weigh food cooked or raw?

You don’t have to weigh your food to lose weight.

Yes that’s gonna be the first sentence of today’s letter cos although we’ll be talking about weighing food to track calories more in-depth today, I don’t want you to start thinking you gotta start weighing food to make progress.

You don’t, you absolutely don’t.

There are many diet methods out there, and most of them don’t involve weighing your food on a food scale. I talk about it a lot so it may seem like I view it as the superior method compared to others but it absolutely isn’t. It’s the method I enjoy the most personally, but one hundred percent it's not the universal best method to be tracking your diet. If you love it, great! If you hate it, no problem. Try something else.

Although...

...I would recommend investing in a food scale (any food scale will do, don’t need to get a super expensive one) and just leave it in your kitchen so when you get the opportunity you can weigh the foods you’re eating just to get an idea of what portions look like. Weigh the bananas you usually get from the market, weigh 100g and 200g of cooked white rice, weigh an apple, weigh the nuts you eat, and put it into an app like myfitnesspal and see how many calories you’re consuming. Doing that with foods you eat regularly gives you a more accurate idea of what portions look like which helps you make better diet decisions in the future.

One thing I’ve found in my journey is that the more I understood about food (portions/calories) the less I was scared and anxious about eating. Like I know by heart a big mac at Mcdonalds is 565kcal. I know if today I’ve eaten nothing all day yet cos it’s been a busy day and I decide to go for a big mac that there is zero chance of the big mac making me gain weight. Makes the big mac a lot more enjoyable and of course helps immensely when I’m planning my diets for the day when especially when I'm off regular routine.

The more you understand about food, calories, and nutrition the better decisions you’ll make in the long term with your diet and all those little decisions does add up and help progress.

You don’t have to be an expert on food or anything, not saying you gotta pass some nutrition exam, but just start to get to know the foods you eat on regular basis a little better. When you start to understand that the handful of “healthy” nuts you grab when you’re craving is actually 200kcal and not very fulfilling while a half a kilo of watermelon is 175kcal and super filling, you’ll be able to make the better decision to satisfy your craving.

Wow ok that was a much longer intro than I intended, so back to the main question for the day, and this is by far one of the questions I get the most when it comes to weighing foods.

So should you weigh your foods raw or cooked?

Weighing raw foods is more accurate than weighing cooked foods, but is a lot more inconvenient (especially if you do any kind of meal prep or buy foods you didn’t cook yourself). Weighing cooked foods on the other hand while is less accurate than weighing raw, but is much more convenient, and is still reliable enough to get you results in basically all scenarios.

There’s no right or wrong way.

Pick the way you enjoy more and stick to that. Oh but do keep in mind when you’re tracking it on your app, do pick the right entry for it. As in if you’re weighing raw food, pick the raw entry and if you’re weighing cooked food pick the cooked entry. Raw rice and cooked rice are significantly different in calories per 100g. While that alone wouldn’t exactly make or break your diet, but it’s a easy mistake to catch and fix.

Personally I weigh all cooked food. None raw. I did do it raw in the very early days when I just started to weigh my food thinking I want maximum accuracy, but after a couple of weeks I just hated the process cos I’m not exactly a fan of handling raw meat too long so I switched over to only measuring cooked. Even though it may be the “less accurate” method but hey, I did lose over 50kg doing it.

Both work, one’s really not superior than the other in terms of making progress with weight loss.

At the end of the day don’t get too riled up by the exact digits or methods of weighing food and tracking calories. The progress is not in the exact digits but in the awareness of how much food you’re eating on a regular basis and being accountable and committed to it.

If you have any questions specific to calorie counting, weighing foods, or using apps like myfitnesspal feel free to reply to this email and let me know. I could go much deeper on any of those topics now that there’s no character limits here.

That’s it for now, till the next one~

Hope you’ve been well, please stay safe!

—Po.