Since beginning Starting Strength, my lifts have increased tremendously.
I mean, far beyond what I ever though possible.
Unfortunately, so has my weight.
So I’m back on the weight roller coaster.
I added service from a Registered Dietician through SSOC, so I needed to get back into tracking my food intake.
I’ve done this before, so I didn’t think it would be a huge deal.
Of course, I had flirted with tracking my macros over the last several months and hadn’t made any progress, so I kind of wrote it off.
But now I’m paying for a service, so I wanted to make sure I was doing it right.
Or at least as right as I can!
Where I Messed Up
I’m now realizing that I didn’t go about this the right way in the past.
Problem – Using Ounces for all measurements
I never really took my scale off the OZ unit of measurement.
Seems to make sense, but here’s the thing:
If you actually read the nutrition labels on lots of food, things vary wildly.
You can have 2 different varieties of the same thing; ice cream, for example (though I can’t recommend regular ice cream consumption if you’re trying to lose weight!
So here’s what I noticed:
All different brands listed 1/2 a cup as the serving size.
So that’s pretty straight forward, right?
8oz = 1 cup, so 4oz = 1/2 cup.
But not so fast!
If you read a little further, depending on the ice cream you’re looking into, 1/2 cup can be equal to anywhere from 53 to 66 GRAMS.
And that’s kind of a huge swing.
Also, I promise you that even 66 grams looks a lot different from 4 ounces.
This is the case with most other foods as well.
So I was thinking I was measuring accurately, because I was using ounces measuring everything.
Solution – Switch your scale over to grams and measure based on the label!
I had this realization today as I weighed out some chili and wanted to put some sour cream on it.
And I regret not taking a photo of this for you to make it even more clear!
The label says a serving is 2 Tablespoons.
So, old Mattie would have gotten out a measuring tablespoon and gotten a couple of scoops (probably heaping scoops too…).
However, 2018 Mattie now knows to see how many grams allegedly equal 2 tablespoons.
Glad I did too.
I was far less than I would have put on if I had used 2 tablespoons!
Now, this may seem like a small deal when a serving of sour cream is 60 calories, but when you extrapolate that out of all the condiments, oils, toppings, etc that you might use over the course of a day, it is way to easy to add hundreds of additional calories.
So once again, go get a kitchen scale, and pay close attention to the unit of measurement on the label.
Thoughts? Questions? Leave a comment. Thanks!