If you’ve recently started tracking calories, you might be wondering how to measure your food correctly. How much rice is 100 grams? Should you weigh chicken before or after cooking? And what do you do with the weight of the bowl?
Don’t worry. Using a kitchen weighing scale is pretty simple once you know a few basics.
1. How to Weigh Food Using a Kitchen Scale
Follow these simple steps:
- Place your digital weighing scale on a flat surface.
- Place an empty bowl or plate on the scale.
- Press the TARE or ZERO button to reset the reading to zero.
- Add your food until the display shows the required weight in grams.
- Enter the food’s weight into your calorie-tracking app, if you’re using one.
For example: If your breakfast includes 50 grams of oats, place your bowl on the scale, press TARE, and add oats until the display reads 50 g.
That’s it! You don’t need to subtract the bowl’s weight or do any complicated calculations.
Just remember that the scale measures weight, not calories. You will need the food’s nutritional information to calculate its calories and protein.
2. Should You Weigh Food Raw or Cooked?
This is where many people get confused when they start tracking their food.
Cooking changes the weight of food because its water content changes. Rice absorbs water and becomes heavier, while chicken generally loses water and becomes lighter.
The important thing is to match the weight of your food with the correct nutritional information.
| Food | Recommended method |
|---|---|
| Rice | Weigh dry before cooking |
| Oats | Weigh dry |
| Chicken | Weigh raw |
| Vegetables | Weigh raw |
| Fruits | Weigh the edible portion |
| Cooking oil | Measure separately |
You can weigh food after cooking, too. Just make sure you select the appropriate cooked-food entry in your calorie-tracking app.
For example, 100 grams of cooked rice is not nutritionally equivalent to 100 grams of dry rice. The cooked rice contains absorbed water, so its calories per 100 grams are lower.
A simple rule to remember: raw weight goes with raw-food data, and cooked weight goes with cooked-food data.
3. Common Mistakes to Avoid
A weighing scale makes portion tracking easier, but a few small mistakes can still throw off your calculations.
- Forgetting to press TARE: You might end up counting the weight of your bowl along with your food.
- Mixing up raw and cooked weights: This can lead to inaccurate calorie estimates.
- Ignoring cooking oil: That little pour of oil or spoonful of ghee still contributes calories. Measure it if you want a more accurate food log.
4. Is Weighing Food Necessary for Weight Loss?
No. You can lose weight without weighing every meal.
However, if you’re struggling to understand portion sizes, a weighing scale can be a useful learning tool. You might discover that your usual serving of rice is larger than you thought or that your handful of nuts varies quite a bit from day to day.
After a while, you’ll become more familiar with what different portions look like. You may not need to weigh everything indefinitely.
In my coaching experience, the goal is to find an approach you can follow consistently, even when work gets busy, you’re travelling, or you’re eating out.
Use a weighing scale to understand your portions, not to make yourself afraid of eating without one.
Want Help With Your Nutrition and Weight Loss?
Knowing how much you eat is a useful starting point, but your overall diet needs to work with your goals, food preferences, activity levels, and daily routine.
At Physique Expert, I help busy professionals build personalised nutrition and workout plans that fit into real life, without crash diets or unnecessarily restrictive meal plans.
If you’re unsure where to start, explore my personalised fitness and nutrition coaching and book a free 1:1 fitness consultation.