CrossFit South Bend

In this video we give a practical demonstration of how to weigh and measure your food, with our guest star Lila the puppy.

Do you need to weigh and measure your food to be healthy? Definitely not.

As we’ve said in many other videos, health can be achieved by focusing on food quality and adequate micronutrients (zinc, magnesium, Vitamins C, D, B12, etc.)

However, weighing and measuring your food can be useful for things like getting lean, gaining size and strength, and for athletic performance. Also, while weighing and measuring your food isn’t strictly speaking necessary for health, there are some cool things you can find out that directly relate to your health like how much fiber, sugar, carbs, protein, and fat you’re consuming on a daily basis. It can also tell you whether you are over-eating or under-eating relative to your goals.

What do you need to weigh and measure your food? Two things:
-A food scale (pretty much any food scale will do)
-An app for like MyFitness Pal to enter the weights in (there are other apps as well)

How do you weigh and measure your food? For most foods there are three steps.
-Step 1: Put raw food that you want to measure on top of the scale (usually on top of parchment paper, aluminum foil, a plate, etc. so the food isn’t directly on the scale for safe food prep)
-Step 2: Check the number on the scale (this could be in grams or ounces, grams are usually more precise)
-Step 3: Enter that number in the food amount section of your calorie counting app like MyFitnessPal.

Repeat these steps for all foods.

Do you need to weigh and measure foods for the rest of your life? Absolutely not. But taking a 3-4 week period to get data on your most common 80-90% of meals can be a super useful exercise.

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Transcript

Robby here from CFSB Nutrition and Crossfit South Bend. Today, I’m here with Lilah, our new addition to the family. She wanted to do a video on weighing and measuring food, so I’m going to do that for her. But I’m going to put her down for now because she’ll want to be held for too long. So she’ll be wondering around while we’re doing the video. Say “hi” Lilah. Cool. Alright. Let’s get to it. So people have been asking me for a video on how to actually, practically weigh and measure your food. So let’s talk about how to do this. So the first thing we’re going to start with is protein, and then we’ll move onto the vegetables. Which I’ve already pre-prepared. So it might be surprising that I’d start with protein you actually don’t need to weigh or measure, but I mention this because this is actually going to make things a lot easier for you. This is one pound of ground pork, just split up, on a sheet pan with parchment paper. I have half of this for breakfast and half of this for lunch. I don’t need to weigh and measure it because it’s already measured as one pound. If I were going to have quarters, I could just easily enter it as quarters. So, that’s a really easy way where you don’t actually need to put it on the scale and measure it. So that’s ready to go. Put it in the oven. On here, on your My Fitness Pal what you would do is, so I’ve already preloaded this so you guys didn’t have to watch me search for it. I’d click my all fresh natural ground pork, and my serving size is one ounce and I have eight ounces of it. If you measured it out on a scale, that would be 227 grams, but again, if you know it’s a one pound brick, you don’t need to weigh and measure it out. Okay. So. That was protein that was pretty easy to know how to split up. What would you do about a chicken breast? So, let me show you here with this. So I’ve got my scale over here that you can come around and see, and you’ll notice is says 738 on it right now. I’m going to zero that out. And then, normally I would just use my hands to do this, but since I’m going to be handling vegetables, and I don’t wanna have to have you guys watch me wash my hands. I’m just going to put this on here with the tong. Hopefully it doesn’t slide down for Lilah to eat. And then I put it on the scale. And that says 242 grams, so I would do here in My Fitness Pal for dinner, is my boneless skinless chicken breast. The serving size is one gram. I change that to 242, and it automatically tells me that’s 55.5 grams of protein, 3.2 grams of fat, so on and so forth. Check, that’s all set. Okay. What if I were doing multiple chicken breasts? All I do is I just zero this out, and then I just add the other chicken breast, just like I added the first one. Okay. So, just put it on there. 224. Zero it out again. And I can do the same thing with this third one. So it’s saying that’s 134. So if you are doing a meal for bunch of you know if you’re doing meal prep for a bunch of different meals or for a family or something like that that can be a good way to just do things all at once. Another important point here guys that I want to make is when you are measuring food specifically protein but also vegetables you want to weigh and measure them raw. That is what the macronutrients values will be listed for on the back of your food, that’s what you find in My Fitness Pal. It’s going to shrink after you cook it, so you want to weigh and measure it raw. Okay. I’m going to pop this right here, in this oven. Right there I guess. Okay. So that is, the protein. So this is going to be my protein basically for the day. Now let’s talk about produce. So. Got another sheet pan here ready. And what we’re going to do is the following. So you’ll see over here, I’ve chopped up basically all my veggies for the day. My starch is in the former Japanese sweet potatoes, my kale, my red cabbage. And what I’m going to do now is I’m going to saute this kale. So I’ve got my stove top preheated here. I’m going to put the kale on the sheet pan, and it’s telling me that it’s 150 grams, so all I would do here is I would go to my kale and it’s one gram measurement and I would change that to 150. And I’m good to go. Do you need to weigh and measure your kale? Not really. Do you really need to weigh and measure anything? No, not really. From a health prospective, you can be perfectly healthy without weighing and measuring anything. But for performance, aesthetics, for certain things in health, like the among of fiber you’re having per day, or the amount of sugar, it can be useful. But just to have consistency with weighing and measuring everything I like to just do that. Now, what I’m going to do here is I’m not actually going to weigh the fat of course, but I am going to measure it. I’m going to put a tablespoon of oil into this tablespoon right here. I’m going to drop it into the pan. You can do this with ghee. You can do it with coconut oil. You can do it with whatever it is you’d like to do. And then I’m just going to take this parchment paper toss it in here and that’s going to start sauteing. And I’m going to put a couple of scoops in here of some salt. Oh, Lilah you like the Kale? Yeah? Lilah likes to hang around and wait for someone to drop them so she can eat them. Alright. So while that’s heating up, I’m going to show you guys the next thing. So the next thing is gong to be my starch for the day. So, in this case, I’m gonna use Japanese sweet potatoes. So I’m gonna to zero my scale out. I’m gonna put one set over there other set over here. Okay. So, that’s roughly you know, it’s saying 376, so that’s, you know, basically a little over one eighty per. So what I do here this is kinda a useful thing I do to just make it so I know, ya know, the rough amount for each portion. You take one tablespoon of oil, for this breakfast portion here, drop it right over that. Do another one for this right here. And then get your salt amounts. You don’t have to weigh and measure your salt. I actually do. Not because I am trying to get too little, but because I wanna make sure I get an adequate amount. Salt is very important for overall health, performance, and electrolytes, and a whole bunch of other things. And then, I just mix it up over here. Mix it up over there. And I’m good to go. So what I’m going to do here. Just get a paper towel for my hands real quick. And I’m going to make sure I’ve got Lilah in check. And then just going to put this in the oven like so. And that’s good to go. So, one other one I wanted to show you is. What would you do if you had two vegetables on the same sheet pan? How would you do that? So, I’m just gonna grab this other sheet pan over here. And then and zero it out. I put this set of Japanese sweet potatoes on, I put that set and that’s telling me about 212, so that’s kinda my dinner amount for the carbs. And then for dinner, I could just go in here, and you know, enter 212 right in there. And then that’s telling me that it’s 44 grams of carbs for those sweet potatoes. And then, I zero it out again. And. Put this on here. And you can come around and see that this is saying about 323. And again all I do with that is I would just put that in right here in my My Fitness Pal. Okay. So in that case it’s 100 grams of, I’m just doing three point two three, but it’s the same exact thing. Now for this, since I’ve got two sets of vegetables I just put two tablespoons of oil. So one tablespoon. Two tablespoons. Put the amount of salt I would typically put on two different vegetables. And then just toss it all up. So it’s ready to go. So you don’t have ta individualize it like I did the other set of sweet potatoes. You can make it where you’re doing bulk vegetables for a number of different people. If you were doing this in a saute pan, you can just drop this into the saute pan. If you were doing it in an Instapot, you can drop it into an Instapot. You don’t need to use a sheet pan and parchment paper. But that happens to be what I use for a lot of this stuff. Just because it tends to be easy. Okay. I’m just going to throw that in there. So as you can probably tell this is not all for one meal. This is just me prepping meals basically for the day, so that I’m ready to go. Last thing I’m going to show you guys is how to do this with your fruit. Okay. For this, I’m just going to use a bowl. I’m gonna put the bowl on top of the scale. And. I typically have about 125 grams of blueberries. When I have blueberries. So, all I do here is, you could use your hands, I just like to kinda slide it in there like so. And you can just see that the scale is goin’ up as I’m doing it. And then right as I get to right around 125. It’s a little bit higher. So all I just do is I just take a couple out. And basically around 125. So. Hopefully that gives you a good sense of how to weigh and measure stuff. Now again, you do not need to do this for health, but a lot of people are getting interested because they want to optimize their performance, or the aesthetics, and there are certain things for health, like your fiber consumption, or your sugar consumption, or your protein amount that can be useful to optimize your health. But you don’t, strictly speaking, need to do it for health. But hopefully now, you guys have a good sense of how to weigh and measure things. Thanks so much for tuning in. And we’ll see you guys next time.