Should You Weigh Before or After Cooking Reddit-Style Advice?

November 26, 2025 •

4 min read

According to discussions across fitness and nutrition subreddits, weighing your food in its raw or uncooked state is almost universally recommended for the most accurate calorie and macro tracking. The reason is simple: a food's weight changes unpredictably during cooking, but its total nutritional content does not. Should you weigh before or after cooking reddit users confirm the raw method is more reliable.

Quick Summary

This article explores the Reddit community's widespread advice on weighing food for accurate nutritional tracking. It explains why measuring raw ingredients is generally the most precise method due to weight fluctuations during cooking, with specific tips for different food types.

Key Points

Weigh raw for accuracy: The majority of nutrition labels and food database entries are based on the uncooked weight, making raw measurement the most precise method.
Cooking changes weight, not calories: Foods like meat lose water and weight during cooking, while rice and pasta absorb water and gain weight, but the total calories remain constant.
Consistency is key: Regardless of whether you weigh raw or cooked, sticking to one consistent method helps ensure your long-term tracking is reliable.
Match your app entry: If you weigh your food cooked, ensure you are logging it with the 'cooked' food entry in your tracking app to avoid under or overestimating calories.
Use a scale, not cups: A digital food scale is a necessity for accurate portioning and macro tracking, as volume-based measurements can be inaccurate.
For recipes, weigh and divide: For dishes with multiple ingredients, weigh all raw components, cook, then weigh the final product and divide the total calories by the total cooked weight.
Consider the Reddit community consensus: The general agreement across Reddit's nutrition and fitness forums is that weighing raw is the superior method for those serious about accurate tracking.

Why Weighing Raw Is the Reddit Consensus

The most consistent piece of advice found on nutrition and fitness subreddits like r/CICO, r/nutrition, and r/loseit is to weigh your food before you cook it. This is because nutrition labels and food database entries, such as those found on MyFitnessPal or Cronometer, are almost always based on the raw, uncooked weight of the ingredient. While a food's weight changes during cooking, its overall caloric and macronutrient content remains the same unless you add other ingredients. By weighing your food raw, you eliminate the variable of moisture loss (in meats and vegetables) or moisture absorption (in grains and pasta), ensuring your log matches the reference data.

The Inconsistency of Weighing Cooked Food

Weighing food after cooking introduces a significant margin of error. The amount of water lost or gained can vary dramatically based on the cooking method, temperature, and duration.

For meat: When you cook a piece of chicken, it loses water weight. The longer it cooks, the more weight it loses. A 4-ounce serving of cooked chicken could represent a different number of raw calories each time you prepare it, leading to inconsistent tracking.
For rice and pasta: These absorb water and gain weight when cooked. 100 grams of raw rice might become 250 grams of cooked rice, but the calorie count is still based on the original 100 grams of dry rice. If you were to track 100 grams of cooked rice using a raw rice entry, you would be vastly underestimating your intake.

Specific Reddit-Recommended Strategies

While weighing raw is the gold standard, the Reddit community also offers practical methods for when you need to weigh after cooking, especially for meal prep or recipes.

For Single-Ingredient Meals

For a single ingredient like a chicken breast, the simplest method is weighing it raw. However, if you forget or prefer weighing after, you can use the total weight of the cooked product. For example, if you cook an entire 1kg package of raw chicken, and the cooked product weighs 750g, you know the total calories of the cooked dish. If you then eat 250g of the cooked chicken, you've consumed one-third of the total calories.

For Complex Recipes

For recipes with multiple ingredients, the 'recipe' feature in apps like MyFitnessPal or MacroFactor is your best friend.

Weigh all raw ingredients: Before you start cooking, weigh each ingredient individually and log it in the app's recipe builder.
Calculate total calories: The app will tally the total calories and macros for the entire dish.
Weigh the final product: After cooking, weigh the entire completed dish. Use this total cooked weight as your reference for servings.
Portion and log: When you take a portion, weigh it in grams and log that amount in your app. The app will automatically calculate the calories and macros for that specific serving.

Comparison: Raw vs. Cooked Weight Logging


Feature	Weighing Raw (Recommended)	Weighing Cooked (Requires Caution)
Accuracy	Highest. Matches most nutritional database entries directly.	Varies significantly. Dependent on cooking method, time, and temperature.
Consistency	Excellent. A 100g serving of raw chicken is always the same amount of chicken.	Poor. A 100g serving of cooked chicken can vary in calorie content depending on water loss.
Convenience	Can be less convenient if you forget to weigh before cooking, especially in complex dishes.	Can be more convenient for leftovers or prepped meals, but requires extra calculation.
Application	Ideal for single-ingredient foods and meticulous macro tracking.	Better for eyeballing portions or when raw weight is unknown, but consistency is a risk.

Best Practices from Reddit for Better Tracking

Consistency over perfection: Many Reddit users emphasize that consistency is the most important factor. Whether you choose raw or cooked, sticking to one method helps you better track your progress over time, as any measurement errors will be consistent and can be adjusted for.
Use the right entry: Ensure the food item you select in your tracking app matches the state you are weighing. If you weigh cooked rice, select the 'cooked rice' entry, not the raw one.
Pay attention to labels: Pre-packaged foods, especially pre-cooked items, will often specify whether the nutritional information is for the raw or cooked weight. Always check the label.
Embrace the food scale: A digital food scale is a non-negotiable tool for precise portion control and tracking, as measuring cups can be wildly inaccurate.

Conclusion

Based on widespread advice from Reddit communities focused on fitness and nutrition, weighing your food in its raw, uncooked state is the most accurate and consistent method for calorie and macro tracking. This approach eliminates the variable of moisture loss or gain during cooking, ensuring your recorded intake aligns with the nutritional data provided on labels and in databases. While weighing cooked food is possible, especially for meal prep using a 'recipe' function in a tracking app, it introduces a margin of error that is best avoided for those seeking high accuracy. The key takeaway from these communities is to be consistent with your chosen method, pay close attention to your food's state, and utilize a digital food scale to ensure precise measurements.

Optional Outbound Link: Learn more about food weight changes during cooking from the Food Standards Australia New Zealand website

Frequently Asked Questions

Weighing food raw is more accurate because most nutritional information is based on the uncooked state of the food. Cooking alters a food's weight through moisture loss (for meat) or gain (for rice and pasta), but the total calories remain unchanged.

If you must weigh food after it's cooked, the most important rule is consistency. Use the 'cooked' food entry in your tracking app, and ensure you use that method every time for that specific food to minimize tracking errors.

For complex recipes, weigh all raw ingredients and enter them into a recipe builder feature on a tracking app. After cooking, weigh the entire finished dish to get the total cooked weight. You can then weigh your portion and the app will accurately divide the macros.

Cooking causes meat like chicken to lose water weight, typically resulting in a weight reduction of around 25%. The total calories, however, are still the same as the original raw weight.

Cooked rice weighs more because it absorbs a large amount of water during the boiling process. 100 grams of raw rice might become 250 grams cooked, but the calories are based on the original dry weight.

Your cooking method can affect the final calorie count if you add ingredients like oil or butter. It also affects the final weight by changing the amount of moisture, which is why weighing raw is more consistent for tracking.

For most raw, uncooked foods like fresh meat, the label provides nutritional information based on the raw weight. For processed foods, especially pre-cooked items, the label will usually specify if the information is for the cooked product.