Its impossible!

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  • xvolution
    xvolution Posts: 721 Member
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    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.
  • DancingMoosie
    DancingMoosie Posts: 8,619 Member
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    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.
  • Pale_Green
    Pale_Green Posts: 64 Member
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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.
  • ahoy_m8
    ahoy_m8 Posts: 3,053 Member
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    kgeyser wrote: »
    Sebani wrote: »
    @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.
  • savithny
    savithny Posts: 1,200 Member
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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.
  • errollmaclean
    errollmaclean Posts: 562 Member
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    RoxieDawn wrote: »
    queenliz99 wrote: »
    Sebani wrote: »
    Eating less means nothing. Yiu dont kniw the hidden crap thats thrown into these dishes i can be completely off.

    I can eat half a dish of somethng and it may still be ovee 1000 calories

    If you think the dish is 1000 calories eat half. Go by how full you feel.

    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.
  • VintageFeline
    VintageFeline Posts: 6,771 Member
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    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.
  • vingogly
    vingogly Posts: 1,785 Member
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    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.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    Sebani wrote: »
    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.
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,575 Member
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    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.
  • peleroja
    peleroja Posts: 3,979 Member
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    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.

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