Twenty-five pounds three months

Roger Zoul said:

Sure, if you only eat the same foods everyday. What if you change things up?
The slabs of salmon I have will be much better at one in than the other. So
while I'm going to presumably eat all of it, the fact that their weight can
be so different will mean that I could be getting way more or way fewer
calories than I think I am. And when you combine that with the fact that you
might either other foods, problems will crop up.
Saying that it averages out doesn't mean it will.

It averages out anyway if you eat all of it sooner or later.

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I don't do that though. If I cook a meal that is supposed to have 4
servings, it is 4 servings. Doesn't matter if it's in tupperware or
frozen for next week or whatever, it is 4 servings. Even when hubby is
nuking leftovers, I tell him if he wants more, take two servings so as not
to screw up my portion sizes.

Well, those are your quirks, not mine. I might choose to have more of
something and less of something else, on a given day. Your hubby might feel
he wants more. Apparently, you threaten him with dear life if he should
mess up your portion sizes. 🙂

No, I don't threaten him. But I *do* have to know my portion sizes to
dose insulin, so if he is gonna eat some of the leftover hamburger
stroganoff on fried cabbage, he is gonna take one portion or two, not
some random amount. I don't spank him for not finishing the second
portion either, just leave me portion sizes I can deal with easily.

He doesn't low-carb so he has lots he can eat without my "tyranny"
anyways as I don't police the crackers or bread (which come in servings
anyway if he wants to police himself).

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I personally don't worry about portions as I weigh those foods that it makes
sense to weigh - like meats and fish (high fat items).

Yeah, I don't see it; seems much easier to divide them into portions to me.

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Cause I take half of the yogurt out of the container (I buy 2-cup
containers) and save half for tomorrow; if it's too much today, it'll be
too little tomorrow and average out. I'm not gonna not eat yogurt for a
month and therefore end up in a calorie deficit today that won't get fixed
until Christmas. 🙂

Well, I might. I might not return to the yogurt for a week, or several
days. Of course, I buy those dannon crave control jobbies with only 60 kcals
per container, so I just eat the entire thing and plug that into fitday.

If you bought a big container of yogurt and had several servings, would
it really *matter* if you ate 50 calories less today and 50 more
sometime next week? It *does* average out as long as you eat the rest
of the yogurt eventually.

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:: I can't see why I'd weigh stuff at home when I bought the foods
:: weighed already.

Because of high fat items, you can't always parse it out exactly.

I measure oils and fats by volume, not weight.

I'm talking about meat, nuts, fish (salmon), etc. I don't see a need to
measure oils on a scale.

The meats, nuts and fish come weighed already.

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I agree I can't know how
much cream is in my coffee or how much olive oil on my salad without
measuring, it's just the scale business I don't get as a tablespoon is a
much more convenient way to measure these things.

Same with stuff like nut butters, a tablespoon is gonna be close enough; I
don't need to distinguish between 15 and 16 grams of almond butter. The
difference is only 3 calories in a food *that* calorically dense and it
can't possibly matter if I eat 3 calories more or less.

I don't either....where did you get the idea that the scale is used for all
measurements?

When I had one, I didn't find it useful for *any* measurements. That is
my point.

You mentioned high fat foods and I thought you were talking about oils
and fats and nuts, which I do by volume. Meat and fish come weighed
already, so...

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I noticed this morning I don't measure raspberries by the cup. The ones I
buy come in 12 oz packages. So I just use 1/3rd a package of raspberries
in 1/2 package of yogurt. And I don't measure the Davinci syrup at all, I
just glug some in there. If it's not as accurate as a scale, I still
can't see why I'd care if I ate an extra raspberry today and am thus short
one tomorrow.

How do you know you only got a 1/3 of a package? What if you don't eat any
tomorrow, or you want a smallish snack later on? So you take an even
smaller than normal about out, and mess up the portion sizes? Or what if
your hubby does? Oh, that's right. He can't and you can't. RoboJackie says
NO! 🙂

4 oz of raspberries is a small enough portion that it'd be a snack
anyways even without messing up the fractions (though I'm very unlikely
to eat fruit without some protein and fat along with it). If Steve ate
some weird proportion of the berries, I'd just go back to volumetric
measurements.

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I buy half-pound squares as that's the only way I can find raw cheeses
here, so I think I can get pretty accurate with the cuts.

IME, it's hard to make a knife cut through thick cheese in such a way as to
make the peices very close to similar in size. And, given that you may mix
and match foods, you can't use the busines about it averaging out, because
the errors you make one day may not compensate for the errors you make the
next, unless you're very "tight" in what and how you eat.

It seems to me that weighing a piece of cheese is getting much *tighter*
with how you eat than just cutting the damned cheese and eyeballing it.

I buy about a pound of mozzarella and cheddar each month; that's the
same amount of calories into my body no matter which days I eat them.

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But even with

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rounded shapes, if you know the weight and know how many servings, even if
you're wildly wrong on the size of a particular piece of cheese, it's
gonna average out.

With high fat foods you can be wildy wrong, especially when you mix and
match and change things up in what, when, and how you eat.

But if my "2oz" piece of cheese today is really 2 1/2oz, then my "2oz"
piece of cheese tomorrow will be 1 1/2oz, so it all works out.

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Same way I
:: measure cream cheese now that I think of it. I don't see how
:: eyeballing can be all that inaccurate.

A little bit here, a little bit there, adds up.

It won't *add* up though. If I make 4 omelets out an 8oz block of cream
cheese over the course of several weeks, if one omelet is high, another
will be low; so it won't *add* up, but will *add and subtract* itself to
being the same average amount of cream cheese.

But who does that? What if you use some of the cream cheese for something
else with some other combination of foods? Yeah, you're eating the food you
buy, but you can't claim, unless you're very rigid,
that your calories will average out.

I am rigid about servings, but not about weighing as it seems much
easier to me.

Foods vary anyways. If I have a "serving" of a main course and am still
hungry, I don't have to choose between having a second serving or being
hungry. I can have something else entirely... like a side dish of swiss
chard.

And yes, I cook a known amount of chard too and therefore know how many
"servings" that has, and hence the carb, protein and calorie counts for it.

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There's no way to measure that could possibly make my omelets average more
than 2oz cream cheese as there's only so much cream cheese in the package
and that doesn't change no matter how I measure it out.

That logic only works if you assume you're always going to divide the block
in a certain way. What if you want a small snack made from a celery stick
and some of that cream cheese? And what if 2 oz is too much for your snack
to stay within your budget?

I open a package of cream cheese today to make an omelet. While it's
open, I cut it into 4 pieces, using one of the pieces to make my omelet.

Tomorrow, I decide I want one ounce to put on celery, so I cut one of
the 2-oz chunks in half.

I'm extremely unlikely to be confused about the pieces remaining... the
one ounce piece is a lot smaller than the 2 oz pieces.

I *can't* end up eating too much cream cheese in the long run with this
method. Any overage today has an underage somewhere else.

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If course it has a weight on it...but that weight can be anything. Rarely is
it 1 lbs or 2 lbs. It might be 1.68 lbs. It might be easy to guessitmate
portions, but that doesn't mean they are right.

That is probably the difference right there.

I "aim" to buy meat in whole pounds. I'll buy the 1.98 package or 2.13
package instead of the 1.68 package. Why? Cause long before insulin or
low-carbing or anything, I never saw a recipe for 1 1/2 lbs hamburger,
so dunno what to do with 1.68 lbs.

Or I ask the butcher for a certain amount and get it close like you do
with deli meats like roast beef or such; a pound of tilapia or a half
pound of scallops.

No, it's not absolutely accurate, but it's not like anyone ever got too
many calories because of accidentally eating 17oz of tilapia over 4
meals instead of 16oz. If I carefully measure each meal to be 4 oz, I
then have to throw out the extra ounce or what?

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Sure, you'lll eventually
eat all of the meat, but since that's not all you're eating, and since most
normal people might want a little daily variation in their diets, and since
most normal people on LC eat foods that are high in fat, your method will
likely land them in trouble if they are using calorie counting to lose
weight.

I don't see how. If I eat a 5 oz burger today by mistake, I'm gonna eat
a 3oz burger SOMETIME, so it averages out.

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If I have a pound of hamburger and make 4 patties, I can be pretty darned
sure how much they weigh without a scale.

If I had a way, I'd challenge you on this. You can be sure within some
sizeable delta. First off, for all you know the scale weight at the store
might be off. Have you ever checked? Hamburger doesn't come in a perfect
square, so there is definitely a + - delta in your portion sizes. Whether
that's important or not depends on the size of the delta and what else
you've eaten that day and how you determined the calorie content of that
food.

I'm *sure* there's a delta. There's a delta with a scale too. There's
no such thing as absolutely accurate measurements no matter what you
measure with.

But I'm *also* sure if I eat a pound of hamburger as 4 servings, I am
not getting more calories even if those burgers are 3oz, 3oz, 4oz and 6
oz. It's still the same amount of hamburger, whether I eat all those
meals today or over the next year as the total amount of burger doesn't
change no matetr *what* else I eat with it.

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If I make a meatloaf with 2 lbs of burger, I cut it into 8 slices out of
the oven and know how much burger is in each serving.

Approximately, anyway. I'd rather know exactly. It's not as hard as you
make it sound and I do it all the time.

I don't think I'm making it sound hard; I just don't see the *point* of
the weighing business nor why it's always recommended for everyone
trying to lose weight. The 8 slices average out to the same serving
size as carefully weighed portions do. It seems to me to add extra
steps to weight it as I have to slice the thing anyways.

Think of it another way. You're single, so I presume all the food you
buy is eaten by you (or thrown out). If you buy 54000 calories of food
each month, you *can't* be eating more than 1800 calories per day even
if *today* you eat 2000 calories.

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Plus, it's just not convenient. Meat comes in pounds. Cabbage comes in
heads (which is about 8 cups shredded). Cooking a pound of hamburger and
a head of cabbage and dividing it into 4 portions is easier than trying to
cook 1/4 lb of hamburger and 1/4 head shredded cabbage so as to just have
one serving.

It's not that big of a deal for me. I weigh the meat and eyeball the
cabbage (it's very low cal compared to meat, so that error I don't get upset
over).

I'd find shredding 1/4 of a cabbage four times and wrapping it and
storing it in between and washing the shredder and wok four times to be
much more annoying than just doing it all at once and having leftovers
and throwing them into tupperwares.

But hey, that's me - you can cook however you want to! I'll weigh my
cabbage if you come over and shred it every day for me. 😉

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Plus, it's not like I'm not gonna eat again tomorrow anyways. I prefer
having leftovers as I don't want to have to cook three times a day. If
I'm tired of a food, I just freeze the leftovers until later.

That sounds like just as much work as doing things might way. You freeze,
thaw, put stuff in the fridge...it's just trading effort....

Yeah, but I don't have to actively cook three times a day. Most meals,
I just nuke. It doesn't take much longer to cook a big batch of meals
than just one.

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A lot of dishes that one might make don't divide easily into quarters.
Every seen a slab of ribs that are longer/fatter on one end than the other?
What of the salmon? The stuff I get is noticable bigger and thicker on one
end than the other. Splitting into equal portions just ain't easy. And, what
if I decide that I want to make some salmon spread to eat with rinds? I
gotta dole out a fixed portion? Why? Just weight out an amount, get the
calories it has, then see if that number works in my budget.

I have to eat fixed portions in order to dose insulin anyway. But
frankly, I tried the scales before insulin and thought it was an
annoyance then also. I'd rather eyeball the salmon into portions. If a
portion today is undersized, it'll get made up sometime down the line
with the larger portion.

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My way works because I'm more concerned about the calories than I am eating
all the food. If something doesn't get eaten within a certain time, I toss
it. Thus, the size of those portions will matter because the averaging won't
be something simple I can anticipate anyhow.

I don't toss meat and cheese though. I'd rather freeze for eating some
day when I don't feel like cooking (which in my case is most days).

I *might* toss cooked chard, as it wouldn't freeze well. But you can be
assured if I do toss some, I'll know how many servings it was that I
tossed. 😉

Quoted message said:

Perhaps that works for you since you seem to be eating within the confines
of a fixed/rigid system that you're created for yourself. Perhaps that's why
you can't understand why others do things differently than you.

I don't see what is so "rigid" about deciding a pound of meat is 4
servings as opposed to weighing every meal and cooking more often. It
seems much simpler and easier to me.

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Also, to weigh the entire wok full of food would need a different scale
than one I'd measure portions on, so I'd need two scales. I doubt it'd
end up any more accurate when you figure two scales with different tares
and all.

That's why I'd make a single serve. Stirfry is simple enough to do.

Yeah, except for shredding the cabbage and washing the shredder and wok
four times; much easier to nuke leftovers.

I am a VERY lazy cook. I cook about twice a week. All the rest is just
nuking, or maybe stirring berries into yogurt or nuking an artichoke
(which is technically cooking, but only takes a minute).

I've already done the math for most of the stuff I eat. The page isn't
officially live yet, but here's how it works for me with stuff I
typically eat (and a few things I eat much less often, I'm saving the
info cause I don't want to calculate every time I eat something):
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/text/diabetes/typicalMeals.asp

Breakfasts are all figured out in advance cause I can't do math before
coffee. 😉 There's a wide variety of calories in them though, so I can
vary depending on how hungry I am. If I wanted to eat low-calorie, I'd
just skip the couple higher calorie breakfasts - cream cheese omelet,
egg and cheese "sandwich", chocolate nut custard, "muffins" and
"pancakes" and stick to the protein shakes, "cereals", yogurt and
cottage cheese meals.

Lunch and dinner are a protein dish and one or more side dishes. I have
calculations for servings, but not for meals, because I dunno what I
might feel like eating any particular day.

So if the main dish is a bit carby, I choose something less carby for a
side dish, etc. Or if I'm not hungry (I still have to eat cause of
medications that have to be taken with meals), I choose stuff that adds
up to low-calories. So like the broccoli-and-cheese soup is both carby
and caloric, so a good side dish for that is one of the salads.

There's few snacks listed as I mostly don't snack anymore, you decide if
you're *really* hungry if you have to stick a needle in your belly to
eat. But it'd not exactly be difficult to just eat half of a normal
serving and call it a snack.

Quoted message said:

Well, maybe because you're eating largely low carb?

Of course I'm eating low-carb! Did you just notice me here, Roger? Do
I have to post about bicycles to get noticed? 😉

Quoted message said:

Insulin is about
normaling BG, not so much about calories. Being off because you over/under
guessed fat isn't nearly as bad as over/under guessing carbs, as far as
insulin is concerned. And the protein isn't nearly as impactful as carbs,
either.

I have found the carb and protein are significant for dosing insulin,
but the fat (and hence calories) aren't. Empirically, 15g total carb
(not net) needs dosing the same as 30g protein.

It all falls apart if I eat more than 60g total carb though - I don't
eat high-carb often enough to have it worked out for that yet.

However, the fat is totally irrelevant as far as I've been able to see;
theoretically it can turn into glucose at 10% but I can't see any
difference in bg numbers at all from fat. Something like that coconut
bark, which is almost entirely fat, doesn't make any difference to my bg
at all even if I eat two "servings".

Yes, coconut bark is in "servings" also; pretty much all my recipes are.
🙂

Still, I do have to know how much I'm eating, even if the fat content
doesn't matter much for the bg control.

If my "eyeballing" method is close enough for insulin where it does
matter how much I eat at every individual meal, I can't imagine it'd be
that far off for calories where a weekly average ought to have the same
results anyway.

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

"Jackie Patti" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Cubit said:

Religious use of Fitday or equivalent using a kitchen scale is the only
way to estimate calories. Eyeball estimates won't cut it.

I have never understood the need for a kitchen scale.

I couldn't get by without a scale. I have a lot of stuff I need to weigh.
Like I buy the big bowls of pre-cut melons, some canteloupe, some
watermellon, some honeydew, etc. I just can't guestimate that stuff, I need
to weigh it out.

I've been staying away from dairy recently, but shreded cheese, cottage
cheese, sour cream, etc. needs to be measured.

I almost always measure weight rather than volume. Its a lot easier to put
my plate on the scale, zero the scale, and then measure out x oz's of
cottage cheese than to mess with measureing cups.

If something is packaged, weighed out and easy to divide, then I do it your
way. Like an 8oz block of cheese, I'll take a 1/4 or a 1/2 of the package
and know exactly what I'm getting. I also buy pre-packaged green salads,
cole slaw, brocolli with cauliflower and carrots, etc. I just make it a
point to either eat 1/2 or all of the package in one day.

Mike

"Jackie Patti" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Cubit said:

Religious use of Fitday or equivalent using a kitchen scale is the only
way to estimate calories. Eyeball estimates won't cut it.

I have never understood the need for a kitchen scale.

I couldn't get by without a scale. I have a lot of stuff I need to weigh.
Like I buy the big bowls of pre-cut melons, some canteloupe, some
watermellon, some honeydew, etc. I just can't guestimate that stuff, I need
to weigh it out.

I've been staying away from dairy recently, but shreded cheese, cottage
cheese, sour cream, etc. needs to be measured.

I almost always measure weight rather than volume. Its a lot easier to put
my plate on the scale, zero the scale, and then measure out x oz's of
cottage cheese than to mess with measureing cups.

If something is packaged, weighed out and easy to divide, then I do it your
way. Like an 8oz block of cheese, I'll take a 1/4 or a 1/2 of the package
and know exactly what I'm getting. I also buy pre-packaged green salads,
cole slaw, brocolli with cauliflower and carrots, etc. I just make it a
point to either eat 1/2 or all of the package in one day.

Mike

"Jackie Patti" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Cubit said:

Religious use of Fitday or equivalent using a kitchen scale is the only
way to estimate calories. Eyeball estimates won't cut it.

I have never understood the need for a kitchen scale.

I couldn't get by without a scale. I have a lot of stuff I need to weigh.
Like I buy the big bowls of pre-cut melons, some canteloupe, some
watermellon, some honeydew, etc. I just can't guestimate that stuff, I need
to weigh it out.

I've been staying away from dairy recently, but shreded cheese, cottage
cheese, sour cream, etc. needs to be measured.

I almost always measure weight rather than volume. Its a lot easier to put
my plate on the scale, zero the scale, and then measure out x oz's of
cottage cheese than to mess with measureing cups.

If something is packaged, weighed out and easy to divide, then I do it your
way. Like an 8oz block of cheese, I'll take a 1/4 or a 1/2 of the package
and know exactly what I'm getting. I also buy pre-packaged green salads,
cole slaw, brocolli with cauliflower and carrots, etc. I just make it a
point to either eat 1/2 or all of the package in one day.

Mike

"Jackie Patti" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Cubit said:

Religious use of Fitday or equivalent using a kitchen scale is the only
way to estimate calories. Eyeball estimates won't cut it.

I have never understood the need for a kitchen scale.

I couldn't get by without a scale. I have a lot of stuff I need to weigh.
Like I buy the big bowls of pre-cut melons, some canteloupe, some
watermellon, some honeydew, etc. I just can't guestimate that stuff, I need
to weigh it out.

I've been staying away from dairy recently, but shreded cheese, cottage
cheese, sour cream, etc. needs to be measured.

I almost always measure weight rather than volume. Its a lot easier to put
my plate on the scale, zero the scale, and then measure out x oz's of
cottage cheese than to mess with measureing cups.

If something is packaged, weighed out and easy to divide, then I do it your
way. Like an 8oz block of cheese, I'll take a 1/4 or a 1/2 of the package
and know exactly what I'm getting. I also buy pre-packaged green salads,
cole slaw, brocolli with cauliflower and carrots, etc. I just make it a
point to either eat 1/2 or all of the package in one day.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Oh, HIIT doesn't have to be as bad as you probably think it is. First,
I'd suggest you start out easy. Second, I'd suggest you find a low-impact
activity, for injury is a major show-stopper. On your bike, if you have a
nice 1/4 mile hill (relatively isolated from cars) that gets your heart
rate up when riding up it, you'll find that a very effective way to do
some HIIT.

Oh. I guess I'm already doing that :-) There's nothing but hills around
here. Right now, making it to the top of some of them is HIIT enough for
me! Its getting easier, though. Rather than trying to pick-up speed on the
uphills, for now, I'm just making my rides longer each time, so more hills
to go up and down.

I thought you meant wind sprints, that kind of thing.

Mike

"Jackie Patti" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Roger Zoul said:

Sure, if you only eat the same foods everyday. What if you change things
up? The slabs of salmon I have will be much better at one in than the
other. So while I'm going to presumably eat all of it, the fact that
their weight can be so different will mean that I could be getting way
more or way fewer calories than I think I am. And when you combine that
with the fact that you might either other foods, problems will crop up.
Saying that it averages out doesn't mean it will.

It averages out anyway if you eat all of it sooner or later.

You're from venus and I'm from mars. That's why you're ignoring what i
wrote.

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I don't do that though. If I cook a meal that is supposed to have 4
servings, it is 4 servings. Doesn't matter if it's in tupperware or
frozen for next week or whatever, it is 4 servings. Even when hubby is
nuking leftovers, I tell him if he wants more, take two servings so as
not to screw up my portion sizes.

Well, those are your quirks, not mine. I might choose to have more of
something and less of something else, on a given day. Your hubby might
feel he wants more. Apparently, you threaten him with dear life if he
should mess up your portion sizes. 🙂

No, I don't threaten him. But I *do* have to know my portion sizes to
dose insulin, so if he is gonna eat some of the leftover hamburger
stroganoff on fried cabbage, he is gonna take one portion or two, not some
random amount. I don't spank him for not finishing the second portion
either, just leave me portion sizes I can deal with easily.

So, since you've portionatized everything you eat, you've done way more work
than the rest of us. Perhaps you should read what you've written here,
Jackie. It's amazing, really. When I buy meat/fish, etc, I just look at the
price and never really worry at all about the weight. I don't think about
how many portions it will make. I just keep track of the weight of what I
eat so I can determine caloric content. None of this spliting up unto X
servings. My life simply doesn't work like that...and I really doubt if many
others here do also...although i'm sure there are others to function in a
manner similar to yours.

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He doesn't low-carb so he has lots he can eat without my "tyranny" anyways
as I don't police the crackers or bread (which come in servings anyway if
he wants to police himself).

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I personally don't worry about portions as I weigh those foods that it
makes sense to weigh - like meats and fish (high fat items).

Yeah, I don't see it; seems much easier to divide them into portions to
me.

Given all of the other work you've done (ie, the page you like below), I can
see that. You're fixed within your own way of doing things and you can't
see how others might function differently.

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Cause I take half of the yogurt out of the container (I buy 2-cup
containers) and save half for tomorrow; if it's too much today, it'll be
too little tomorrow and average out. I'm not gonna not eat yogurt for a
month and therefore end up in a calorie deficit today that won't get
fixed until Christmas. 🙂

Well, I might. I might not return to the yogurt for a week, or several
days. Of course, I buy those dannon crave control jobbies with only 60
kcals per container, so I just eat the entire thing and plug that into
fitday.

If you bought a big container of yogurt and had several servings, would it
really *matter* if you ate 50 calories less today and 50 more sometime
next week? It *does* average out as long as you eat the rest of the
yogurt eventually.

Not if I ate 50 caloires too much today, along with 100 caloires too much of
something else, and then another 50 calories somewhere else. Then, sometimes
next week I might be going something similar, or I might run out fo
something and get some more. That's because I'm not "unitizing" every food
item I bring into my house into "servings" or "portions". For me a portion
is defined by what my calorie budget is and who much of this particular
thing I feel like eating. I'd have to transform into RoboRoger to survive
with your scheme. It's no wonder you hate to cook. You're probably
exhausted from all the mental prep in thing of all those portions and
dividing things up. I can see why you don't like the math too early...

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> :: I can't see why I'd weigh stuff at home when I bought the foods
> :: weighed already.
>
> Because of high fat items, you can't always parse it out exactly.
I measure oils and fats by volume, not weight.

I'm talking about meat, nuts, fish (salmon), etc. I don't see a need to
measure oils on a scale.

The meats, nuts and fish come weighed already.

Sure. But very few divide them into integer servings as you do. That must
take a lot of time.

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I agree I can't know how
much cream is in my coffee or how much olive oil on my salad without
measuring, it's just the scale business I don't get as a tablespoon is a
much more convenient way to measure these things.

Same with stuff like nut butters, a tablespoon is gonna be close enough;
I don't need to distinguish between 15 and 16 grams of almond butter.
The difference is only 3 calories in a food *that* calorically dense and
it can't possibly matter if I eat 3 calories more or less.

I don't either....where did you get the idea that the scale is used for
all measurements?

When I had one, I didn't find it useful for *any* measurements. That is
my point.

I understand your point...but it doesn't work for me. That's my point.

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You mentioned high fat foods and I thought you were talking about oils and
fats and nuts, which I do by volume. Meat and fish come weighed already,
so...

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I noticed this morning I don't measure raspberries by the cup. The ones
I buy come in 12 oz packages. So I just use 1/3rd a package of
raspberries in 1/2 package of yogurt. And I don't measure the Davinci
syrup at all, I just glug some in there. If it's not as accurate as a
scale, I still can't see why I'd care if I ate an extra raspberry today
and am thus short one tomorrow.

How do you know you only got a 1/3 of a package? What if you don't eat
any tomorrow, or you want a smallish snack later on? So you take an
even smaller than normal about out, and mess up the portion sizes? Or
what if your hubby does? Oh, that's right. He can't and you can't.
RoboJackie says NO! 🙂

4 oz of raspberries is a small enough portion that it'd be a snack anyways
even without messing up the fractions (though I'm very unlikely to eat
fruit without some protein and fat along with it). If Steve ate some
weird proportion of the berries, I'd just go back to volumetric
measurements.

"weird portions" is very telling...

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I buy half-pound squares as that's the only way I can find raw cheeses
here, so I think I can get pretty accurate with the cuts.

IME, it's hard to make a knife cut through thick cheese in such a way as
to make the peices very close to similar in size. And, given that you may
mix and match foods, you can't use the busines about it averaging out,
because the errors you make one day may not compensate for the errors you
make the next, unless you're very "tight" in what and how you eat.

It seems to me that weighing a piece of cheese is getting much *tighter*
with how you eat than just cutting the damned cheese and eyeballing it.

I buy about a pound of mozzarella and cheddar each month; that's the same
amount of calories into my body no matter which days I eat them.

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But even with

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rounded shapes, if you know the weight and know how many servings, even
if you're wildly wrong on the size of a particular piece of cheese, it's
gonna average out.

With high fat foods you can be wildy wrong, especially when you mix and
match and change things up in what, when, and how you eat.

But if my "2oz" piece of cheese today is really 2 1/2oz, then my "2oz"
piece of cheese tomorrow will be 1 1/2oz, so it all works out.

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> Same way I
> :: measure cream cheese now that I think of it. I don't see how
> :: eyeballing can be all that inaccurate.
>
> A little bit here, a little bit there, adds up.
It won't *add* up though. If I make 4 omelets out an 8oz block of cream
cheese over the course of several weeks, if one omelet is high, another
will be low; so it won't *add* up, but will *add and subtract* itself to
being the same average amount of cream cheese.

But who does that? What if you use some of the cream cheese for something
else with some other combination of foods? Yeah, you're eating the food
you buy, but you can't claim, unless you're very rigid,
that your calories will average out.

I am rigid about servings, but not about weighing as it seems much easier
to me.

But being rigid about these serving is a lot more work, since you have to
divide everything you buy into servings. Far too much work.

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Foods vary anyways. If I have a "serving" of a main course and am still
hungry, I don't have to choose between having a second serving or being
hungry. I can have something else entirely... like a side dish of swiss
chard.

Which, of course, you've parse out into "servings". It almost to think
hurts to about it.

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And yes, I cook a known amount of chard too and therefore know how many
"servings" that has, and hence the carb, protein and calorie counts for
it.

Yep. Knew it.

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There's no way to measure that could possibly make my omelets average
more than 2oz cream cheese as there's only so much cream cheese in the
package and that doesn't change no matter how I measure it out.

That logic only works if you assume you're always going to divide the
block in a certain way. What if you want a small snack made from a
celery stick and some of that cream cheese? And what if 2 oz is too much
for your snack to stay within your budget?

I open a package of cream cheese today to make an omelet. While it's
open, I cut it into 4 pieces, using one of the pieces to make my omelet.

Tomorrow, I decide I want one ounce to put on celery, so I cut one of the
2-oz chunks in half.

I'm extremely unlikely to be confused about the pieces remaining... the
one ounce piece is a lot smaller than the 2 oz pieces.

I *can't* end up eating too much cream cheese in the long run with this
method. Any overage today has an underage somewhere else.

Again, that doesn't mean that you can't eat too much food.

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If course it has a weight on it...but that weight can be anything. Rarely
is it 1 lbs or 2 lbs. It might be 1.68 lbs. It might be easy to
guessitmate portions, but that doesn't mean they are right.

That is probably the difference right there.

I "aim" to buy meat in whole pounds. I'll buy the 1.98 package or 2.13
package instead of the 1.68 package. Why? Cause long before insulin or
low-carbing or anything, I never saw a recipe for 1 1/2 lbs hamburger, so
dunno what to do with 1.68 lbs.

See...that's rigid thinking there. A scale would solve that problem
immediately. Or, just don't worry about it and guess it.

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Or I ask the butcher for a certain amount and get it close like you do
with deli meats like roast beef or such; a pound of tilapia or a half
pound of scallops.

No, it's not absolutely accurate, but it's not like anyone ever got too
many calories because of accidentally eating 17oz of tilapia over 4 meals
instead of 16oz. If I carefully measure each meal to be 4 oz, I then have
to throw out the extra ounce or what?

No, you'd figure it into your budget and if necessary, leave off something
else. Again, your 1 lb of tilapia might be 4 fillets this week and 5 next.
What a pain.

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Sure, you'lll eventually eat all of the meat, but since that's not all
you're eating, and since most normal people might want a little daily
variation in their diets, and since most normal people on LC eat foods
that are high in fat, your method will likely land them in trouble if
they are using calorie counting to lose weight.

I don't see how. If I eat a 5 oz burger today by mistake, I'm gonna eat a
3oz burger SOMETIME, so it averages out.

You eat 3 meals a day. That means you can make at least 3 mistakes in
portions. If they all are on the high side, then your caloires are too high.
When you get around to those other portions, they may not be balanced
correctly to compensate for the mistakes you made before, because the 3
mistakes might be different ones. So, depending on the mistake and what you
eat, you could easily end up eating more again. And when you do get around
to those smaller portions, they may leave you hungry, so you end up hurting
down other foods.

Of course, you're in some Robo mode and have done all of the "math"
calculations on combo foods - which might save you. But it much more work
than a lot of people are willing to do, Jackie. And it seems to not factor
in any kind of out-of-house eating for which your "averaging out" doesn't
account for.

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If I have a pound of hamburger and make 4 patties, I can be pretty
darned sure how much they weigh without a scale.

If I had a way, I'd challenge you on this. You can be sure within some
sizeable delta. First off, for all you know the scale weight at the
store might be off. Have you ever checked? Hamburger doesn't come in a
perfect square, so there is definitely a + - delta in your portion sizes.
Whether that's important or not depends on the size of the delta and what
else you've eaten that day and how you determined the calorie content of
that food.

I'm *sure* there's a delta. There's a delta with a scale too. There's no
such thing as absolutely accurate measurements no matter what you measure
with.

With a decent scale, it's delta is way smaller than your eyeballing
technique, IMO. Who said anything about absolutely accurate measurements,
anyhow.

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But I'm *also* sure if I eat a pound of hamburger as 4 servings, I am not
getting more calories even if those burgers are 3oz, 3oz, 4oz and 6 oz.
It's still the same amount of hamburger, whether I eat all those meals
today or over the next year as the total amount of burger doesn't change
no matetr *what* else I eat with it.

I don't understand why you keep saying that....it's not just how many
calories you get from meat divided in a certain way, it the avergae number
of calories you get from all your foods. That depends on what you eat each
day. Most people won't be happy with just a 3 oz serving of meat and will
end up lookign for something else.

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If I make a meatloaf with 2 lbs of burger, I cut it into 8 slices out of
the oven and know how much burger is in each serving.

Approximately, anyway. I'd rather know exactly. It's not as hard as you
make it sound and I do it all the time.

I don't think I'm making it sound hard; I just don't see the *point* of
the weighing business nor why it's always recommended for everyone trying
to lose weight. The 8 slices average out to the same serving size as
carefully weighed portions do. It seems to me to add extra steps to
weight it as I have to slice the thing anyways.

Because most people don't divide everything up the way you do in terms of
servings. Why don't you ask mike if he does that. Or david. Most of us just
buy food, stuff it in the box, and eat is as we please. Maybe you have time
an inclination for this, but I surely don't. If I buy a package of
hamburger meat, I don't bother reading what's on the label. I just break off
some amount, weight it, and cook it, and eat it. That gets recorded along
with every thing else. I haven't done a calculation of how many serves I'm
going to get out of it. I haven't worried about combination foods. I can
easly add 8 oz of broccoli with some spicy mustard and splenda sweetened
pickle relish in a bowl. That's a meal.

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Think of it another way. You're single, so I presume all the food you buy
is eaten by you (or thrown out). If you buy 54000 calories of food each
month, you *can't* be eating more than 1800 calories per day even if
*today* you eat 2000 calories.

You're assuming some kind of closed system here. For one, no one buys food
for a month. It won't keep that way. And just because I bought food to keep
at home, doesn't mean that's the only food I eat. I may decide to get a
sausage patty from MCD one day, along with a large coffee. I may get a
salad at work, and get those containers of dressing to cover it. When I get
home I have a certain calorie budget left. A 2 oz error in meat might put me
over for the day. Or, that error might come from multiple places but still
add up to an equivalent error. The next day is a new one, with different
choices made and new chances of introducing errors. This averaging out stuff
you talk about won't work for me because I haven't done all of the work you
have in preparing portions. In fact, the notion of portion parsing IMO is
unnatural and something I'm never going to be likely to do.

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Plus, it's just not convenient. Meat comes in pounds. Cabbage comes
in heads (which is about 8 cups shredded). Cooking a pound of hamburger
and a head of cabbage and dividing it into 4 portions is easier than
trying to cook 1/4 lb of hamburger and 1/4 head shredded cabbage so as
to just have one serving.

It's not that big of a deal for me. I weigh the meat and eyeball the
cabbage (it's very low cal compared to meat, so that error I don't get
upset over).

I'd find shredding 1/4 of a cabbage four times and wrapping it and storing
it in between and washing the shredder and wok four times to be much more
annoying than just doing it all at once and having leftovers and throwing
them into tupperwares.

You can buy shredded cabbage in bags. It's how I do my stirflys. I just
dump some amount in (which I admit I don't weigh because it's low calorie so
it's likely to not be impactful to calories or carbs). Washing a shredder
after cabbage is just a rinse. And who says you need to wash the wok? Just
leave it there until next time. 🙂

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But hey, that's me - you can cook however you want to! I'll weigh my
cabbage if you come over and shred it every day for me. 😉

Just do as I do. It's quicker. I bet spend a lot more time worrying about
food/meals/portions/etc than I do. Of course, you're also probably serving
up delightful tasty food for you and your hubby. I eat very basic "meals".
In fact, I rarely call them dishes or anything because 9 times out of 10
it's just thrown together from what's in the box and what I want. I tailor
it all to meet the budget.

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Plus, it's not like I'm not gonna eat again tomorrow anyways. I prefer
having leftovers as I don't want to have to cook three times a day. If
I'm tired of a food, I just freeze the leftovers until later.

That sounds like just as much work as doing things might way. You freeze,
thaw, put stuff in the fridge...it's just trading effort....

Yeah, but I don't have to actively cook three times a day. Most meals, I
just nuke. It doesn't take much longer to cook a big batch of meals than
just one.

I don't like nuking meats. I also don't like having a box full of different
leftovers. I can deal with a few.
I certainly don't cook 3 meals a day, either. For me, cooking one meal a day
is about all I can muster and I feel good when I make that. Ok, weekends are
different.

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A lot of dishes that one might make don't divide easily into quarters.
Every seen a slab of ribs that are longer/fatter on one end than the
other? What of the salmon? The stuff I get is noticable bigger and
thicker on one end than the other. Splitting into equal portions just
ain't easy. And, what if I decide that I want to make some salmon spread
to eat with rinds? I gotta dole out a fixed portion? Why? Just weight
out an amount, get the calories it has, then see if that number works in
my budget.

I have to eat fixed portions in order to dose insulin anyway. But
frankly, I tried the scales before insulin and thought it was an annoyance
then also. I'd rather eyeball the salmon into portions. If a portion
today is undersized, it'll get made up sometime down the line with the
larger portion.

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My way works because I'm more concerned about the calories than I am
eating all the food. If something doesn't get eaten within a certain
time, I toss it. Thus, the size of those portions will matter because the
averaging won't be something simple I can anticipate anyhow.

I don't toss meat and cheese though. I'd rather freeze for eating some
day when I don't feel like cooking (which in my case is most days).

Sometimes I'll cook a big slab of salmon and just won't finsih it all. Since
I don't freeze stuff, I just toss it if I think it's been hanging around too
long to be any good.

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I *might* toss cooked chard, as it wouldn't freeze well. But you can be
assured if I do toss some, I'll know how many servings it was that I
tossed. 😉

I believe it!

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Perhaps that works for you since you seem to be eating within the
confines of a fixed/rigid system that you're created for yourself.
Perhaps that's why you can't understand why others do things differently
than you.

I don't see what is so "rigid" about deciding a pound of meat is 4
servings as opposed to weighing every meal and cooking more often. It
seems much simpler and easier to me.

Well, duh! Considering all of the other work you've done, I can see that.
you have portions built into your head Jackie. Maybe a lot of women do, but
I won't know anything about that, huh?

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Also, to weigh the entire wok full of food would need a different scale
than one I'd measure portions on, so I'd need two scales. I doubt it'd
end up any more accurate when you figure two scales with different tares
and all.

That's why I'd make a single serve. Stirfry is simple enough to do.

Yeah, except for shredding the cabbage and washing the shredder and wok
four times; much easier to nuke leftovers.

We already talked about that! 🙂

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I am a VERY lazy cook. I cook about twice a week. All the rest is just
nuking, or maybe stirring berries into yogurt or nuking an artichoke
(which is technically cooking, but only takes a minute).

You dont have much energy left after you divide everything into your
portions, huh? The heavy math saps your energy. haha.

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I've already done the math for most of the stuff I eat.

You go girl! 🙂

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The page isn't officially live yet, but here's how it works for me with
stuff I typically eat (and a few things I eat much less often, I'm saving
the info cause I don't want to calculate every time I eat something):
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/text/diabetes/typicalMeals.asp

Wow. ROTFLMAO. Amazing. I admire your dedication, though. It must be the
dosing insulin thing that set you on this path. You're just using the
butcher to weigh your stuff and then you divide from there. After I get meat
home, I could not tell you what it weighed. And that label soon gets messed
up and discarded.

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Breakfasts are all figured out in advance cause I can't do math before
coffee. 😉 There's a wide variety of calories in them though, so I can
vary depending on how hungry I am. If I wanted to eat low-calorie, I'd
just skip the couple higher calorie breakfasts - cream cheese omelet, egg
and cheese "sandwich", chocolate nut custard, "muffins" and "pancakes" and
stick to the protein shakes, "cereals", yogurt and cottage cheese meals.

Lunch and dinner are a protein dish and one or more side dishes. I have
calculations for servings, but not for meals, because I dunno what I might
feel like eating any particular day.

So if the main dish is a bit carby, I choose something less carby for a
side dish, etc. Or if I'm not hungry (I still have to eat cause of
medications that have to be taken with meals), I choose stuff that adds up
to low-calories. So like the broccoli-and-cheese soup is both carby and
caloric, so a good side dish for that is one of the salads.

There's few snacks listed as I mostly don't snack anymore, you decide if
you're *really* hungry if you have to stick a needle in your belly to eat.
But it'd not exactly be difficult to just eat half of a normal serving and
call it a snack.

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Well, maybe because you're eating largely low carb?

Of course I'm eating low-carb! Did you just notice me here, Roger? Do I
have to post about bicycles to get noticed? 😉

🙂

Well, it does help with insulin use that you're not pumping in huge carbs to
compensate for, is all I'm saying.

Oh, I try not to post too much stuff about bikes here. Like the new one I'm
getting soon. Can't wait! This will be number 3.

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Insulin is about normaling BG, not so much about calories. Being off
because you over/under guessed fat isn't nearly as bad as over/under
guessing carbs, as far as insulin is concerned. And the protein isn't
nearly as impactful as carbs, either.

I have found the carb and protein are significant for dosing insulin, but
the fat (and hence calories) aren't. Empirically, 15g total carb (not
net) needs dosing the same as 30g protein.

It all falls apart if I eat more than 60g total carb though - I don't eat
high-carb often enough to have it worked out for that yet.

Yes, that's essential I was a was referring to above.

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However, the fat is totally irrelevant as far as I've been able to see;
theoretically it can turn into glucose at 10% but I can't see any
difference in bg numbers at all from fat. Something like that coconut
bark, which is almost entirely fat, doesn't make any difference to my bg
at all even if I eat two "servings".

Yes, coconut bark is in "servings" also; pretty much all my recipes are.
🙂

Still, I do have to know how much I'm eating, even if the fat content
doesn't matter much for the bg control.

See -- I knew all of this from before!

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If my "eyeballing" method is close enough for insulin where it does matter
how much I eat at every individual meal, I can't imagine it'd be that far
off for calories where a weekly average ought to have the same results
anyway.

Well, I'm coming at this from a "counting LC calories to lose weight" POV,
which is what Mike and I was sort of discussing for helping him get his 25
in 3.

Anyway, carry on Jackie. I'm sure what you do works for you. I wish it could
work for me, but I prefer to be more foot-loose and fancy-free! I'm
certainly not much of a home maker, either. Just some dumb guy.

I'm off for a century tomorrow. Yay!

"Jackie Patti" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

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Roger Zoul said:

Sure, if you only eat the same foods everyday. What if you change things
up? The slabs of salmon I have will be much better at one in than the
other. So while I'm going to presumably eat all of it, the fact that
their weight can be so different will mean that I could be getting way
more or way fewer calories than I think I am. And when you combine that
with the fact that you might either other foods, problems will crop up.
Saying that it averages out doesn't mean it will.

It averages out anyway if you eat all of it sooner or later.

You're from venus and I'm from mars. That's why you're ignoring what i
wrote.

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I don't do that though. If I cook a meal that is supposed to have 4
servings, it is 4 servings. Doesn't matter if it's in tupperware or
frozen for next week or whatever, it is 4 servings. Even when hubby is
nuking leftovers, I tell him if he wants more, take two servings so as
not to screw up my portion sizes.

Well, those are your quirks, not mine. I might choose to have more of
something and less of something else, on a given day. Your hubby might
feel he wants more. Apparently, you threaten him with dear life if he
should mess up your portion sizes. 🙂

No, I don't threaten him. But I *do* have to know my portion sizes to
dose insulin, so if he is gonna eat some of the leftover hamburger
stroganoff on fried cabbage, he is gonna take one portion or two, not some
random amount. I don't spank him for not finishing the second portion
either, just leave me portion sizes I can deal with easily.

So, since you've portionatized everything you eat, you've done way more work
than the rest of us. Perhaps you should read what you've written here,
Jackie. It's amazing, really. When I buy meat/fish, etc, I just look at the
price and never really worry at all about the weight. I don't think about
how many portions it will make. I just keep track of the weight of what I
eat so I can determine caloric content. None of this spliting up unto X
servings. My life simply doesn't work like that...and I really doubt if many
others here do also...although i'm sure there are others to function in a
manner similar to yours.

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He doesn't low-carb so he has lots he can eat without my "tyranny" anyways
as I don't police the crackers or bread (which come in servings anyway if
he wants to police himself).

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I personally don't worry about portions as I weigh those foods that it
makes sense to weigh - like meats and fish (high fat items).

Yeah, I don't see it; seems much easier to divide them into portions to
me.

Given all of the other work you've done (ie, the page you like below), I can
see that. You're fixed within your own way of doing things and you can't
see how others might function differently.

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Cause I take half of the yogurt out of the container (I buy 2-cup
containers) and save half for tomorrow; if it's too much today, it'll be
too little tomorrow and average out. I'm not gonna not eat yogurt for a
month and therefore end up in a calorie deficit today that won't get
fixed until Christmas. 🙂

Well, I might. I might not return to the yogurt for a week, or several
days. Of course, I buy those dannon crave control jobbies with only 60
kcals per container, so I just eat the entire thing and plug that into
fitday.

If you bought a big container of yogurt and had several servings, would it
really *matter* if you ate 50 calories less today and 50 more sometime
next week? It *does* average out as long as you eat the rest of the
yogurt eventually.

Not if I ate 50 caloires too much today, along with 100 caloires too much of
something else, and then another 50 calories somewhere else. Then, sometimes
next week I might be going something similar, or I might run out fo
something and get some more. That's because I'm not "unitizing" every food
item I bring into my house into "servings" or "portions". For me a portion
is defined by what my calorie budget is and who much of this particular
thing I feel like eating. I'd have to transform into RoboRoger to survive
with your scheme. It's no wonder you hate to cook. You're probably
exhausted from all the mental prep in thing of all those portions and
dividing things up. I can see why you don't like the math too early...

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> :: I can't see why I'd weigh stuff at home when I bought the foods
> :: weighed already.
>
> Because of high fat items, you can't always parse it out exactly.
I measure oils and fats by volume, not weight.

I'm talking about meat, nuts, fish (salmon), etc. I don't see a need to
measure oils on a scale.

The meats, nuts and fish come weighed already.

Sure. But very few divide them into integer servings as you do. That must
take a lot of time.

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I agree I can't know how
much cream is in my coffee or how much olive oil on my salad without
measuring, it's just the scale business I don't get as a tablespoon is a
much more convenient way to measure these things.

Same with stuff like nut butters, a tablespoon is gonna be close enough;
I don't need to distinguish between 15 and 16 grams of almond butter.
The difference is only 3 calories in a food *that* calorically dense and
it can't possibly matter if I eat 3 calories more or less.

I don't either....where did you get the idea that the scale is used for
all measurements?

When I had one, I didn't find it useful for *any* measurements. That is
my point.

I understand your point...but it doesn't work for me. That's my point.

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You mentioned high fat foods and I thought you were talking about oils and
fats and nuts, which I do by volume. Meat and fish come weighed already,
so...

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I noticed this morning I don't measure raspberries by the cup. The ones
I buy come in 12 oz packages. So I just use 1/3rd a package of
raspberries in 1/2 package of yogurt. And I don't measure the Davinci
syrup at all, I just glug some in there. If it's not as accurate as a
scale, I still can't see why I'd care if I ate an extra raspberry today
and am thus short one tomorrow.

How do you know you only got a 1/3 of a package? What if you don't eat
any tomorrow, or you want a smallish snack later on? So you take an
even smaller than normal about out, and mess up the portion sizes? Or
what if your hubby does? Oh, that's right. He can't and you can't.
RoboJackie says NO! 🙂

4 oz of raspberries is a small enough portion that it'd be a snack anyways
even without messing up the fractions (though I'm very unlikely to eat
fruit without some protein and fat along with it). If Steve ate some
weird proportion of the berries, I'd just go back to volumetric
measurements.

"weird portions" is very telling...

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I buy half-pound squares as that's the only way I can find raw cheeses
here, so I think I can get pretty accurate with the cuts.

IME, it's hard to make a knife cut through thick cheese in such a way as
to make the peices very close to similar in size. And, given that you may
mix and match foods, you can't use the busines about it averaging out,
because the errors you make one day may not compensate for the errors you
make the next, unless you're very "tight" in what and how you eat.

It seems to me that weighing a piece of cheese is getting much *tighter*
with how you eat than just cutting the damned cheese and eyeballing it.

I buy about a pound of mozzarella and cheddar each month; that's the same
amount of calories into my body no matter which days I eat them.

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But even with

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rounded shapes, if you know the weight and know how many servings, even
if you're wildly wrong on the size of a particular piece of cheese, it's
gonna average out.

With high fat foods you can be wildy wrong, especially when you mix and
match and change things up in what, when, and how you eat.

But if my "2oz" piece of cheese today is really 2 1/2oz, then my "2oz"
piece of cheese tomorrow will be 1 1/2oz, so it all works out.

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> Same way I
> :: measure cream cheese now that I think of it. I don't see how
> :: eyeballing can be all that inaccurate.
>
> A little bit here, a little bit there, adds up.
It won't *add* up though. If I make 4 omelets out an 8oz block of cream
cheese over the course of several weeks, if one omelet is high, another
will be low; so it won't *add* up, but will *add and subtract* itself to
being the same average amount of cream cheese.

But who does that? What if you use some of the cream cheese for something
else with some other combination of foods? Yeah, you're eating the food
you buy, but you can't claim, unless you're very rigid,
that your calories will average out.

I am rigid about servings, but not about weighing as it seems much easier
to me.

But being rigid about these serving is a lot more work, since you have to
divide everything you buy into servings. Far too much work.

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Foods vary anyways. If I have a "serving" of a main course and am still
hungry, I don't have to choose between having a second serving or being
hungry. I can have something else entirely... like a side dish of swiss
chard.

Which, of course, you've parse out into "servings". It almost to think
hurts to about it.

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And yes, I cook a known amount of chard too and therefore know how many
"servings" that has, and hence the carb, protein and calorie counts for
it.

Yep. Knew it.

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There's no way to measure that could possibly make my omelets average
more than 2oz cream cheese as there's only so much cream cheese in the
package and that doesn't change no matter how I measure it out.

That logic only works if you assume you're always going to divide the
block in a certain way. What if you want a small snack made from a
celery stick and some of that cream cheese? And what if 2 oz is too much
for your snack to stay within your budget?

I open a package of cream cheese today to make an omelet. While it's
open, I cut it into 4 pieces, using one of the pieces to make my omelet.

Tomorrow, I decide I want one ounce to put on celery, so I cut one of the
2-oz chunks in half.

I'm extremely unlikely to be confused about the pieces remaining... the
one ounce piece is a lot smaller than the 2 oz pieces.

I *can't* end up eating too much cream cheese in the long run with this
method. Any overage today has an underage somewhere else.

Again, that doesn't mean that you can't eat too much food.

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If course it has a weight on it...but that weight can be anything. Rarely
is it 1 lbs or 2 lbs. It might be 1.68 lbs. It might be easy to
guessitmate portions, but that doesn't mean they are right.

That is probably the difference right there.

I "aim" to buy meat in whole pounds. I'll buy the 1.98 package or 2.13
package instead of the 1.68 package. Why? Cause long before insulin or
low-carbing or anything, I never saw a recipe for 1 1/2 lbs hamburger, so
dunno what to do with 1.68 lbs.

See...that's rigid thinking there. A scale would solve that problem
immediately. Or, just don't worry about it and guess it.

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Or I ask the butcher for a certain amount and get it close like you do
with deli meats like roast beef or such; a pound of tilapia or a half
pound of scallops.

No, it's not absolutely accurate, but it's not like anyone ever got too
many calories because of accidentally eating 17oz of tilapia over 4 meals
instead of 16oz. If I carefully measure each meal to be 4 oz, I then have
to throw out the extra ounce or what?

No, you'd figure it into your budget and if necessary, leave off something
else. Again, your 1 lb of tilapia might be 4 fillets this week and 5 next.
What a pain.

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Sure, you'lll eventually eat all of the meat, but since that's not all
you're eating, and since most normal people might want a little daily
variation in their diets, and since most normal people on LC eat foods
that are high in fat, your method will likely land them in trouble if
they are using calorie counting to lose weight.

I don't see how. If I eat a 5 oz burger today by mistake, I'm gonna eat a
3oz burger SOMETIME, so it averages out.

You eat 3 meals a day. That means you can make at least 3 mistakes in
portions. If they all are on the high side, then your caloires are too high.
When you get around to those other portions, they may not be balanced
correctly to compensate for the mistakes you made before, because the 3
mistakes might be different ones. So, depending on the mistake and what you
eat, you could easily end up eating more again. And when you do get around
to those smaller portions, they may leave you hungry, so you end up hurting
down other foods.

Of course, you're in some Robo mode and have done all of the "math"
calculations on combo foods - which might save you. But it much more work
than a lot of people are willing to do, Jackie. And it seems to not factor
in any kind of out-of-house eating for which your "averaging out" doesn't
account for.

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If I have a pound of hamburger and make 4 patties, I can be pretty
darned sure how much they weigh without a scale.

If I had a way, I'd challenge you on this. You can be sure within some
sizeable delta. First off, for all you know the scale weight at the
store might be off. Have you ever checked? Hamburger doesn't come in a
perfect square, so there is definitely a + - delta in your portion sizes.
Whether that's important or not depends on the size of the delta and what
else you've eaten that day and how you determined the calorie content of
that food.

I'm *sure* there's a delta. There's a delta with a scale too. There's no
such thing as absolutely accurate measurements no matter what you measure
with.

With a decent scale, it's delta is way smaller than your eyeballing
technique, IMO. Who said anything about absolutely accurate measurements,
anyhow.

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But I'm *also* sure if I eat a pound of hamburger as 4 servings, I am not
getting more calories even if those burgers are 3oz, 3oz, 4oz and 6 oz.
It's still the same amount of hamburger, whether I eat all those meals
today or over the next year as the total amount of burger doesn't change
no matetr *what* else I eat with it.

I don't understand why you keep saying that....it's not just how many
calories you get from meat divided in a certain way, it the avergae number
of calories you get from all your foods. That depends on what you eat each
day. Most people won't be happy with just a 3 oz serving of meat and will
end up lookign for something else.

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If I make a meatloaf with 2 lbs of burger, I cut it into 8 slices out of
the oven and know how much burger is in each serving.

Approximately, anyway. I'd rather know exactly. It's not as hard as you
make it sound and I do it all the time.

I don't think I'm making it sound hard; I just don't see the *point* of
the weighing business nor why it's always recommended for everyone trying
to lose weight. The 8 slices average out to the same serving size as
carefully weighed portions do. It seems to me to add extra steps to
weight it as I have to slice the thing anyways.

Because most people don't divide everything up the way you do in terms of
servings. Why don't you ask mike if he does that. Or david. Most of us just
buy food, stuff it in the box, and eat is as we please. Maybe you have time
an inclination for this, but I surely don't. If I buy a package of
hamburger meat, I don't bother reading what's on the label. I just break off
some amount, weight it, and cook it, and eat it. That gets recorded along
with every thing else. I haven't done a calculation of how many serves I'm
going to get out of it. I haven't worried about combination foods. I can
easly add 8 oz of broccoli with some spicy mustard and splenda sweetened
pickle relish in a bowl. That's a meal.

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Think of it another way. You're single, so I presume all the food you buy
is eaten by you (or thrown out). If you buy 54000 calories of food each
month, you *can't* be eating more than 1800 calories per day even if
*today* you eat 2000 calories.

You're assuming some kind of closed system here. For one, no one buys food
for a month. It won't keep that way. And just because I bought food to keep
at home, doesn't mean that's the only food I eat. I may decide to get a
sausage patty from MCD one day, along with a large coffee. I may get a
salad at work, and get those containers of dressing to cover it. When I get
home I have a certain calorie budget left. A 2 oz error in meat might put me
over for the day. Or, that error might come from multiple places but still
add up to an equivalent error. The next day is a new one, with different
choices made and new chances of introducing errors. This averaging out stuff
you talk about won't work for me because I haven't done all of the work you
have in preparing portions. In fact, the notion of portion parsing IMO is
unnatural and something I'm never going to be likely to do.

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Plus, it's just not convenient. Meat comes in pounds. Cabbage comes
in heads (which is about 8 cups shredded). Cooking a pound of hamburger
and a head of cabbage and dividing it into 4 portions is easier than
trying to cook 1/4 lb of hamburger and 1/4 head shredded cabbage so as
to just have one serving.

It's not that big of a deal for me. I weigh the meat and eyeball the
cabbage (it's very low cal compared to meat, so that error I don't get
upset over).

I'd find shredding 1/4 of a cabbage four times and wrapping it and storing
it in between and washing the shredder and wok four times to be much more
annoying than just doing it all at once and having leftovers and throwing
them into tupperwares.

You can buy shredded cabbage in bags. It's how I do my stirflys. I just
dump some amount in (which I admit I don't weigh because it's low calorie so
it's likely to not be impactful to calories or carbs). Washing a shredder
after cabbage is just a rinse. And who says you need to wash the wok? Just
leave it there until next time. 🙂

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But hey, that's me - you can cook however you want to! I'll weigh my
cabbage if you come over and shred it every day for me. 😉

Just do as I do. It's quicker. I bet spend a lot more time worrying about
food/meals/portions/etc than I do. Of course, you're also probably serving
up delightful tasty food for you and your hubby. I eat very basic "meals".
In fact, I rarely call them dishes or anything because 9 times out of 10
it's just thrown together from what's in the box and what I want. I tailor
it all to meet the budget.

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Plus, it's not like I'm not gonna eat again tomorrow anyways. I prefer
having leftovers as I don't want to have to cook three times a day. If
I'm tired of a food, I just freeze the leftovers until later.

That sounds like just as much work as doing things might way. You freeze,
thaw, put stuff in the fridge...it's just trading effort....

Yeah, but I don't have to actively cook three times a day. Most meals, I
just nuke. It doesn't take much longer to cook a big batch of meals than
just one.

I don't like nuking meats. I also don't like having a box full of different
leftovers. I can deal with a few.
I certainly don't cook 3 meals a day, either. For me, cooking one meal a day
is about all I can muster and I feel good when I make that. Ok, weekends are
different.

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A lot of dishes that one might make don't divide easily into quarters.
Every seen a slab of ribs that are longer/fatter on one end than the
other? What of the salmon? The stuff I get is noticable bigger and
thicker on one end than the other. Splitting into equal portions just
ain't easy. And, what if I decide that I want to make some salmon spread
to eat with rinds? I gotta dole out a fixed portion? Why? Just weight
out an amount, get the calories it has, then see if that number works in
my budget.

I have to eat fixed portions in order to dose insulin anyway. But
frankly, I tried the scales before insulin and thought it was an annoyance
then also. I'd rather eyeball the salmon into portions. If a portion
today is undersized, it'll get made up sometime down the line with the
larger portion.

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My way works because I'm more concerned about the calories than I am
eating all the food. If something doesn't get eaten within a certain
time, I toss it. Thus, the size of those portions will matter because the
averaging won't be something simple I can anticipate anyhow.

I don't toss meat and cheese though. I'd rather freeze for eating some
day when I don't feel like cooking (which in my case is most days).

Sometimes I'll cook a big slab of salmon and just won't finsih it all. Since
I don't freeze stuff, I just toss it if I think it's been hanging around too
long to be any good.

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I *might* toss cooked chard, as it wouldn't freeze well. But you can be
assured if I do toss some, I'll know how many servings it was that I
tossed. 😉

I believe it!

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Perhaps that works for you since you seem to be eating within the
confines of a fixed/rigid system that you're created for yourself.
Perhaps that's why you can't understand why others do things differently
than you.

I don't see what is so "rigid" about deciding a pound of meat is 4
servings as opposed to weighing every meal and cooking more often. It
seems much simpler and easier to me.

Well, duh! Considering all of the other work you've done, I can see that.
you have portions built into your head Jackie. Maybe a lot of women do, but
I won't know anything about that, huh?

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Also, to weigh the entire wok full of food would need a different scale
than one I'd measure portions on, so I'd need two scales. I doubt it'd
end up any more accurate when you figure two scales with different tares
and all.

That's why I'd make a single serve. Stirfry is simple enough to do.

Yeah, except for shredding the cabbage and washing the shredder and wok
four times; much easier to nuke leftovers.

We already talked about that! 🙂

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I am a VERY lazy cook. I cook about twice a week. All the rest is just
nuking, or maybe stirring berries into yogurt or nuking an artichoke
(which is technically cooking, but only takes a minute).

You dont have much energy left after you divide everything into your
portions, huh? The heavy math saps your energy. haha.

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I've already done the math for most of the stuff I eat.

You go girl! 🙂

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The page isn't officially live yet, but here's how it works for me with
stuff I typically eat (and a few things I eat much less often, I'm saving
the info cause I don't want to calculate every time I eat something):
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/text/diabetes/typicalMeals.asp

Wow. ROTFLMAO. Amazing. I admire your dedication, though. It must be the
dosing insulin thing that set you on this path. You're just using the
butcher to weigh your stuff and then you divide from there. After I get meat
home, I could not tell you what it weighed. And that label soon gets messed
up and discarded.

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Breakfasts are all figured out in advance cause I can't do math before
coffee. 😉 There's a wide variety of calories in them though, so I can
vary depending on how hungry I am. If I wanted to eat low-calorie, I'd
just skip the couple higher calorie breakfasts - cream cheese omelet, egg
and cheese "sandwich", chocolate nut custard, "muffins" and "pancakes" and
stick to the protein shakes, "cereals", yogurt and cottage cheese meals.

Lunch and dinner are a protein dish and one or more side dishes. I have
calculations for servings, but not for meals, because I dunno what I might
feel like eating any particular day.

So if the main dish is a bit carby, I choose something less carby for a
side dish, etc. Or if I'm not hungry (I still have to eat cause of
medications that have to be taken with meals), I choose stuff that adds up
to low-calories. So like the broccoli-and-cheese soup is both carby and
caloric, so a good side dish for that is one of the salads.

There's few snacks listed as I mostly don't snack anymore, you decide if
you're *really* hungry if you have to stick a needle in your belly to eat.
But it'd not exactly be difficult to just eat half of a normal serving and
call it a snack.

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Well, maybe because you're eating largely low carb?

Of course I'm eating low-carb! Did you just notice me here, Roger? Do I
have to post about bicycles to get noticed? 😉

🙂

Well, it does help with insulin use that you're not pumping in huge carbs to
compensate for, is all I'm saying.

Oh, I try not to post too much stuff about bikes here. Like the new one I'm
getting soon. Can't wait! This will be number 3.

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Insulin is about normaling BG, not so much about calories. Being off
because you over/under guessed fat isn't nearly as bad as over/under
guessing carbs, as far as insulin is concerned. And the protein isn't
nearly as impactful as carbs, either.

I have found the carb and protein are significant for dosing insulin, but
the fat (and hence calories) aren't. Empirically, 15g total carb (not
net) needs dosing the same as 30g protein.

It all falls apart if I eat more than 60g total carb though - I don't eat
high-carb often enough to have it worked out for that yet.

Yes, that's essential I was a was referring to above.

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However, the fat is totally irrelevant as far as I've been able to see;
theoretically it can turn into glucose at 10% but I can't see any
difference in bg numbers at all from fat. Something like that coconut
bark, which is almost entirely fat, doesn't make any difference to my bg
at all even if I eat two "servings".

Yes, coconut bark is in "servings" also; pretty much all my recipes are.
🙂

Still, I do have to know how much I'm eating, even if the fat content
doesn't matter much for the bg control.

See -- I knew all of this from before!

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If my "eyeballing" method is close enough for insulin where it does matter
how much I eat at every individual meal, I can't imagine it'd be that far
off for calories where a weekly average ought to have the same results
anyway.

Well, I'm coming at this from a "counting LC calories to lose weight" POV,
which is what Mike and I was sort of discussing for helping him get his 25
in 3.

Anyway, carry on Jackie. I'm sure what you do works for you. I wish it could
work for me, but I prefer to be more foot-loose and fancy-free! I'm
certainly not much of a home maker, either. Just some dumb guy.

I'm off for a century tomorrow. Yay!

"Jackie Patti" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

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Roger Zoul said:

Sure, if you only eat the same foods everyday. What if you change things
up? The slabs of salmon I have will be much better at one in than the
other. So while I'm going to presumably eat all of it, the fact that
their weight can be so different will mean that I could be getting way
more or way fewer calories than I think I am. And when you combine that
with the fact that you might either other foods, problems will crop up.
Saying that it averages out doesn't mean it will.

It averages out anyway if you eat all of it sooner or later.

You're from venus and I'm from mars. That's why you're ignoring what i
wrote.

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I don't do that though. If I cook a meal that is supposed to have 4
servings, it is 4 servings. Doesn't matter if it's in tupperware or
frozen for next week or whatever, it is 4 servings. Even when hubby is
nuking leftovers, I tell him if he wants more, take two servings so as
not to screw up my portion sizes.

Well, those are your quirks, not mine. I might choose to have more of
something and less of something else, on a given day. Your hubby might
feel he wants more. Apparently, you threaten him with dear life if he
should mess up your portion sizes. 🙂

No, I don't threaten him. But I *do* have to know my portion sizes to
dose insulin, so if he is gonna eat some of the leftover hamburger
stroganoff on fried cabbage, he is gonna take one portion or two, not some
random amount. I don't spank him for not finishing the second portion
either, just leave me portion sizes I can deal with easily.

So, since you've portionatized everything you eat, you've done way more work
than the rest of us. Perhaps you should read what you've written here,
Jackie. It's amazing, really. When I buy meat/fish, etc, I just look at the
price and never really worry at all about the weight. I don't think about
how many portions it will make. I just keep track of the weight of what I
eat so I can determine caloric content. None of this spliting up unto X
servings. My life simply doesn't work like that...and I really doubt if many
others here do also...although i'm sure there are others to function in a
manner similar to yours.

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He doesn't low-carb so he has lots he can eat without my "tyranny" anyways
as I don't police the crackers or bread (which come in servings anyway if
he wants to police himself).

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I personally don't worry about portions as I weigh those foods that it
makes sense to weigh - like meats and fish (high fat items).

Yeah, I don't see it; seems much easier to divide them into portions to
me.

Given all of the other work you've done (ie, the page you like below), I can
see that. You're fixed within your own way of doing things and you can't
see how others might function differently.

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Cause I take half of the yogurt out of the container (I buy 2-cup
containers) and save half for tomorrow; if it's too much today, it'll be
too little tomorrow and average out. I'm not gonna not eat yogurt for a
month and therefore end up in a calorie deficit today that won't get
fixed until Christmas. 🙂

Well, I might. I might not return to the yogurt for a week, or several
days. Of course, I buy those dannon crave control jobbies with only 60
kcals per container, so I just eat the entire thing and plug that into
fitday.

If you bought a big container of yogurt and had several servings, would it
really *matter* if you ate 50 calories less today and 50 more sometime
next week? It *does* average out as long as you eat the rest of the
yogurt eventually.

Not if I ate 50 caloires too much today, along with 100 caloires too much of
something else, and then another 50 calories somewhere else. Then, sometimes
next week I might be going something similar, or I might run out fo
something and get some more. That's because I'm not "unitizing" every food
item I bring into my house into "servings" or "portions". For me a portion
is defined by what my calorie budget is and who much of this particular
thing I feel like eating. I'd have to transform into RoboRoger to survive
with your scheme. It's no wonder you hate to cook. You're probably
exhausted from all the mental prep in thing of all those portions and
dividing things up. I can see why you don't like the math too early...

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> :: I can't see why I'd weigh stuff at home when I bought the foods
> :: weighed already.
>
> Because of high fat items, you can't always parse it out exactly.
I measure oils and fats by volume, not weight.

I'm talking about meat, nuts, fish (salmon), etc. I don't see a need to
measure oils on a scale.

The meats, nuts and fish come weighed already.

Sure. But very few divide them into integer servings as you do. That must
take a lot of time.

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I agree I can't know how
much cream is in my coffee or how much olive oil on my salad without
measuring, it's just the scale business I don't get as a tablespoon is a
much more convenient way to measure these things.

Same with stuff like nut butters, a tablespoon is gonna be close enough;
I don't need to distinguish between 15 and 16 grams of almond butter.
The difference is only 3 calories in a food *that* calorically dense and
it can't possibly matter if I eat 3 calories more or less.

I don't either....where did you get the idea that the scale is used for
all measurements?

When I had one, I didn't find it useful for *any* measurements. That is
my point.

I understand your point...but it doesn't work for me. That's my point.

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You mentioned high fat foods and I thought you were talking about oils and
fats and nuts, which I do by volume. Meat and fish come weighed already,
so...

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I noticed this morning I don't measure raspberries by the cup. The ones
I buy come in 12 oz packages. So I just use 1/3rd a package of
raspberries in 1/2 package of yogurt. And I don't measure the Davinci
syrup at all, I just glug some in there. If it's not as accurate as a
scale, I still can't see why I'd care if I ate an extra raspberry today
and am thus short one tomorrow.

How do you know you only got a 1/3 of a package? What if you don't eat
any tomorrow, or you want a smallish snack later on? So you take an
even smaller than normal about out, and mess up the portion sizes? Or
what if your hubby does? Oh, that's right. He can't and you can't.
RoboJackie says NO! 🙂

4 oz of raspberries is a small enough portion that it'd be a snack anyways
even without messing up the fractions (though I'm very unlikely to eat
fruit without some protein and fat along with it). If Steve ate some
weird proportion of the berries, I'd just go back to volumetric
measurements.

"weird portions" is very telling...

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I buy half-pound squares as that's the only way I can find raw cheeses
here, so I think I can get pretty accurate with the cuts.

IME, it's hard to make a knife cut through thick cheese in such a way as
to make the peices very close to similar in size. And, given that you may
mix and match foods, you can't use the busines about it averaging out,
because the errors you make one day may not compensate for the errors you
make the next, unless you're very "tight" in what and how you eat.

It seems to me that weighing a piece of cheese is getting much *tighter*
with how you eat than just cutting the damned cheese and eyeballing it.

I buy about a pound of mozzarella and cheddar each month; that's the same
amount of calories into my body no matter which days I eat them.

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But even with

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rounded shapes, if you know the weight and know how many servings, even
if you're wildly wrong on the size of a particular piece of cheese, it's
gonna average out.

With high fat foods you can be wildy wrong, especially when you mix and
match and change things up in what, when, and how you eat.

But if my "2oz" piece of cheese today is really 2 1/2oz, then my "2oz"
piece of cheese tomorrow will be 1 1/2oz, so it all works out.

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> Same way I
> :: measure cream cheese now that I think of it. I don't see how
> :: eyeballing can be all that inaccurate.
>
> A little bit here, a little bit there, adds up.
It won't *add* up though. If I make 4 omelets out an 8oz block of cream
cheese over the course of several weeks, if one omelet is high, another
will be low; so it won't *add* up, but will *add and subtract* itself to
being the same average amount of cream cheese.

But who does that? What if you use some of the cream cheese for something
else with some other combination of foods? Yeah, you're eating the food
you buy, but you can't claim, unless you're very rigid,
that your calories will average out.

I am rigid about servings, but not about weighing as it seems much easier
to me.

But being rigid about these serving is a lot more work, since you have to
divide everything you buy into servings. Far too much work.

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Foods vary anyways. If I have a "serving" of a main course and am still
hungry, I don't have to choose between having a second serving or being
hungry. I can have something else entirely... like a side dish of swiss
chard.

Which, of course, you've parse out into "servings". It almost to think
hurts to about it.

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And yes, I cook a known amount of chard too and therefore know how many
"servings" that has, and hence the carb, protein and calorie counts for
it.

Yep. Knew it.

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There's no way to measure that could possibly make my omelets average
more than 2oz cream cheese as there's only so much cream cheese in the
package and that doesn't change no matter how I measure it out.

That logic only works if you assume you're always going to divide the
block in a certain way. What if you want a small snack made from a
celery stick and some of that cream cheese? And what if 2 oz is too much
for your snack to stay within your budget?

I open a package of cream cheese today to make an omelet. While it's
open, I cut it into 4 pieces, using one of the pieces to make my omelet.

Tomorrow, I decide I want one ounce to put on celery, so I cut one of the
2-oz chunks in half.

I'm extremely unlikely to be confused about the pieces remaining... the
one ounce piece is a lot smaller than the 2 oz pieces.

I *can't* end up eating too much cream cheese in the long run with this
method. Any overage today has an underage somewhere else.

Again, that doesn't mean that you can't eat too much food.

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If course it has a weight on it...but that weight can be anything. Rarely
is it 1 lbs or 2 lbs. It might be 1.68 lbs. It might be easy to
guessitmate portions, but that doesn't mean they are right.

That is probably the difference right there.

I "aim" to buy meat in whole pounds. I'll buy the 1.98 package or 2.13
package instead of the 1.68 package. Why? Cause long before insulin or
low-carbing or anything, I never saw a recipe for 1 1/2 lbs hamburger, so
dunno what to do with 1.68 lbs.

See...that's rigid thinking there. A scale would solve that problem
immediately. Or, just don't worry about it and guess it.

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Or I ask the butcher for a certain amount and get it close like you do
with deli meats like roast beef or such; a pound of tilapia or a half
pound of scallops.

No, it's not absolutely accurate, but it's not like anyone ever got too
many calories because of accidentally eating 17oz of tilapia over 4 meals
instead of 16oz. If I carefully measure each meal to be 4 oz, I then have
to throw out the extra ounce or what?

No, you'd figure it into your budget and if necessary, leave off something
else. Again, your 1 lb of tilapia might be 4 fillets this week and 5 next.
What a pain.

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Sure, you'lll eventually eat all of the meat, but since that's not all
you're eating, and since most normal people might want a little daily
variation in their diets, and since most normal people on LC eat foods
that are high in fat, your method will likely land them in trouble if
they are using calorie counting to lose weight.

I don't see how. If I eat a 5 oz burger today by mistake, I'm gonna eat a
3oz burger SOMETIME, so it averages out.

You eat 3 meals a day. That means you can make at least 3 mistakes in
portions. If they all are on the high side, then your caloires are too high.
When you get around to those other portions, they may not be balanced
correctly to compensate for the mistakes you made before, because the 3
mistakes might be different ones. So, depending on the mistake and what you
eat, you could easily end up eating more again. And when you do get around
to those smaller portions, they may leave you hungry, so you end up hurting
down other foods.

Of course, you're in some Robo mode and have done all of the "math"
calculations on combo foods - which might save you. But it much more work
than a lot of people are willing to do, Jackie. And it seems to not factor
in any kind of out-of-house eating for which your "averaging out" doesn't
account for.

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If I have a pound of hamburger and make 4 patties, I can be pretty
darned sure how much they weigh without a scale.

If I had a way, I'd challenge you on this. You can be sure within some
sizeable delta. First off, for all you know the scale weight at the
store might be off. Have you ever checked? Hamburger doesn't come in a
perfect square, so there is definitely a + - delta in your portion sizes.
Whether that's important or not depends on the size of the delta and what
else you've eaten that day and how you determined the calorie content of
that food.

I'm *sure* there's a delta. There's a delta with a scale too. There's no
such thing as absolutely accurate measurements no matter what you measure
with.

With a decent scale, it's delta is way smaller than your eyeballing
technique, IMO. Who said anything about absolutely accurate measurements,
anyhow.

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But I'm *also* sure if I eat a pound of hamburger as 4 servings, I am not
getting more calories even if those burgers are 3oz, 3oz, 4oz and 6 oz.
It's still the same amount of hamburger, whether I eat all those meals
today or over the next year as the total amount of burger doesn't change
no matetr *what* else I eat with it.

I don't understand why you keep saying that....it's not just how many
calories you get from meat divided in a certain way, it the avergae number
of calories you get from all your foods. That depends on what you eat each
day. Most people won't be happy with just a 3 oz serving of meat and will
end up lookign for something else.

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If I make a meatloaf with 2 lbs of burger, I cut it into 8 slices out of
the oven and know how much burger is in each serving.

Approximately, anyway. I'd rather know exactly. It's not as hard as you
make it sound and I do it all the time.

I don't think I'm making it sound hard; I just don't see the *point* of
the weighing business nor why it's always recommended for everyone trying
to lose weight. The 8 slices average out to the same serving size as
carefully weighed portions do. It seems to me to add extra steps to
weight it as I have to slice the thing anyways.

Because most people don't divide everything up the way you do in terms of
servings. Why don't you ask mike if he does that. Or david. Most of us just
buy food, stuff it in the box, and eat is as we please. Maybe you have time
an inclination for this, but I surely don't. If I buy a package of
hamburger meat, I don't bother reading what's on the label. I just break off
some amount, weight it, and cook it, and eat it. That gets recorded along
with every thing else. I haven't done a calculation of how many serves I'm
going to get out of it. I haven't worried about combination foods. I can
easly add 8 oz of broccoli with some spicy mustard and splenda sweetened
pickle relish in a bowl. That's a meal.

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Think of it another way. You're single, so I presume all the food you buy
is eaten by you (or thrown out). If you buy 54000 calories of food each
month, you *can't* be eating more than 1800 calories per day even if
*today* you eat 2000 calories.

You're assuming some kind of closed system here. For one, no one buys food
for a month. It won't keep that way. And just because I bought food to keep
at home, doesn't mean that's the only food I eat. I may decide to get a
sausage patty from MCD one day, along with a large coffee. I may get a
salad at work, and get those containers of dressing to cover it. When I get
home I have a certain calorie budget left. A 2 oz error in meat might put me
over for the day. Or, that error might come from multiple places but still
add up to an equivalent error. The next day is a new one, with different
choices made and new chances of introducing errors. This averaging out stuff
you talk about won't work for me because I haven't done all of the work you
have in preparing portions. In fact, the notion of portion parsing IMO is
unnatural and something I'm never going to be likely to do.

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Plus, it's just not convenient. Meat comes in pounds. Cabbage comes
in heads (which is about 8 cups shredded). Cooking a pound of hamburger
and a head of cabbage and dividing it into 4 portions is easier than
trying to cook 1/4 lb of hamburger and 1/4 head shredded cabbage so as
to just have one serving.

It's not that big of a deal for me. I weigh the meat and eyeball the
cabbage (it's very low cal compared to meat, so that error I don't get
upset over).

I'd find shredding 1/4 of a cabbage four times and wrapping it and storing
it in between and washing the shredder and wok four times to be much more
annoying than just doing it all at once and having leftovers and throwing
them into tupperwares.

You can buy shredded cabbage in bags. It's how I do my stirflys. I just
dump some amount in (which I admit I don't weigh because it's low calorie so
it's likely to not be impactful to calories or carbs). Washing a shredder
after cabbage is just a rinse. And who says you need to wash the wok? Just
leave it there until next time. 🙂

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But hey, that's me - you can cook however you want to! I'll weigh my
cabbage if you come over and shred it every day for me. 😉

Just do as I do. It's quicker. I bet spend a lot more time worrying about
food/meals/portions/etc than I do. Of course, you're also probably serving
up delightful tasty food for you and your hubby. I eat very basic "meals".
In fact, I rarely call them dishes or anything because 9 times out of 10
it's just thrown together from what's in the box and what I want. I tailor
it all to meet the budget.

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Plus, it's not like I'm not gonna eat again tomorrow anyways. I prefer
having leftovers as I don't want to have to cook three times a day. If
I'm tired of a food, I just freeze the leftovers until later.

That sounds like just as much work as doing things might way. You freeze,
thaw, put stuff in the fridge...it's just trading effort....

Yeah, but I don't have to actively cook three times a day. Most meals, I
just nuke. It doesn't take much longer to cook a big batch of meals than
just one.

I don't like nuking meats. I also don't like having a box full of different
leftovers. I can deal with a few.
I certainly don't cook 3 meals a day, either. For me, cooking one meal a day
is about all I can muster and I feel good when I make that. Ok, weekends are
different.

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A lot of dishes that one might make don't divide easily into quarters.
Every seen a slab of ribs that are longer/fatter on one end than the
other? What of the salmon? The stuff I get is noticable bigger and
thicker on one end than the other. Splitting into equal portions just
ain't easy. And, what if I decide that I want to make some salmon spread
to eat with rinds? I gotta dole out a fixed portion? Why? Just weight
out an amount, get the calories it has, then see if that number works in
my budget.

I have to eat fixed portions in order to dose insulin anyway. But
frankly, I tried the scales before insulin and thought it was an annoyance
then also. I'd rather eyeball the salmon into portions. If a portion
today is undersized, it'll get made up sometime down the line with the
larger portion.

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My way works because I'm more concerned about the calories than I am
eating all the food. If something doesn't get eaten within a certain
time, I toss it. Thus, the size of those portions will matter because the
averaging won't be something simple I can anticipate anyhow.

I don't toss meat and cheese though. I'd rather freeze for eating some
day when I don't feel like cooking (which in my case is most days).

Sometimes I'll cook a big slab of salmon and just won't finsih it all. Since
I don't freeze stuff, I just toss it if I think it's been hanging around too
long to be any good.

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I *might* toss cooked chard, as it wouldn't freeze well. But you can be
assured if I do toss some, I'll know how many servings it was that I
tossed. 😉

I believe it!

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Perhaps that works for you since you seem to be eating within the
confines of a fixed/rigid system that you're created for yourself.
Perhaps that's why you can't understand why others do things differently
than you.

I don't see what is so "rigid" about deciding a pound of meat is 4
servings as opposed to weighing every meal and cooking more often. It
seems much simpler and easier to me.

Well, duh! Considering all of the other work you've done, I can see that.
you have portions built into your head Jackie. Maybe a lot of women do, but
I won't know anything about that, huh?

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Also, to weigh the entire wok full of food would need a different scale
than one I'd measure portions on, so I'd need two scales. I doubt it'd
end up any more accurate when you figure two scales with different tares
and all.

That's why I'd make a single serve. Stirfry is simple enough to do.

Yeah, except for shredding the cabbage and washing the shredder and wok
four times; much easier to nuke leftovers.

We already talked about that! 🙂

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I am a VERY lazy cook. I cook about twice a week. All the rest is just
nuking, or maybe stirring berries into yogurt or nuking an artichoke
(which is technically cooking, but only takes a minute).

You dont have much energy left after you divide everything into your
portions, huh? The heavy math saps your energy. haha.

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I've already done the math for most of the stuff I eat.

You go girl! 🙂

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The page isn't officially live yet, but here's how it works for me with
stuff I typically eat (and a few things I eat much less often, I'm saving
the info cause I don't want to calculate every time I eat something):
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/text/diabetes/typicalMeals.asp

Wow. ROTFLMAO. Amazing. I admire your dedication, though. It must be the
dosing insulin thing that set you on this path. You're just using the
butcher to weigh your stuff and then you divide from there. After I get meat
home, I could not tell you what it weighed. And that label soon gets messed
up and discarded.

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Breakfasts are all figured out in advance cause I can't do math before
coffee. 😉 There's a wide variety of calories in them though, so I can
vary depending on how hungry I am. If I wanted to eat low-calorie, I'd
just skip the couple higher calorie breakfasts - cream cheese omelet, egg
and cheese "sandwich", chocolate nut custard, "muffins" and "pancakes" and
stick to the protein shakes, "cereals", yogurt and cottage cheese meals.

Lunch and dinner are a protein dish and one or more side dishes. I have
calculations for servings, but not for meals, because I dunno what I might
feel like eating any particular day.

So if the main dish is a bit carby, I choose something less carby for a
side dish, etc. Or if I'm not hungry (I still have to eat cause of
medications that have to be taken with meals), I choose stuff that adds up
to low-calories. So like the broccoli-and-cheese soup is both carby and
caloric, so a good side dish for that is one of the salads.

There's few snacks listed as I mostly don't snack anymore, you decide if
you're *really* hungry if you have to stick a needle in your belly to eat.
But it'd not exactly be difficult to just eat half of a normal serving and
call it a snack.

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Well, maybe because you're eating largely low carb?

Of course I'm eating low-carb! Did you just notice me here, Roger? Do I
have to post about bicycles to get noticed? 😉

🙂

Well, it does help with insulin use that you're not pumping in huge carbs to
compensate for, is all I'm saying.

Oh, I try not to post too much stuff about bikes here. Like the new one I'm
getting soon. Can't wait! This will be number 3.

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Insulin is about normaling BG, not so much about calories. Being off
because you over/under guessed fat isn't nearly as bad as over/under
guessing carbs, as far as insulin is concerned. And the protein isn't
nearly as impactful as carbs, either.

I have found the carb and protein are significant for dosing insulin, but
the fat (and hence calories) aren't. Empirically, 15g total carb (not
net) needs dosing the same as 30g protein.

It all falls apart if I eat more than 60g total carb though - I don't eat
high-carb often enough to have it worked out for that yet.

Yes, that's essential I was a was referring to above.

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However, the fat is totally irrelevant as far as I've been able to see;
theoretically it can turn into glucose at 10% but I can't see any
difference in bg numbers at all from fat. Something like that coconut
bark, which is almost entirely fat, doesn't make any difference to my bg
at all even if I eat two "servings".

Yes, coconut bark is in "servings" also; pretty much all my recipes are.
🙂

Still, I do have to know how much I'm eating, even if the fat content
doesn't matter much for the bg control.

See -- I knew all of this from before!

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If my "eyeballing" method is close enough for insulin where it does matter
how much I eat at every individual meal, I can't imagine it'd be that far
off for calories where a weekly average ought to have the same results
anyway.

Well, I'm coming at this from a "counting LC calories to lose weight" POV,
which is what Mike and I was sort of discussing for helping him get his 25
in 3.

Anyway, carry on Jackie. I'm sure what you do works for you. I wish it could
work for me, but I prefer to be more foot-loose and fancy-free! I'm
certainly not much of a home maker, either. Just some dumb guy.

I'm off for a century tomorrow. Yay!