[marinmania]

I highly recommend people get a food scale/measuring cups and weighing everything single thing they eat (even small things like nuts and cooking oil) for at least two weeks. After that I think you have a much better appreciation for how many calories your regular meals and snacks have.

[dailykoder]

I counted calories and put everything on a scale, for about 2 or 3 months in 2022 (iirc). And you are 100% right. I had absolutely no idea how much calories some food has. There were a lot of things, but I think cashews were my biggest eye opener (probably obvious to a lot of people). I easily achieved my goal of -10kg and saved A LOT of money, because I always had food prepared. And since I was going for a calorie deficit, I easily could afford a few sweets on the weekend.

Then I obviously got lazy. And while I sometimes still think I can estimate how much I am eating, I am probably wrong, because my bathroom scale says something different. My key takeaway is that it takes quite a bit of effort, but once you got into a routine, it's not hard.

Edit: Also, while I might have tried to ditch "wasted calories", I didn't put too much effort in eating healthy. One step at a time.

[dutchbookmaker]

Nuts are so deceptive.

I love almonds and because I love them so much, if I don't portion them out then I end up eating 2-3X the calories that I thought I did so easily.

I pretty much eat 1k calories per day during the week and then 2-3k on the weekend.

It took constant lowering of calories over a year to get to this point but being hungry just feels normal and natural for me. There must be something with fat adaption going on as I never feel low on energy. Eating during the week has been completely divorced from a pleasurable activity to me too. Chicken breast, nuts, vegetables, not much else during the week. It is just easy at this point for me to wait to eat for pleasure on the weekend.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Might be a good idea, but I'm constantly concerned when I eat chicken breast every meal of the week. I'd rather use legumes, but chicken breast is so low on calories...

[mattlondon]

+1

The killer for me was breakfast cereals. The box shows a full bowl of whatever, full to the brim etc. in reality the pictures are probably 5 or 6 or more servings - a single serving would barely even cover the base of the bowl and even then be 200ish calories before milk.

If you just pour yourself "a bowl" of cereal without thinking or weighing then you're probably having 1200+ calories (or about 50% of your entire daily quota) even before you add milk or anything else, just for breakfast.

[aidenn0]

I don't know if they still do this, but I remember Special K cereal had identical calories listed for their various varieties, despite obvious differences in the ingredients; they just changed the portion size for each variety.

[ksenzee]

Cereal bowl sizes vary wildly, to make it even more confusing. Mine hold two cups (~450ml). Some hold way more than that. Some hold less. Buy a new set of bowls and you might be affecting your entire household’s eating habits.

[WheatMillington]

You don't have to fill a bowl to the top with whatever you're eating lol

[ksenzee]

Well, no, but people do. The whole point of this thread is "people are bad at estimating quantity." If it looks the same size as it used to be, but in reality it's half again as big, that's going to have an effect.