What do people do for logging when you can't weigh the food you're eating?

lemurcat12

I estimate the ingredients (and if it's a restaurant I add extra butter or quick add some calories) or I just quick add what seems a reasonable (generous) estimate for what I ate.

I regularly go out for dinner a couple times a week, and never to places with calorie information, and I just order reasonably, watch portion size, and make sure I don't fool myself when logging. I've been doing this from the beginning and have managed to lose 88 pounds and get close to my goal (still in process).

For me it wouldn't have made sense to do this without incorporating meals out, since my social life and work include a good bit of it, and I enjoy trying restaurants, so I had to figure out how to make it work.

segacs

I estimate, too.

I see a food scale as a crutch. Useful at home, and VERY educational in terms of what a portion size actually looks like and how much food weighs.

But this is a lifestyle change for me, not a "diet". It has to work for me in the real world. And in the real world, there are restaurants and eating at friends' and relatives' houses and social events. Avoiding all of those things because I'm afraid of not being able to log accurately would be counterproductive to my life.

So yeah, learning to guesstimate is a good skill. I'm working on it. Still not great at it, but working on it.

I also agree with whoever said to eat half a portion in restaurants.

04hoopsgal73

What jacksonpt said when I'm not at home, and when the place doesn't have the nutrional value and measurements on their website.

Liftng4Lis

When you're not in a position to weigh, pick something as close as possible and always guesstimate up!

holyfenix

I just use the app when I am dieting. Its close enough and I have gotten very good at estimating if something is accurate to the app. Also I put my cut calories lower than they need to be when I am trying to lose weight. This helps with any margin of error I can come up with. I also underestimate any exercise by 75%.

tomatoey

I visually estimate - if this is weird for you, there are guides online like this.webmd.com/diet/printable/wallet-portion-control-size-guide or this.

And yeah, I'd take the higher values from the database. Most restaurants use fat for taste; if it tastes really good, it probably has more fat and therefore more calories.

Also, weirdly, after a while you can kind-of learn to feel (very roughly) how much things are. Like after a while logging, I was able to correlate the number (very roughly!) with my feelings of satiety (taking portion sizes into account as well as what I know about the food). If I feel full and satisfied, odds are fat was highish, protein was highish, and the overall count was around 500-700 (excluding beverages), so I'll pick the database option that goes with that. If feel full to bursting and heavy, like I don't want to move and want to just sit for a while, it was probably 700-1000. If it feels tasty and filling immediately upon eating but leaves me sort of empty-feeling, odds are it was carby and fatty and probably 500-700. If I feel about 80% full, but satisfied, it was a good balance of macros and about 400 calories.

Like I had a chicken schwarma last night. I noticed that they used a 6" pita; I watched how much chicken they put on, etc. Database options offered values as low as 400 and as high as 800. Mine was small and not packed full, but it did have hummous and tahini, and I know the chicken in schwarmas is fatty; and, I felt "full and satisfied", so I picked 600.

(I wouldn't rely on those feelings, because they take a while to learn, but they can help when you're deciding between database options.)

sheepotato

I over-estimate to er on the side of caution, whenever the restaurant has nutritional data on their website I will use it to prelog but I will leave extra calories as padding.

LiftAllThePizzas

I'm not sure what people do for logging when I can't weigh the food I'm eating. Why would they be logging what I eat?

sophomorelove

Not often do I get to say this: here's where your basic algebra comes in handy -unit conversions! Although it's not at all helpful when eating out

FromHereOnOut

I usually order in more than eating out, so I will weigh, but our neighborhood restaurants don't have calorie info (plus I live in Greece, so not the big American chain places here...not that I'd eat there anyway vs our local joints), so I pick multiple similar entries (sometimes upto 7+) and log them all one after the other, for the correct weight, then I take a very critical look at them and I also google search photos of the entries I've chosen to see if it looks similar to what I had ("oh no, that has much more cheese than what I ate!"). At that point, I'll sometimes take the highest calorie entry, but not if the macros look way off. By looking at all of them in the log at the same time, I can, for example, eliminate entries that are "outliers" for clearly low protein (such as the item was maybe "chicken flavored" whereas mine had a good 4 or 5oz of chicken for example). Also, if a particular macro looks too low or too high vis-a-vis the total calories, I quickly multiply out the macros in grams by calories per macro to see if the total calories is correct (you'd be surprised how many entries have this wrong!) Eventually I narrow it down to an entry (or combined entries) I have confidence in. It helps that I've been weighing and logging my food off and on, for half my life (I used to use calorie/nutrient books and a notebook back in the day). I pretty much always weigh food at this point, but to stay sharp, I test myself for "guesstimating weighing" all the time (guess, then weigh) and I'm usually sharply accurate for common items I use often (ounce of cheese, 3oz meat, etc).

Losingthedamnweight

I log it as 1 calorie and eat it

ValerieMartini2Olives

I look up several similar items in the database and then go for the average

jrose1982

I just do the best I can. But I also try to minimize these situations. I.e. I don't go to restaurants as often as I used to. I'm finding I have more success the more I cook at home, and this is a big part of why.

mustloseweight2015

Thanks everyone for helpful hints!

mustloseweight2015

tomatoey wrote: »

I visually estimate - if this is weird for you, there are guides online like this.webmd.com/diet/printable/wallet-portion-control-size-guide or this.

And yeah, I'd take the higher values from the database. Most restaurants use fat for taste; if it tastes really good, it probably has more fat and therefore more calories.

Also, weirdly, after a while you can kind-of learn to feel (very roughly) how much things are. Like after a while logging, I was able to correlate the number (very roughly!) with my feelings of satiety (taking portion sizes into account as well as what I know about the food). If I feel full and satisfied, odds are fat was highish, protein was highish, and the overall count was around 500-700 (excluding beverages), so I'll pick the database option that goes with that. If feel full to bursting and heavy, like I don't want to move and want to just sit for a while, it was probably 700-1000. If it feels tasty and filling immediately upon eating but leaves me sort of empty-feeling, odds are it was carby and fatty and probably 500-700. If I feel about 80% full, but satisfied, it was a good balance of macros and about 400 calories.

Like I had a chicken schwarma last night. I noticed that they used a 6" pita; I watched how much chicken they put on, etc. Database options offered values as low as 400 and as high as 800. Mine was small and not packed full, but it did have hummous and tahini, and I know the chicken in schwarmas is fatty; and, I felt "full and satisfied", so I picked 600.

(I wouldn't rely on those feelings, because they take a while to learn, but they can help when you're deciding between database options.)

These visual guides are very useful! Thanks for sharing.

zeal26

I haven't weighed *anything* in over 6 months because I don't have a scales right now. I just make the best guesses I can and leave it at that. I'm still losing on track so the precise measuring I did for the first 6 months doesn't seem to be necessary right now.

FromHereOnOut

To be clear, I love fat...I really do and I eat a lot of it. But, when it comes to situations where you can't weigh, you might want to make lower fat choices, because although a mistaken guesstimate in a high water, carby, or protein item might not throw you off too much, a mistake of every gram of fat is 9 calories, so like cream soups, buttery stuff, cheesy stuff, creamy sauced stuff, full fat salad dressing, etc can get thrown way off by guesstimate errors. Just as a tip.