I weigh or measure everything. I write down every BLT and I plan my meals in advance. Works for me.

After 5.5 years, I still measure the following:

Rice
Pasta
Nuts
Cereal (including oatmeal)
Salad dressing
Corn
Protein for my salad (by the oz, with my food scale)

It's not so bad, it's habit.

I spent a month measuring everything to get a good idea of portion size, now I'll spot check myself, or measure something I'm freezing for a meal later. Mostly I eyeball.

I measure everything except the veggies that are free with WW, unless I'm cooking them in a recipe and want to get the proportions right. I've been going through a phase of learning a lot of new recipes from cookbooks/websites to stop me from getting bored. So I would be using the scales quite a lot even if I wasn't currently losing weight.

Last night I made whole wheat pasta with tomatoes, spinach, onions and mushrooms (no processed sauce for me!). I weighed the pasta (after cooking before putting on my plate) and measured the olive oil I used. But that's it. If chicken (or some other protein) had been part of it, then I typically look at the package and use that figure. I eyeball for fitday how many cups of veggies and other minor ingredients. I do include them, though, because I track my nutrition.

I also eat dinner on the smaller plates - lunch plates my grandmother called them.

Just remembered that I don't measure milk for tea/cereal right now, but I monitored how much I was using on average over a few days, and I give myself a points allowance for it every day. Some days it's going to be higher, sometimes lower but hopefully it all evens out in the end.

I've counted/measured my food (and not) just about every way that's possible (ridgidly or loosely counting calories, points, fat/carb/fiber grams... counting veggies, not counting veggies, weighing/measuring every morsel... just about any way it can be done, I've done it).


For me, measuring (or not) doesn't nearly determine my success as much as documenting (or not).

When I use my food journal daily, I lose more weight than when I do not. If I write down what I'm going to eat BEFORE I eat it (even if it's 5 seconds before), I'm more successful than if I document it afterward (but afterward is still better than not writing at all).

Right now I'm using an exchange plan, which is a little more flexible. One fruit exchange can range from about 50 to 70 calories. I don't usually weigh or measure vegetables that have less than 30 calories per cup, but I love my new food scale, so I find myself weighing even condiments (I love the zero feature that allows me to put my plate on the scale and zero before adding the next food to weigh).

Yesterday I weighed my salad greens for example (because I noticed on the 1 lb box of baby greens that the serving size was 3 oz. So I measured out 3 ounces and it FILLED the plate).

It's so easy to measure food this way, I really don't have an excuse for not using it ALL of the time.

I rarely use volume measures anymore because the scale is so much handier (and no dirty measuring tools).

I have eyeballed and then weighed, and I found that my guesstimates are pretty accurate, even with meat. I do tend to underestimate calories in heavy, calorically dense foods (like hard cheese), but tend to overestimate on lower density foods like lettuce.

Since I've stared using the BodyBugg, I've become more concerned than ever with measuring my portions of food. As many of you have said, I can accurately estimate my portions for things that I eat really often, like peanut butter, honey, milk, chicken, broccoli... the list goes on. My mom mentioned picking up a food scale, which I think is a great idea, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works out for my calorie accuracy.

So far based on my weight loss, my daily food logs have been within 50-100 calories of accurate, so I consider that perfectly fine.