A Food Scale Goes a Long Way in Dieting

While dieting, a food scale could easily become your best friend because it will help you portion out your servings to the exact amount you want. If your healthy recipe calls for 8 ounces of something, that is the amount that you will want because that’s what the nutritional value is based off of and it will give you a more accurate reading for your journal. So having a food scale to make sure your portions are perfect will help aid you into healthy eating and keeping track of your calorie, fat, protein, sodium and other important intakes that go along with your meals. Make sure using the scale is something that becomes habit because when you simply eye-ball measurements, you risk the chance of leaving your meals with too much or too less of something and that will affect your journal and your recipe. If you’re counting calories, especially, having a food scale to give you the right amount is crucial to keeping that accurate. You can find food scales at any nutritional store and make sure that it gets good reviews on accuracy because the last thing you want is to think you’re getting the right amount, but in fact you are getting a wrong counting on the weight and portion of the food you’re about to eat. And while having an accurate food scale is important, having an accurate recipe as well. A quick tip as well, make sure to read any recipes before weighing food as some will call for the size of the food cooked or uncooked. So for example, you have a recipe that calls for half a pound of chicken breast, which the recipe will usually include how the measurement should be made right after the part the says chicken breast. Usually, if it just says “Half a pound of chicken breast, squared”, it means take the chicken breast and measure it to half a pound and then cut it into squares of equal size. There are some recipes, however, that will say something like “Half a pound of chicken breast, squared and cooked” and that will mean for you to square the chicken, cook it and then put it on the food scale to measure out half a pound. This will give you the most accurate measurement for what the recipes nutritional value is and will help with serving sizes as well. It will also control your portions to ensure that you are eating just what you are supposed to eat and not going over your allotted amount. Food scales are easy to keep right on the counter as well, not taking up too much space. Image by bradleypjohnson on Flickr