  Eventually, even when you aren't trying to, you start to memorize calories per ounce or serving size.  If I go out for lunch or dinner, I can usually estimate calories fairly accurately now.  Plus, it keeps my basic math skills sharp. :)

All in all, I think I am willing to put up with tediousness as I am finally fully committed to getting healthy.  I truly think weight loss is a mental game.  When you get your head in the game and fully commit, health just sort of happens.