Should you weigh your food?

You absolutely do not have to weigh your food to get results. In fact, unless I’m specifically working towards something, I eyeball my portion sizes based on what I know from tracking macros for so long.

It’s also super important to consider on your relationship with food before you start weighing things. If you struggle with a healthy body image or any type of disordered eating, weighing all your food can actually be super detrimental to your progress. YOU are the only one that can determine if using a food scale will make you neurotic or help you to achieve your goals.

While I believe it’s not for everyone, some of the benefits of weighing your food include:

  • when tracking your macros by cups vs grams you’ll end up with inaccuracies. My Fitness Pal says 1 cup of cooked brown rice is 216 calories, 44.8 g carbs/1.8 g fat/5 g protein. However, you can tell by this image that you might actually end up with different macros/calories depending on how you fill your measuring cups. Also, selecting different brands will get you different macros..hence why my fitness pal says 1 cup of cooked brown rice can have 45 grams of carbs and less calories than the measured cup on the left side.
  • learning portion sizes, a lot of people underestimate the amount of food they eat
  • same goes for those trying to put on weight, they often underestimate how much they are eating
  • being a little more precise allows you to stick to a smaller calorie deficit more accurately. If you overestimate your portions at every meal (all week long) your calorie deficit might not actually be as big as you think. Was that actually just 1 Tbsp. of peanut butter?  I definitely had a rude awakening the first time I weighed out a Tbsp. hahah!

You certainly don’t have to track/weigh your food forever to reap the benefits. Doing this for even a month will give you a lot of insight into portion sizes and quantities.

But, at the end of the day, your focus should be on health and well-being. And this does not always involve a scale (of any kind!).

I do not currently weigh any of my food. I can maintain my weight quite easily using what I learned about portion sizes from weight my food. I’ll do check ins every now and then to make sure i’m still on track.

Check out this old video on measuring cup vs. food scale. It shows how you can easily end up eating at least one extra serving a week. That might not seem like much but multiply that by 52 weeks and 3 meals a day, that’s a lot of additional calories.


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