Wow - Yesterday a.m., I measured out my 1/2 cup of oats to make oatmeal. Not a heaping cup by any means - in fact the oats came to a bit UNDER the top of the measuring cup. Anyway, I noticed there were only a tablespoon or so of oats left in the bag, so I thought I'd throw my 1/2 cup on the scale, maybe they'd weigh in a little low & I could just finish off the bag (see how I always try to find excuses to get more food in?)...

Anyway, according to the bag, 1/2 cup is 44 g - but my slightly-less-than-1/2-cup weighed in at *54*! I realize that cereals, especially, tend to settle - but I didn't expect to see such a big difference (nearly 20% extra!).

Yup I've noticed that quite a bit. I tend to measure most of my food and input the calories based on weight.

You know, you make an excellent point. I need to be more diligent about this too.

It gets even crazier when you start doing grams instead of ounces! I briefly went metric... and scale crazy!

That 10 grams difference amounted to maybe 36 calories. If food measurements are off by that much in the course of a day, and always in the same direction, then that can be significant.

But please remember that all these numbers are averages. There is no way to guarantee that the oats contain xx calories per serving, every time. So what we are always doing is adding up estimates. The same goes for calories burned. Even if a person has a fancy test done to come up with your basal metabolic rate, that can vary.

Fortunately, most of the time the estimates come close enough for weight loss purposes. But imagine how far off someone could be if they had little experience and were trying to "eyeball" a half a cup! So that's why it's good always to measure in some way, just for consistency.

Jay

Interesting.... this is something I am going to have to watch.

I also have an issue with FitDay and meat types; especially beef. Do we really need so many descriptions? I never know if I'm using the right item from the pull-down menu.

I did the same thing awhile back! I noticed that there is a little difference from measuring in a cup vs on a scale. I feel like I am more accurate when I measure my foods on the scale. Every little bit measures up and counts. Every little penny adds up and so do calories.

I always measure and have successfully lost weight w/ this method. I am however thinking of buying a scale for things like chips and pasta. My thoughts on measuring vs weighing? If you are just measuring and losing weight, things are on the right track portion-wise :-)

That's really interesting. I never thought about that. Usually, if a food's serving size in cups, I measure that and if it's in oz. I use a scale. Like my pasta serving size is 2 oz. so I will use a scale but my frozen veggies have serving sizes in cups so I use a cup. For next meal, I'll do both and compare.

Let us know Faith. If I do 2 oz of dry pasta, I will measure 1/4 c. - wonder how it will differ???