Just getting back to calorie counting (it seems to work for me) but was wondering about something. When your counting calories, do you go by the weight of the meat before or after it's cooked?

The reason I asked is that DH and I decided to have hamburgers for dinner tonight. I weighed my hamburger on the scale before cooking. I started to weight just 4 oz. but then I wondered about cooked vs not cooked. I weighed out 5 oz. When it was finished cooking and I soaked all the grease off of it with paper towels, I re-weighed it. After cooking, it weighed 3.5 oz.

Does anyone know if I should go with the calories before cooking or after!

Whenever possible, I go by the uncooked weight because I feel like that is more accurate. The weight after cooking will vary depending on how long you've cooked it for and what temperature you cook it at--the longer and hotter you cook it, the more moisture cooks out of it and the less it weighs. So 5 oz of hamburger cooked to "rare" would weigh more than if it were "well done." So if I'm looking at calories for 3 oz of cooked hamburger, I never know if that's really the same amount of meat as the 3 oz of meat I'm eating.

If there are calories stated on the package, they are always for the uncooked weight unless the package specifically says it is for the cooked or "as prepared" weight. So if your package says that 5 oz of hamburger is 190 calories, that's 5 oz weighed before cooking, unless the package says otherwise.

If you are looking at an online source, book, or other resource for the calories, the resource should specify whether it is for cooked or uncooked weight. For example, CalorieKing provides calories for ground beef raw, pan-fried, or broiled. When I look at those three pages, I'm pretty sure my 4 oz of raw ground beef is the same amount of meat and water as their 4 oz of raw ground beef. But I can't say the same thing for their cooked ground beef because I don't know how longed they cooked it or at what temperature.

And sometimes it's impossible to go by the cooked weight. If I'm making beef stew, I pretty much have to weight the meat before I cook it. On the other hand, there are also times when I have no choice but to weigh the meat after I cook it. If a roast a whole chicken, for example, I can't weigh it before I cook it because it includes bones, skin, and fat that I won't end up eating.

If you switch to leaner cuts of meat, you'll find that the difference between weight before and after will become smaller.

I believe it's based on the uncooked, because the people at the meat packing company can never be sure how you'll cook the meat, so they can't be sure what the weight of the cooked meat will be.

So I try to go by the original.

If I have the info for what it weighed cooked, then I go with the cooked weight -- for meat, that means that some of the fat may have been cooked out. But as others have said, we don't always know... so frequently I go with the uncooked weight.

I don't sweat these issues too much. For me calorie counting is more about accountability. For instance, writing everything down helps me not eat mindlessly. I know my numbers won't ever be exact, so I don't worry about it too much -- just try my best...

Thanks for your responses. I usually go by what the packaged meat says and I believe that it is "before cooking". My little experiment just kind of confused me a little. I'll go off of the pre-cooked meat calories, as I too, am just trying to get the approximate calories.

Thanks guys!