Its impossible!
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queenliz99 wrote: »
I agree with this.
If you primarily eat restaurant food simply learn how to eat the foods you choose and monitor it over a period of time (like 3 - 4) weeks and see how your weight does. If the scale is not moving, perhaps change the amount of food being ordered/served, split the entre with a friend or take home the other half.
Sometimes one of these meals out at a restaurant really is all a person can have for day and perhaps a little more (snacks or small meal at home) and be completely out of calories at the end of the day and stay within their calorie deficit to loose weight.3 -
I'm still trying to figure out how being Chinese makes it harder for you??
We all have to figure out a way to eat well and still stay within our calorie allowance, no matter if that is Chinese food, Italian food, Indian food, Mexican food???....2 -
If you are insistent on eating a lot of meals in restaurants, I don't because I want to cook it myself and KNOW what's in it, but everyone is different, why don't you google "healthiest Chinese restaurant dishes". At least that will give you an idea of meals that are typically prepared healthier/lower calorie.3
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Ask for sauce on the side. And eat out less. Sorry, but that's what it is.0
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Are you speaking about Chinese restaurants specifically? I don't know about how Chinese restaurants are everywhere else, but here in the Midwest USA there are always choices of steamed vegetables, shrimp, rice, etc on Chinese restaurant menus. .it isn't difficult to go in and choose lower calorie options, and add soy sauce or whatever you want accordingly. Eating out doesn't mean you always have to pick the deep fried options with tons of sauces. What exactly are you ordering at these restaurants to make your counts so difficult, OP?1
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you have to make up your mind to do it, I know if I can anyone can, down 40 lbs for 4 years. Others have done it also, just keep reading those success stories!
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Anything you do in life is as possible or impossible as you make it! I have lost 44 pounds by logging faithfully and using common sense. If I go out, I try to eat what I know is a lower calorie alternative, but if I want something else...I just eat less. I use the calculator that MFP has, then look at items that are similar and pick one that seems close. I usually use the count that is in the middle, but know it won't be exact. I then make my next few meals a little lower. Losing weight requires changing your life some, no matter what method you use. If you are not ready to do that...maybe this is not the time to start. Seems like a little change in attitude might help.0
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I agree that it is a pain in the butt to log at a buffet so I find if I quick count 1000 calories in for the meal I go out to eat at it works for me. I find whenever I go out to eat no matter how hard I try it is around 1000 calories average from soup to salad to entree. And that's only eating half the entree. Good luck. Just find what works for you. There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread.2
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A lot of my Chinese friends have mentioned what you have. I've also noticed that I now eat less often at ethnic restaurants when I want to be more accurate with my caloric counts.
So does this mean that a lifestyle of eating out with your family and friends all the time makes it harder to lose weight? Absolutely.
It is up to you whether you will turn harder into impossible.
In your case your caloric allowance on mfp will be even more of a guess than it is for most people.
However if you log consistently, in other words the same way on a continuous basis, and if you follow your weight on a trending weight app, you will be able to eventually figure out how many of your consistently logged calories you can eat to lose.
In the meanwhile you may want to adopt more traditional weight lossstrategies.
Fill up on congee or broth soups. Avoid dishes with a lot of oil. Cut down on rice and noodles portions, including dumplings or noodles in the soups. Increase steamed vegetable portions. Order your vegetables steamed, or boiled, not fried. Avoid dumplings, or breadings, or rich sauces.
In other words if you don't want to reduce the volume substitute lower-calorie stuff for higher-calorie stuff.
Or if it is impossible to change the way your family has their meals, then aim to eat about three-quarters of what you used to eat. And if that doesn't work reduce to 60% and keep going till it works.
Note that you should give "a" change at least three weeks before you make a determination as to whether things are working or not.
Especially when eating out water weight changes are way bigger then your underlying weight changes and if you don't give a consistent change enough time you will have no clue whether something is working, or not.
Cutting too many calories for rapid weight loss, in my opinion, especially in the longer term, may have undesirable side effects, so it is usually better to be accurate so as to create a controlled deficit in the 10℅ to 20℅, 25℅ if obese, range.
MFP, weight watchers, other diets are all tools that can help you create a deficit.
If your weight loss needs are cosmetic, being a little bit more careful with what you eat and moving a little bit more may help you control things.
If your weight loss is a lifestyle/ medical necessity, as the case was with myself, the answer is that your lifestyle will have to change, and it is up to you to figure out how.
The concepts are simple. The tools imperfect as they may be can still be made to work. The implementation takes a bit of effort.6 -
It is only impossible if you are unwilling to make changes in your eating habits. It doesn't matter what your ethnicity is.
I eat chinese food fairly often. I also eat pizza and Greek,and pasta and burgers. I only have trouble losing weight when my calories in exceed my calories out on more than an occasional basis.4 -
I rarely go out to eat [chinese twice a month] and I usually get the same things every time [rice, seafood stir fry, hot & sour soup, sushi, coconut shrimp, etc] so I made a custom entry called Chinese Dinner that estimates how many calories/macros that particular meal would have. I usually only have a small breakfast on that day anyways [plus two weeks of banked calories] so as long as the numbers are fairly close it's fine.
Now, if I had chinese more often than twice a month, I'd try harder to get the numbers exactly right.0 -
Try not to eat breaded/fried, and the low-mein noodles. I usually order mixed vegetables with shrimp and steamed rice, but don't eat much of the rice. One dinner is usually enough for two meals for me. You can always get something that is lean meat and veggies, sauce on the side.0
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I don't eat out, and when at others homes I am strict with myself. Its only as hard as how committed you are. If you must eat out do research ahead of time on popular chinese dishes and find the ones that are generally healthier to choose while out.
Calorie counting hasn't taken over my life...my commitment to myself and my choice to be healthier has. I've read before weightloss and I guess healthly eating is 90% mental...10%physical. Change how you view food and I guess restrictions. I don't view the self imposed restrictions are a negative thing but rather a positive healthy thing. Eating unhealthy and over my calories is not a "treat" its abuse.0 -
@Bxqtie116 trust me... Not all restaurants have their nutritional info espexially chinese ones. Hence my dilemma. And its impossibke to guestimate which i heard was friwned upin here anyways
Do you have certain restaurants that you tend to frequent? Because while you may not be measuring the portions, the restaurant probably does - I find that the meal I get (steamed chicken with veggies, sauce on the side) comes out to be almost the same amount of chicken every time, so I don't even bother weighing it anymore. Try getting some dishes as take out and weigh them out, it's not going to be exact every single time but it would at least get you a pretty close estimate.
@kgeyser love your profile pic! Solid advice, too.0 -
You don't give up your social life when you diet, but don't expect to get results eating the same way you did before. Cook home as often as possible and only eat restaurant foods when you are actually going out with people. Don't order in or go to restaurants alone all the time unless absolutely necessary or you have the calories for it. You can change what you can control regardless of the situation, or you can sit there and complain and do nothing, but guess which one will get you results?
I also live in a place where nutritional info is not available in most restaurants and I do have a social life. To make it even harder, I live in a home cooking culture where plenty of social situations involve high fat home cooked meals that don't come with nutritional information and there is a lot of variance in the way different people cook the same dish. To make it even worse, the host takes great pride in their food and it's impolite to eat small portions, and if you do expect some extreme forms of food pushing. None of this has prevented me from losing a lot of weight because what I can control I try to control to the best of my abilities.
Next week I have been invited to the best brisket and burger places in the area. I will be ordering a burger. Their burgers are known for being extra big, juicy and fatty. I have never been there before so I'm planning to eat all the things I want and enjoy the whole experience. What have I done to make it work?
- I have been saving for this the whole week, cutting 1000 calories from my weekly budget.
- I'm planning to have my long run on that day.
- I'm planning to eat at maintenance that day.
- I'm planning to have low calorie but satisfying breakfast and lunch on that day: a 250 calorie omelette and a 250 calorie vegetable stew, plus about 100 calories of tomatoes and cucumbers for snacks.
- So here are the calculations: 2000 calories maintenance + 500 calories from my long run + 1000 saved calories = 3500 is my allowance for the day, and 2900 calories is my allowance for that planned meal. This is more than enough calories to eat whatever I want in whatever quantities I want, but I will still stop eating when I'm comfortably full.
- I will likely log it using the highest calorie choices of similar foods I can find in the database.
- I expect to be losing less than I usually do on that week and I'm mentally prepared for both smaller loss and water weight gain.
On random less special outings than this one, my planning is less extreme and usually involves being more active, eating lower calorie meals on that day or skipping some meals entirely, and making smarter safer choices at the restaurant. If it's a sudden thing and I had no chance to plan, I just eat smaller smarter choices and have a very low calorie day afterwards for damage control. Half a plate might as well have 1000 calories, but that's still 1000 calories fewer than you used to eat on similar outings.
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Common sense says "I am maintaining this current weight. As part of that, I eat at Restaurant X every week and I get Dish A and Dish B and Dish C. If I wish to maintain a lower weight, I need to eat less across the board, so When I go to Restaurant X, I will only get Dish A and Dish B. Or I will eat 3/4 of each dish and leave food on my plate."
Just doing that? Will create a deficit.2 -
queenliz99 wrote: »
I agree with this.
If you primarily eat restaurant food simply learn how to eat the foods you choose and monitor it over a period of time (like 3 - 4) weeks and see how your weight does. If the scale is not moving, perhaps change the amount of food being ordered/served, split the entre with a friend or take home the other half.
Sometimes one of these meals out at a restaurant really is all a person can have for day and perhaps a little more (snacks or small meal at home) and be completely out of calories at the end of the day and stay within their calorie deficit to loose weight.
^This!
Weighing and measuring your food is "front end" work that leads to a deficit. You can do it backwards, by watching your body weight on the scale. If you are not losing at the expected rate, you are eating too much, cut your portions. It is very possible to lose weight, it's just easier and more accurate with a food scale. Might help to take pictures and notes of what and how much you're eating, so you have something to go back and look and compare to.0 -
Well. Chinese food, being as popular as it is the world over, should be reasonably easy to track. You either look for something similar already in the database or you could even look up a recipe in google and make a guesstimate from there. Generic, bastardised by the west dishes will all be much of a muchness and authentic fayre will be less calorie laden given the western propensity to make dishes a million times more calorific for the western palate.
Start weighing and measuring the things you do eat at home to educate yourself what portions look like, this will further help you with guesstimating while out.
Here in the UK it would be more unusual to eat out at a chain restaurant for most people, our best places are independent. In my small area of London there are a couple of big chain coffee places and that's it, everywhere else is independent. I eat from those places pretty regularly, at least once a week on average I'd say and it hasn't hindered my losses at all.
What would hinder me is a completely defeatist attitude.1 -
Guesstimate based on what's in the database. As others have said, make better choices and eat a fraction - then wait the 20 minutes it takes for your sensation of fullness to kick in -- then decide whether you've had enough and want to take the rest home, or need to eat more of it.
Plenty of us have lost a lot of weight by doing MFP, so it's clearly not impossible to make this work.0 -
To track calories and lose weight without having any semblance of a life.
Please some of you seasoned MFPers tell me how you can go out to eat and accurately document your calorie intake. Especially if youre Chinese... It is effing impossible
Its also unrealistic to eat 100% of your meals home cooked.
Please give me some useful advice!
I ate out way less and just did the best I could when I did eat out...you're never going to be 100% accurate anyway.
It's not impossible at all...I lost 40 Lbs and I've maintained that for over 3.5 years. I very much have a life...it just didn't and doesn't revolve around me going out to eat all of the time.1 -
I found weighing and logging food was not for me as well. I do cook most of our meals at home from scratch but I don't measure ingredients so it was a huge change in process for me and not a welcome one. Also, when we eat at a restaurant it's usually locally owned and has no nutritional information.
Honestly, I just did it by paying attention to what I was eating. What ingredients I used at home, being more careful with how much oil I add. When at a restaurant skip breaded fried meats and go for grilled or stir fry. Easy on the bread/rice/noodles and heavier on the vegetables.
It really does help to eat at home more than out. We did this anyway so that wasn't a change for me, but if you eat a lot of your meals out you might want to start trying to switch to more home cooked meals.0 -
I rarely eat at large chain restaurants, but I love that they have nutritional information available because it helps me a lot with eating at the restaurants I do visit.
If I search for the chicken fajitas at Chilis and it's 1000 calories (I have no idea what it actually is), then I can say pretty safely that a reasonable portion of the same at a local restaurant is probably in that ballpark as well. If I get a wood-fired 10-inch pizza at a local place, then I can guess that a similar style pizza from a chain that posts calorie counts is probably a similar number of calories.
It's not perfect and the more accurate you are the better, obviously, but one way to mitigate the guessing when you do eat out is to be as accurate as possible at home. Calorie counting is always going to be an estimation anyway, so all you can do is count as correctly as you can whenever you can and make the most educated guesses possible when you can't.
The longer you do it, the easier it gets, as well. I like restaurants and I don't want to cut them out of my life, but I've done my homework now and I can guess pretty easily what a given meal is likely to be, and my results (whether losing or now maintaining) have proven I'm in the ballpark for sure. I know that a meal-sized salad with protein, cheese, and creamy dressing is probably 800-1000 calories. I know that a moderate serving of fries in a restaurant is probably around 400 calories. I know that a 6 oz steak is about 350 calories. I know that a large tortilla is about 200 calories, etc., etc., etc. Learning all this makes it easy for me to go to any restaurant and guess.
You can easily do the same with Chinese food. Look up whatever it is you like to eat and see approximately how many calories a portion of that tends to be at chain restaurants (and note the portion size.) That will give you at least an idea of what to expect when you order it at your local place. Everyone else has already given you lots of advice on making lower calorie choices (avoiding sweet or creamy sauces, choosing unbreaded and not fried options, limiting starch and choosing more vegetables, halving portions when possible.)
If you eat out a lot your counts are never going to be super accurate, that's clear. However, it's still going to be very possible to take in fewer calories if you pay attention and make changes where you can.2
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