A kitchen scale is a must-have tool for anyone serious about weight loss. When preparing meals, it is nearly impossible to eyeball a serving size, and most people overestimate portion sizes. Using a kitchen scale teaches you what an actual serving of food looks like. Additionally, a food scale will give you an accurate weight of what's on your plate, so you can easily calculate calories, carbs and/or proteins. Keeping your meals and snacks in check will help you reach your health and fitness goals.

Calories and nutrients are usually based on weight

Measuring cups and spoons leave room for error. It’s easy to overload them, and food can vary in volume which makes measuring cups unreliable. The best way to get an accurate serving size is to measure your food on one of our digital kitchen scales, especially when eating calorie dense foods, such as cheese, pasta or avocado. This video shows portion sizes for cheese and steak from our blogger friend Girls Gone Sporty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fJO05nZ2Ls

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Serving sizes are difficult to guess

You may read that one bagel is 245 calories, but that’s based on a 98g serving size. Many stores and food chains have bagels that are much larger than 98g. In fact, you may be eating 400 calories before you even add a topping! Small, medium and large servings vary and, as a result, so do the calories. This is why measuring by weight is necessary. The picture on the right shows us what a serving size of pretzels looks like using the Precision Elite Digital Kitchen Scale.

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No more guessing portion sizes

It can be shocking to see what an actual serving of certain foods looks like. You may think you know the portion size of your favorite food, but it’s often an eye opener to measure a true portion by weight. Our Precision Elite Digital Kitchen Scale eliminates the guesswork when measuring out your foods. This video by our blogger friend Cassie Gant, demonstrates how use an EatSmart kitchen scale to count calories in a serving of halibut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKOB5qedsdA

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Unreliable estimated serving sizes on packaged food

Many packaged foods, such as cereals, snacks, and nuts, give the calories by weight and an estimated serving size. When you actually weigh a cup of cereal you may see that it’s closer to one and half servings, rather than one. This may not seem like a big deal for lower calorie foods, but throughout the day these additional calories make a big difference. Most packaged foods give their weight in ounces or grams, so all of our kitchen scales weigh in both units so you always have a precise measurement. Here's a great video showing how to measure a serving size of carrots from our blogger friend Erica D House. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrgYODnfwLw

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Keep track of key nutrients

Knowing that your portions are on point allows you to accurately keep track of your calorie and carb intake. It makes managing diabetes or sticking to a diet plan much easier. Our Digital Nutrition Scale - Professional Food and Nutrient Calculator calculates calories, carbs, fiber, sodium, fats and other nutrients so you don’t have to.

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Dine out with confidence

After you get into a habit of weighing your foods, you will have a much better idea of what a standard portion looks like. This is helpful when you are dining out or are at a party and don’t have access to your Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale. It will become easy to recognize when your dish of food is two portions, and you can take the additional serving home as a leftover. Just look how quickly this plate of Thanksgiving leftovers added up to 1 pound of food!

Has an EatSmart kitchen scale helped you lose weight? Tweet us at @eatsmartscales.