If you’re thinking about cleaning up your nutrition, you’re probably wondering if you should weigh and measure your food so you can count calories and determine how much protein, fat and carbohydrate you’re consuming.

But is this a good idea or a bad plan? That all depends. Here’s my take on it.

Watch the video for more details, but here’s the quick version.

There are two cases when weighing food can be a fantastic idea. More on that later. Otherwise, weighing and measure foods is not something I advocate. In my opinion, there are a hundred steps to take first before carefully weighing food. I’m talking, of course, about the absolute basics.

Things To Try Before Obsessively Weighing and Measuring Everything You Eat In Order To Lose Weight:

• slowing down your eating and chewing food properly

• doing some kind of meal prep on a regular basis

• for that matter, getting to the grocery store and simply having better shopping habits

• learning the fundamentals about what constitutes a healthy, balanced plate/meal for you

• making time not to skip meals

• reducing sugar intake

• reducing alcohol consumption

• reducing reliance on caffeine

• eating more vegetables and doing it more often

• gradually improving consistency with all of the above

• and so on…

Most people who want to feel better and drop body fat will get their best results from mastering and embodying these habits. It’s all about doing the “simple stuff” more consistently over time.

Why I don’t recommend weighing and measuring food in most situations:

• it adds extra work that’s unnecessary, which is a waste of time and effort

• quite frankly, most people find it annoying

• it shifts focus away from the process of learning new key habits that will be more sustainable for the long-haul

• it turns eating into a simple math formula when in real life this is far from the truth.

• it can engender near-obsessive behaviour, especially from previous dieters or those who are prone to eating disorders.

Who Should weight and measure their food?

So, who’s the exception? First, someone who has no concept of portion control. Weighing and measuring food for 1-week as a gut-check and learning exercise can teach people a lot. After that, they can go back to eye-balling portion size.

Second, it’s necessary for those few people who have the basics dialled in but who still want a higher level of results. The obvious benefit of weighing and measuring is the added precision. In the right circumstance, weighing food will be critical to eeking out the last bit of performance and improvement.