How do you weigh your chicken and meats?
 

I know this is probably a crazy question but there's a huge difference in meat weights when raw compared to cooked. Lets take chicken for example. do you weigh it raw and put those into the food journal or after? The food listing for chicken that I would probably use are chicken breast raw without skin or should I use chicken breast (yield after cooking) All I need to know is what to use for my boneless skinless chicken breast and to weigh it before or after cooking? I always have a hard time trying to decipher how meat should be weighed and counted. thanks. I feel really dumb today.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I weigh it hot on the scale and then use the "yield after cooking" or just "cooked". I also feel dumb because I don't understand when to use "raw" calories...I'm not eating it raw. Same thing with unpopped popcorn calories? Or batter mix "unprepared". Why or when would I use that??? Not to throw off your question, but it's all sort of the same to me. :confused:

I cook my meats & then weigh them.

I don't think it is a crazy question at all because I have wondered the same thing! I finally did some research on it and came up with - you should weigh it after you cook it. This is from the Mayo Clinic-
"Weigh the meat after cooking and after removing bone, skin and excess fat. A 3-ounce portion of cooked meat is equal to about 4 ounces of raw meat. A 3-ounce portion of cooked meat is about the size of a deck of cards."

As for the batter mix question I think I can answer that too. Lets say you have a cake mix and it calls for oil, milk and eggs. You may add corn oil, full fat milk and eggs, while I might add applesauce, skim milk and egg beaters. There would be a big difference in calories, fat etc between the two. So they give you the unprepared nutritional amounts and you have to figure the rest for what you would add to the mix. Or use the prepared figures if you put in exactly what the recipe calls for.

On the popcorn they probably aren't adding in the fat it takes to cook the popcorn in because some people might cook it in oil and others might use a hot air popper.

Deanna

Hi Deanna,

Thanks for bringing up the idea about the batter; I think that makes perfect sense and makes me wonder why I never thought of it!

:)

Today I made chili with 98% fat free ground beef and beans. Couldn't find anything for home-cooked chili or bean chili without meat-I had planned to use a bean-only chili and then add the meat to the log. Even the vegetarian chili was way off-it included a "meat substitute" that was almost 50% calories from fat! I ended up just logging the ingredients ><

Just a heads up
 

Most foods in Fitday are listed as RAW and also COOKED. Be aware that some of Fitday's cooked items have fat grams (not just meat but vegetables) added in things that normally don't have any or as much fat as is listed. I noticed this when I was entering steamed fish and greenbeans with no added fat. When they say 'cooked' they don't say how it's cooked. Because I saw it again in several of their cooked vs raw foods I've been weighing my food raw then entering it in my Fitday journal as raw. I love Fitday, don't get me wrong, but they really should list how the items were cooked.