I just started a couple carb up meals, and I was wondering should I weigh the 4 oz. sweet potato raw or cooked? I know your supposed to weigh meat raw, I haven't done it that way. Weighing raw meat is hard, if your short or over taking and adding is not easy. However, raw vs. cooked sweet potato is different. Just curious what everyone else does? I love sweet potato fries (Baked) they are amazing!!!! Just toss in whipped egg white and bake WOW thanks in advance for help.............

I was told to weigh it cooked.

i was told to weigh your meats and carbs raw.

Weighing food is a waste of time. This stuff not rocket science. If your trainer is telling you to do this he is clueless. Just eat it and enjoy it. If you eat more than 15 grams of carbs your pancrease will secrete insulin and for the next 4-5 hour interval your body will not use fats for an energy source for that time. That is all you have to know. Starches are become glucose sugars when then are metabolized. Yes do not gorge yourself but 1 plus a large amount of veggies is fine whenever you load.

Remember your body will only burn 1 energy source at a time. If you cause an insulin response it will burn only carbs until they are mitigated. Then the the next favorite fuel is fats. Glucagon is the hormone that comes on to do this. IF you do not have enough of fat or carbs then the body goes after the Protein and that is your living tissue, not good.

thanks for the input, kinda confused before after cooking? I do feel the need to weigh as I am very sensitive to food. A little more here and there shows changes......thanks for everyones input.

i havent noticed a 10 oz. sweet potato lose weight after being cooked, but if it did, if it was microwaved or baked wouldnt it just lose a little moisture from evaporation?

I disagree Jarnold. Although weighing food is not totally an exact science being that you will not be perfectly measuring the same amounts without some human error, weighing your food is critical to tracking your calories and where they come from whether gaining or leaning. How can you measure your protein without knowing how much your chicken breast weighs? How do you know that you have increased your protein or fats without knowing what your bird weighed before and what your bird currently weighs?

Again, not an exact science b/c cooking different ways will change a food's weight and packaging when raw will also change a food's weight but you have to have a consistent measuring method (either raw or cooked) so that you can track your own personal progress.

With that said, I measure my meat weight whether chicken, beef, fish, or turkey by cooking first and estimating that 20 percent of it was lost to water. So that means after my planned 10 oz raw serving is cooked, I estimate that it should weigh 8 oz.

Hope that helps. I know I've read where someone said they estimate that their meat loses 1.5 oz after cooking.

Whatever you do...just be consistent and do only one method. Your progress will thank you for it.

weighing your foods is the best way to go no matter what bodytype you are, its the only way to really know where to adjust your foods when progress is too fats or too slow, and going that low on carbs is really wrong as well as in the long run, muscle will be your loss! Carbs should be taken in as high as the body and bodytype allows to where your muscle is retained, yet bodyfat is still dropping!

Switzerland here. I have done this diet both ways, weighing and "guesstimating" the weights of my foods. And I weighed with a freaking DIGITAL scale that could do so in grams or ounces. I think the stress of weighing every meal released more cortisol than not weighing my food and it actually took LONGER to see results. My point? If you "guesstimate" and you're off by an ounce or so, I think it just challenges the body more and the minimal shift is a constant suprise to the body. I don't know if that makes any sense, but if it helps...good for you, then!

If you want to take all the hard work it took to get you on stage and make it a guessing game, especially if you are in a top notch show, the guessing game is going to LOSE, precision is key here if you want to be your hardest, leanest, fullest, and most dry competitor on stage, and if you are lucky enough to have the freak metabolism, then even the best show are not worth throwing it a away on a guess!

While I don't doubt Cytrainer's thoughts (I mean the guy IS a natural BB pro), some of us aren't entering comps, but actually just want to look good. My only thought was actually one of self reflection. Sometimes, the weighing of your food to the exact gram can sometimes be a bit, well...much. After trying the diet both ways, I can honestly say that for me, it works better when I am "in the ballpark" of the weight I'm looking to utilize. For others, the "exact science" approach may work better. What we all have to remember is that what might work for us MAY NOT work for someone else. The key is to have the framework of what you want to do and find the path that works best for you. And if it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!

AS long as you are making progress and you are not going into a show, the guessing thing can be OK, but if you stall somewhere along the way, time to measure just to be sure! And measuring in the beginning can lead to better eyeing of the amounts of food you are using! Good luck Mike, and keep working hard, your perception for serving sizes is pretty good, otherwise you would not be making progress.

Yeah, I suppose after doing this diet for about 4-5 years you kind of get an idea of what 8oz. of chicken or fish looks like! Progress is still going well...down from 206 on Jan 9th to 192 yesterday. Now if there was just way to lose pizza and wing cravings along the way...