SHOULD YOU WEIGH YOUR FOOD RAW OR COOKED
Tracking your food is an integral part of our FBBN programs as it is the quickest and most accurate method to track your progress, however you may want to take a more gentle approach and simply start using our recipes and monitoring your intake. By monitoring your food intake, you can make precise adjustments and achieve optimal results. So let’s talk about best practices with tracking your foods.
Tracking macros go hand in hand with weighing your food. It's a no-brainer. But did you know that there is a significant difference in weighing your foods raw and cooked?
Here's why you should weigh RAW every time.
Weighing your food AFTER it has been cooked can cause a lot of discrepancies for several reasons.
While some prefer to weigh out their food once all cooking is over for convenience's sake, putting in the extra hard yards to pre-weigh your ingredients will ensure that what you're entering is ACCURATE. Raw ingredients have not been affected by cooking methods or a loss or gain in the volume of liquid present.
EVER NOTICE HOW MUCH MUSHROOMS SHRINK WHEN YOU COOK THEM?
Imagine 100g of raw mushrooms.
Now imagine cooking them for a few minutes in a frying pan. They will shrink slightly and may reduce down to around 75g.
Now cook the mushrooms for a further 10 minutes. The mushrooms are now 40g with the water evaporating and reducing in the pan.
This is where the discrepancies occur.
You should aim to prepare and cook foods the same way every time to ensure that what you enter into MyFitnessPal reflects the true macronutrient breakdown of the food.
If you enter the mushrooms in as 100g raw, its end weight won't affect your entry! Tracking RAW takes any chance of preparation affecting the true macros out of the equation.
We know this is not always possible.
We know that when cooking curries or stir frys or other recipes where there are a lot of different ingredients that this can become a little difficult, however we recommend doing your best to measure and weigh raw before cooking, as this will be the most accurate.
Any remember the main thing is to have fun, do your best and know that this may be contributing to you ‘BEING’ or ‘NOT BEING’ in a calorie deficit BUUUUT, it’s not the biggest thing holding you back from making progress..This is just one aspect or tool to improve results but it won’t be the ‘thing’ that gets you results, it’s all the little consistent things you do over the entire week, month or year. Remember your habits like steps, water, sleep along with your workouts and consistent healthy food choices as a collective.
If you need help with your nutrition reach out to us, our programs offer monthly check ins and support to help you reach your goals, what ever they might be!
Make it stand out
Remember, the important things are: moving your body in a gentle and fun way, eating a variety of healthy foods to support hormones, mood and energy and allowing yourself some self care each week to recharge and reinforce self love…. Xx
