If you are just starting to pay attention to your nutrition, learning how to use a food scale to count calories and macros will make the process easier. With a bit of time and practice, you can confidently determine what is in your food (and, therefore, how much you need to eat) to reach specific body composition, performance, and overall wellness goals.
Before discussing how to use a food scale to count calories and macros, let’s first consider why you might want to start tracking macros in the first place.
Why Track Calories and Macros?
By tracking your macronutrient intake, you ensure an optimal balance of nutrients to make up your total caloric goal. Macros include protein, carbohydrates, and fats, and while there are some different ways you can track your food intake, tracking macros is a great way to support your health and fitness goals.
While there are multiple ways to measure food portions, a food scale is the most accurate. Along with accuracy, food scales are the easiest, most consistent, and quickest way to measure your food and beverage portions. Portable food scales are an inexpensive kitchen staple for easy travel and convenience, no matter where your health and fitness journey takes you.
Understanding Calories and Macros
Calories are the units of energy provided to your body through nutrient intake. You can think of the calories you eat as how much energy is in your food. Macronutrients are a more specific breakdown of those calories into protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Balancing macronutrients is important for overall wellness and optimal body functioning.
Protein, in particular, can be easily under-consumed if you are unaware of your intake. Protein supports several essential bodily functions, including all chemical reactions, gene expression, immune function, muscle growth, and contraction, and providing hormones and digestive enzymes. Dietary protein intake is necessary to acquire the nine essential amino acids the body cannot produce otherwise.
Dietary carbohydrates also play supportive roles in optimal function and wellness. Carbohydrates are the body’s main energy source and play an important role in the metabolism of insulin and cholesterol. Dietary fats play an important role in supporting your health as well.
Fats directly impact skin, hair, nails, organs, hormones, cardiovascular and brain function, and the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.
Your optimal balance of macros can depend on your goals and activity level. A balance of macros will best support your energy levels and dietary needs. If you would like support in accessing optimal macros for your goals, you can get custom macros and ongoing 1-on-1 nutrition support from a WAG coach!
What are the Benefits of Using a Food Scale?
There are many benefits to using a food scale when tracking calories and macros.
- You increase your accuracy with portion sizes and macro intake
- Enhance your awareness of true portion sizes and portions that work for your macro targets
- Increase your knowledge of the nutritional content of food
Using a good-quality food scale allows you to weigh your food portions to the exact gram or fluid ounce. This accuracy is unmatched compared to other measurement forms, such as measuring cups or guesswork.
Food scales are also easy to use and make for a mess-free process with fewer dirty dishes. After diligently measuring portions with a food scale for an extended period of time, you can keep up with your goals with estimation.
How to Choose the Right Food Scale
Consider the features offered when choosing the right food scale for your tracking needs. Most importantly, you want to ensure accuracy. Consider capacity, clear display, price point, usability (thank you, Amazon reviews), and easy cleanup.
There are a variety of food scales on the market, including digital, analog, and portable options.
Here are five high-quality recommendations:
Top Recommendations for Reliable Food Scales:
- OXO Good Grips 11-Pound Stainless Steel Food Scale with Pull-Out Display (voted top of the line for accuracy)
- Amazon Basics Digital Kitchen Scale (best for a budget)
- Escali Primo Digital Food Scale
- My Way KD-8000 Digital Food Scale
- Joseph Joseph Travel Food Scale (easy for travel)
How to Use a Food Scale Effectively
When purchasing your food scale, make sure to order the correct batteries and keep extra batteries on hand so you can quickly and easily replace them as needed. Every scale is different, so thoroughly reading through your user manual will set you up for easy use and success.
When you begin weighing your intake, select the appropriate unit. “Grams” is most commonly used for solids, while “fluid ounces” is used for liquids.
Set your dish on the food scale and use the tare feature to set the scale back to zero before adding food.
Begin adding food to your dish until you reach your desired amount. Check the exact measurement displayed on the scale and use that weight when entering your portion into your tracking app.
Food scales are also helpful when taking measurements from a jar, such as when measuring nut butter. You can use a zero-out (or “tare”) method with your food scale for a quick and accurate measurement. Here’s how:
- Place your nut butter jar on your food scale
- Reset the scale to zero using the tare button
- Remove desired nut butter
- The negative measurement is an accurate serving size.
The tare feature also lets you weigh multiple ingredients in the same bowl. Just hit “tare” to zero out your scale when you move from one ingredient to the next. This feature alone is worth the investment in a food scale, as it supports an easy process with less clean-up, so you can easily track, fuel up, and get back to doing the things you love!
Pro Tip: One of the most common questions about weighing protein is whether to weigh it raw or cooked. For accuracy, you should weigh your protein raw. If you weigh it after cooking, you should track it as a cooked entry in your food tracking app. Learn more here!
Tracking the Macros On Your Food Scale
You can search for the food you are tracking in your tracking app under the meal you are tracking, e.g., breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
When you have found the correct entry, be sure to check that the serving size is listed in the same unit in which you weighed your food, i.e., grams or ounces. Then, enter the exact weight of your portion, and your tracking app will calculate your macros. You can confirm the entry. Continue to search for each item in your meal and log the correct serving sizes.
Some people prefer writing all of their serving sizes down on a post-it note after weighing them out and adding them to their tracking app, while others prefer to search and enter the data directly into their tracking app as they use their food scale.
Check out our article How to Read a Nutrition Label for more and our Macro Calculator Cheat Sheet for help determining your baseline intake needs.
If you're tracking macros, download a food-tracking app to make it easy. Two WAG favorites for easy macro tracking are MacrosFirst and MyFitnessPal. These apps sync with Seismic, our online coaching software, so if you work with a coach, your logs are automatically updated each week with your check-in.
For the ultimate breakdown of working with the MacrosFirst app, check out the full article MacrosFirst Tutorials: WAG Nutrition Ultimate Playlist. To find the best free macro tracking app for you, read this article!
Final Thoughts on How to Use a Food Scale
WAG recommends a food scale as the number one tool for tracking macros for most of our clients because of its accuracy, ease, and convenience. A kitchen scale is an inexpensive tool that allows you to precisely meet your macro targets, helping you meet your goals faster and expanding your knowledge of proper serving sizes for long-term success.
If you initially started tracking macros without using a food scale and have recently hit a plateau or are having difficulty seeing results, this is a great time to invest in a food scale and develop more accuracy with your tracking for continued progress and better results.
Remember, using a food scale versus measuring with cups and spoons can result in a difference of several hundred calories, negating or significantly reducing your progress. There are two main factors when it comes to reaching your health and fitness goals: precision and consistency.
Food scales allow you to track with precision, and the daily use of this simple tool keeps you consistent, allowing you to reach your goals much faster and with less frustration.
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