I've got a question for all you ladies . . . I count calories, and use fitday to measure them. The problem is, I don't know if I'm underestimating how much I'm eating, or if I'm eating less than I thought I was. For example, yesterday I felt like I ate quite a bit. But when I put it in fitday, it was barely 1200 calories. The question is: did I just think I ate a lot, when in fact I didn't eat much? Or did I underestimate the amount I ate when I entered it into fitday?

I don't have a kitchen scale and I don't really weigh out my portions. I try to eyeball it to figure it out. Last night I had a piece of salmon, which I estimated at 4 oz because I bought a pound of salmon, then cut what looked like about 1/4 of it off and put it on my plate. Is this a good way to estimate? I had some rice, about one serving spoonful, which I estimated at about 3/4 C. I guessed that my handful of green beans was about 1/2 C, and that my bowlful of salad was about 1 C.

Is there a good way to eyeball portion sizes? Or should I start actually measuring every single thing I eat?

I could never ''eyeball'' very well... I ALWAYS went over what I guesstimated unfortunately... Are you losing weight this way? If you are losing weight and not feeling hungry then keep doing what you are doing, I would say. But I weigh and measure EVERYTHING, it's just habit for me now...

I weigh and measure a lot too, when I have the time (and clean measuring utensils) and when I think about it. After a while you get pretty good at eye-balling, or at least I have, so I don't do it all the time. Occasionally, or if I feel I'm getting out of hand, I measure everything to make sure I'm still eye-balling accurately. It's good to measure things for a while, especially things like butter, mayonnaise, peanut butter, and salad dressing, because they're *very* easy to underestimate.
Your approximations don't sound far off to me, but then I'm not looking at what you're looking at, and my mental image could be way off. A measuring cups and spoons can be easily and cheaply gotten at the dollar store. You can get a decent food scale at WalMart for under $20. Or you can buy actual serving sizes of food for a few days to get a feel for what a serving should be.
But overall I agree with Ilene: if what you are doing is working, keep right on doing it!
Hope this helps!
~Elisha

I have white plastic measuring cups and I'll just throw my rice in there before putting it on my plate, it really only takes a few seconds and it's definitely worth it! When I go out to eat, I don't measure my portions, but I usually just split whatever I'm eating in half because the usually serve WAY too much food for one meal.

I have gotten in the habit of measuring things that are fairly easy, like cottage cheese or cereal. However, somethings that I kind of have to eyeball like dry spaghetti and cuts of meat always make me a little nervous. I don`t trust myself yet to guess correctly so I usually stick to things that I can easily portion out.

A kitchen scale is invaluable, as are measuring cups and spoons. If you want to be accurate you really need to measure things for a while, at least. Then you LEARN eyballing. It still pays to do a reality check, periodically -- I think most people suffer from portion creep when they've been estimating for a while rather than measuring.

Portion creep! THAT'S what it's called! Every few months I have to re-learn what a cup of cereal actually is.

"Portion creep"

I like that! LOL This is so true. The portions slowly get bigger and bigger. I use measuring cups, or seperate a fraction of a canned food and do the math.

Yeah, I think measuring out everything is such an eye opener, and its really not that hard once you start doing it.... with me its just become apart of every meal.

~Liz

If you have a local Goodwill type thrift store, check out their kitchen section. I got my food scale there for $1.00.

What I think is key, is that you measure when you are at home. Meat/fish is the one thing you can get away with not measuring, AS LONG AS you buy something in a full pound, so you can easily divide it in half or quarters. I buy Lauras Extra Lean Ground Beef (no hormones or antibiotics, etc. in the cattle) for instance, and it comes measured out in 1 pound containers. I can easily divide it into 4, 4oz. sections. Only do this though on things that you can be really sure about.

For rice, fruit chunks, peanut butter, etc. measuring cups and spoons are important. What I do is measure my food when I am at home, and it is more convenient to do so. Then, because I have trained myself by measuring to know what 1 cup, or 1 teaspoon looks like-when I eat at someone elses home or in a restaurant, I can "eyeball" more accurately. If you measure out 2 cups of salad every day at home, when you are at a family dinner, it is much easier to eyeball 2 cups of salad-because you see it every day. If you eyeball all of the time, then you are probably eating too much or too little consistently.

Yep, aphil. I try to premeasure everything when I get home from the grocery store too! Then when I am making my lunch or taking snacks somewhere with me it is so quick & easy!

I bought my first scale at the dollar store! Dollar Tree, actually if you have them. I have since bought a digital scale. I checked the two against each other and the scale for $1 was pretty accurate! The digital is much easier to read though.

I used to hear the trick that 3oz of meat was appx the size of a deck of cards. Does that trick have any merit? Or is it way off?

Thanks for the advice everyone! I measured dinner last night and breakfast this morning in my measuring cups, and they came out just like I had been estimating, which made me feel a little better. I eat Lean Cuisine for lunch so I don't have to worry about measuring that at least.

I think my problem is that I make some sort of mixture, like last night I put mushrooms, onions, garlic, and basil in with some pasta sauce, then took a spoonful of the mixture. It's really hard to guess how much mushroom, how much onion, etc was in that spoonful! Do you all know of any good websites for finding nutritional info in like a recipe, rather than for a single food item?

Thinking of it as a deck of cards DOES have some merit, but of course this is to help you eyeball a proper portion size when you are unable to measure, like at a restaurant.

I do a couple of different things. We eat a lot of fish, and since I don't own a food scale (yet. I do want one.) I have each filet wrapped and weighed separately at the grocery store. That way I know exactly how much fish I'm eating. We very, very rarely eat red meat, but when we have it I'll have them do the same thing at the store so it's measured out ahead of time. I also spent one afternoon and measured 1 cup of water in each of my cups and glasses, and into our bowls also. I usually use a measuring cup with rice or pasta because that's what is really hard for me to eyeball - I love my carbs and it's hard for me to keep portion sizes in mind when serving out my favorite foods. The measuring cups help a lot with that. When we go out to eat, I ask the servers to put half my meal in a to-go box before bringing it to the table and then I only eat half of what I'm served on my plate. Most restaurants will give you 3-4 portions worth of food. If I'm feeling particularly virtuous, I leave my to-go box on the table "accidentally" when we leave.