Having trouble estimating calories

starsarai720

What is a good source for a breakdown of calorie values and how they work? I often find difficulty logging in foods that are not in the database because I have no clue how to estimate the caloric value. Thanks!

futuremanda

If you have the nutritional information of the food, you can go to your food diary and go to My Foods and create a food. Copy the label in, and then log using whatever the portion was you actually ate.

If you mean like when you go out to eat, just try to guess based on the closest sounding thing in the database. Or if it's a chain place, you can often get the info by looking up the nutrition in Google. Ex: "subway nutrition" would get you the nutrition info for foods from Subway.

If you mean home-cooked foods, you can weigh and log ingredients separately. You can also check out the My Meals and Recipes section of your food journal.

If you mean that you want to be able to look at a food and somehow reverse engineer guess the calories based on knowing how calories "work" then... I don't think that's a possible thing. I mean, you might get good at eye balling, eventually, but you won't get that way by reading up on calories, you'll get that way by measuring and weighing carefully, repeatedly, a lot. (And will get less accurate with your guessing over time.)

CyberTone

In over 80 weeks of logging food in MFP, I have averaged about 1 item every other week that I have not found from a search in the Food Database. What item or items of food are you looking for and how are you searching for it/them?

honkytonks85

Fat 1 gram = 9 calories
Protein 1 gram = 4 calories
Carbohydrate 1 gram = 4 calories
Alcohol 1 gram = 7 calories

starsarai720

Thank you all so much! Honkytonks85 answered more what I was looking for. I guess I didn't understand how a sweet potato could be around 50 calories, but a banana is 100! Thanks for the breakdown.
Cybertone, usually I do a google search for similar foods or ingredients in whatever food I've eaten out. Recipes and such and then look up every ingredient on myfitnesspal. It takes awhile.
FutureManda, I meant guessing when eating out and "eyeballing" foods. Eating out is particularly hard to guess when it isn't a chain, so I was hoping having a better grasp of nutrition and how calories work would make the job easier. Thanks for the tips! I'll definitely be using them.

futuremanda

I guess I just didn't see how knowing that, say, protein has 4 cals/gram, would help if you don't know the protein values either! If you know how much fat, protein, carbs and alcohol was in your food, you'd likely just have a label, which would have the cals there.

Also, unless you had like a really small sweet potato, I don't think "a sweet potato" is 50 cals. At least not any I've ever eaten!

For eating out, if I really truly have no idea, I do one of two things:

1. Search for the thing on MFP. Say I ordered lasagna. Look for all the definitely from a restaurant, high calorie lasagna options in MFP, and pick a nice, high cal one.
2. Assume it was between 850 and 1200 for the meal.

Your goal is to come close but hopefully overestimate (because we have a tendency to underestimate, so trying to overestimate will likely get you closer). So like the opposite of The Price Is Right.

starsarai720

Haha. It was a really small sweet potato.

lynn_glenmont

starsarai720 wrote: »

I guess I didn't understand how a sweet potato could be around 50 calories, but a banana is 100!

Haha. It was a really small sweet potato.

It would have to be about half the weight of the banana you're comparing it to, if it has half the calories -- a cooked (baked) sweet potato and a raw banana are very close in calorie-density -- both roughly 90 calories for 100 grams. I guess if you boil your sweet potatoes the calorie-density would drop a little, since they probably weigh more from absorbing water.

I have never in my life seen a sweet potato that was so small that it was only 50 calories. It wouldn't be much bigger than a golf ball.