Have I been weighing my food wrong?

My normal is to weigh cooked meats. I read an article somewhere at random that says the nutrition information on most packages is for the meat raw. Should I have been measuring raw and then cooking the food at that amount?

Also, a side question, does turkey weigh less than other meats?

I don't know about the raw vs cooked thing - I don't think it makes that much of a difference. However, turkey and chicken are less dense than beef, so 3 ounces of turkey will look like a lot more than 3 ounces of beef.

An ounce is an ounce. However, the volume you get for the ounce reflects the density. A pound of feather and a pound brick weigh the same, but there are a lot more feathers.

Thanks, I was mostly just wondering about the turkey since when I measure out 3oz it always looks like so much food compared to other foods!

If you're relying on the package for your nutrition information, then whatever state that product is when you buy it is what the nutrition information refers to. Say you buy raw ground beef, and it says 3oz is 240 calories. If you weigh out 3oz raw and then cook it, depending on the fat content in it, it will weight less when cooked, so cooked weight might be 2oz; therefore, 2oz cooked is 240 cals. If you cooked it and then weighed out 3oz, it would be much more than 240 cals. If you have purchased precooked food, then the information will be correct once you heat it up. Meats shrink when cooked from raw. The same goes for frozen veggies. Weigh them frozen, because they lose water during cooking, and the calorie info is for the frozen product. The caveat to this would be IF the label says somewhere "nutrition information AFTER heating or cooking" or "as prepared" like for dry rice mixes and such.

If you don't want to weigh things raw, then you need to use something like My Fitness Pal, or some other app where you can look up the nutrition info on cooked foods.

ETA: Your dietary guidelines from your surgeon/program are going to be for prepared/cooked foods, not raw. So if it says eat 2oz of protein, then it means cooked. So you'll have to test out your different foods to see how much raw product you have to prepare to get 2oz after cooking.

I did a little checking cooked vs raw and it seems that the meats I eat regularly do not really change much. The ground beef is the only thing that is iffy, but thankfully I only purchase very lean ground beef so the calories are lower.

As long as your consistent in your method of tracking, it doesn't really matter much.

I wonder about this from time to time myself. My main criterion is, am I still losing weight? So far the answer is yes, so I don't worry about it. Eventually, my main criterion will be, am I maintaining weight? As long as the answer is yes, I won't worry. If I start to regain, I will change my perspective.

I use whatever data that I have that is close and go with that, trying to be consistent. There is a lot of USDA data out there that may be used on different apps. The program that I use for tracking is great in some areas and not so great in others. For many meats, particularly beef, they list ground beef with different (starting) fat contents, and then raw, broiled, pan broiled, baked, etc. For some things like steak it will list raw, broiled, and broiled, yield from 8oz raw. So, if I have data like that, I will go with it, or wing it with the closest. If all I have is raw data, then I would enter the raw amount that I started with and call it close enough. Typically, 4 oz of ground beef will cook down to 3 oz, give or take. (Note that the fast food joints will list their quarter pound burgers as "*weight before cooking" to satisfy the lawyers out there.)

Try to get as close as you can, as nutritional values can change with cooking along with weight, but consistency is probably more important than outright accuracy.

Grimm contacted the USDA and told us what he learned. Much to our collective disappointment, the calories are calculated on the weight of raw meat.

I weigh everything raw, however I batch cook often or pre-freeze portions. What I do is total the calories in MFP and then divide it by frozen servings. I batch cook because 1) I am insane and work like more than I ever want to admit and would just probably eat nothing but cheese otherwise which would kill Harvey because my sleeve hates dairy and 2) I am cheap and hate fast food for the most part. I really don't care what the measurements are other than to make sure I am not overeating for my sleeve size, though, because of the psychological boost tracking provides. Meeting my macros is a pleasant side effect of tracking assiduously.

So I'm not saying that nutrition isn't important, however it's the tracking that actually matters most, I'd argue. This literature review goes into a bit of detail as to why. The tracking is typically what stops us from eating poorly, not because we count everything, but because we are hyper aware of our consumption. This stops us from making unconscious food choices.

As for turkey weighing less than other meats...if they are dead, turkeys will absolutely measure things less...heh heh.

Unfunny jokes aside, I'm not sure what you mean. Most meat has relatively the same protein per ounce, regardless. Fat and water content can cause this to vary. Sausage often has less protein per ounce, for instance, because it has more fillers.

Just make sure to use a reliable database for nutrition info and you should be fine. The USDA information is mostly reliable, though it doesn't include a lot of vitamin information about meat. Much meat has vitamin C in it, for instance (fresh meat has been known to prevent scurvy for quite some time - see the traditional Inuit diet if curious), but the USDA database doesn't list it frequently.