Tracking Calories Without Weighing Everything (What Finally Worked)
Six years ago I asked whether you really need a food scale. My answer has changed. How I track calories now without weighing every meal — and the three things I still put on the scale.
Hannah Caldwell 4 min read 
Back in 2020, in one of the first posts on this diary, I asked whether you actually need a food scale. My answer then was a slightly anxious “probably, mostly, yes”. I weighed everything. I have a clear memory of weighing lettuce.
Six years on, my answer has changed, and since “how do I track calories without weighing everything?” is one of the questions I get asked most by friends who know I keep this diary — here is the honest, current version.
TL;DR: I barely weigh anything any more. Between learning a handful of reference portions by eye and logging most meals by photo, my tracking is close enough that the weekly trend — the only number I really use — makes sense. Three foods still go on the scale, and I’ll tell you which ones.
Why I stopped weighing everything
The scale didn’t fail me because it was inaccurate. It failed me because it was friction. Weighing every component of every meal turns cooking into a lab procedure, and there are only so many evenings you’ll do a lab procedure before you’d rather not know the number at all. Every time I quit tracking over the years — and I’ve quit and restarted more times than I’d like — the quitting started with the scale.
What I eventually accepted is something I wish someone had told me in 2020: the value of tracking is in the pattern, not the precision. If every meal is logged roughly right, the week tells the truth. If half the meals are logged perfectly and the other half not at all — because the perfect version was too much work — the week tells you nothing.
What replaced the scale
1. A borrowed eye. The scale’s real gift wasn’t the daily numbers, it was calibration. A few weeks of weighing teaches you what 70g of rice or a proper portion of pasta actually looks like, and that knowledge doesn’t expire. I wrote about judging portions by eye a few years back, and it’s still the skill I lean on at other people’s tables and in restaurants.
2. Photo logging for the everyday plates. This is the piece that didn’t exist when I started this diary. Most of my meals now get logged by pointing my phone at the plate — the app I use, PlateLens, works out what’s on it and takes a sensible guess at the portion, and I nudge it when it’s off, which takes seconds. I compared the five most popular tracking apps at length last year, and the photo-plus-manual combination is the reason that one stuck: it made the ordinary meals — the Tuesday pasta, the fridge-picnic dinner — nearly effortless to record. When the effort dropped, the consistency arrived, and consistency was the thing I’d been missing for a decade.
3. Honest defaults for the repeats. Half of what I eat, I’ve eaten a hundred times. My porridge is my porridge. Once a repeat meal is in the app, logging it again is one tap, no scale, no photo, no thought.
The three things I still weigh
I promised honesty, so: oil, nut butter, and granola. (Cheese is on probation.) These are the foods where everyone’s eyeball — mine, yours, and any app’s — fails in the same optimistic direction, because a “drizzle” of olive oil can quietly be a triple portion and look identical on the plate. The scale takes three seconds for these and earns its cupboard space. I wrote years ago about weighing versus eyeballing, and this is where that post landed too: weigh the dense stuff, eyeball the rest.
Who this approach is for
If you’re brand new to tracking, I’d still borrow a scale for two or three weeks — not forever, just long enough to teach your eye what portions look like. And if you have a medical reason to be precise, follow your professional’s advice, not a diary on the internet.
But if you’re where I was for years — quitting tracking every few weeks because the “proper” way was exhausting — then the permission I can offer is this: the imperfect version you’ll actually keep doing beats the perfect version you’ll abandon by a mile. Rough, consistent, and sustainable took me further than precise-and-abandoned ever did.
The scale lives in the cupboard now. It comes out for the granola. We’ve never been happier.
A few questions I get asked
Can you really count calories without weighing food?
Yes — with a caveat. You won't be gram-perfect, and that's fine, because you don't need gram-perfect to see your pattern and make progress. What you need is consistency. A combination of knowing a handful of reference portions by eye and logging by photo gets me close enough that my weekly trend makes sense, which is the thing I actually use. Perfection was never the goal; a record I'll actually keep is.
Do you need a food scale to lose weight?
No. I lost my weight — and have kept it off — mostly without one. A scale is genuinely useful for a few weeks at the start to calibrate your eye, and for a small set of dense foods where guessing goes badly wrong. But as a forever-tool for every meal? I tried that, and it's the version of tracking I always quit.
What app do you use to track calories from a photo?
PlateLens — it's the app I landed on after trying the big names, and the photo logging is the reason. I point the camera at my plate, it works out what's there and takes a sensible guess at the portion, and I nudge it if it's off. There are other apps with photo features, and I've written a whole comparison post about the five I tested — but this is the one that stuck for me.
Is photo logging accurate enough to be worth it?
For my purpose — an honest picture of what I actually eat — yes. It's not a laboratory and I don't treat it like one. On a normal home-cooked plate it lands close enough that my week-to-week numbers tell a consistent story. Where I don't trust any eyeball, mine or an app's, is the dense stuff: oil, nut butter, cheese, granola. Those three seconds on the scale are still worth it.