measuring portions

speedracer10

New Member
hello, i have a question about measuring portion size of meats. When a diet plan (like the one given by this website) calls for a "4 oz serving" of chicken, beef, or fish, is it measured raw or cooked. I measured 4 oz of raw chicken on a food scale, and it seemed really small. if anyone can help with my question, i'd greatly appreciate it. thanks
 
4oz of cooked chicken is about 120gm, and this gives on average about 30gm of protein.

Raw chicken has less protein since there is more water.

Instead of pondering raw vs cooked, why don't you ascertain it from raw weights, then cook it the way you like? It is a bit more accurate this way since different cooking methods will result in a different end cook weight.

For me, I'd have the total day's intake of food set out before me e.g. a kilo of raw chicken breast, 2 kilos of raw potatoes, six cups of raw rice etc then I'll simply cook it any way I want to (pending dietary constraints of course...low-fat..high-fat etc) and make sure I eat it all up for that day. This is more convenient than trying to weigh out an amount for several meals a day. I simply look at what I've got to eat for the whole day, and ration myself from there. I'd at least get a breakfast, lunch and dinner from it.

I use this website to estimate amounts:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl

You could make a list of your most frequently eaten foods, then assign a fixed measurement or weight to such food e.g. 100gm cooked chicken, 1 cup steamed beans etc and find out the nutrient data from the above website. It's a once-off job but from there, planning your nutrition intake is pretty much plain sailing.

Godspeed, and happy HSTing :)
 
I should really get one of those scale thigies. Right now I just estimate, though my estimations are probably pretty decent considering it says the total weight on the package.
 
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