Tracking Food

KristiMillner08

OK, so I tend to get really stressed about logging food. I can do it when I cook and prepare meals and when I eat already prepared meals, but if it is food that someone else makes it stresses me out. How do I log it if I don't know exactly what is in it? I know I can't be the only one with this stress. Do you just guess? Should I not stress so much about a meal like this if its just every now and then?

emmamcgarity

Even our most accurate entries of what we prepare at home are still estimates. I try to find a similar item knowing it will likely be inaccurate. If given lots of different calorie counts for similar items I choose the mid-higher calorie option from the database. I have adjusted my calorie mindset to weekly calories vs daily calories. The impact of one meal on a weekly count is pretty minimal. This view really relieved my stress about it.

NovusDies

No you should absolutely not stress about it. If you want to transition from a diet to a lifestyle you have to understand that life happens and you will not always be in control over your meals/calories.

Guessing is what I do. I look for anything that I think is comparable in the database calorie-wise. If there are several I look for a high average. If there is nothing I think really hard about the ingredients I can detect and do the best I can to log it.

janejellyroll

Don't put yourself through that stress!

Look, when creating a deficit you want to focus on long-term consistency. An occasional outlier is much less of a concern than the things you're doing day-in, day-out. So if you're doing your best to log your ordinary days, then the extraordinary days are unlikely to throw you off.

Find similar items, use common sense, focus on accurately logging on regular days. If you find you stop losing weight, it may be time to look at those special occasions and figure out a plan. But if you're losing weight, then it's working!

KristiMillner08

Great advice. Thanks

kettiecat

Also if we’re talking about food prepared by friends you could ask for the recipe.

fitoverfortymom

Guesstimate. Pick something in the database that's close. Log it. Move on.

Unless this happens a LOT, it will have little impact on your weight loss. We all have to make guesses sometimes and have much bigger life things to stress us out rather than this.

chandraminick

Don't let other peoples meals influence yours. Pack a lunch box, and stick to it.

Suzanne_the_foot_lady

If part of the meal is from packaged food you could ask to scan the barcode.
You could also make sure you have done a good workout or long walk during the day if you will be eating at a friend's. If you know you have added 400 calories from excersize, then you can relax a little eating out.

AnnPT77

chandraminick wrote: »

Don't let other peoples meals influence yours. Pack a lunch box, and stick to it.

Personally, I would not consider that a strategy I'd want to follow for the rest of my life, and I would consider it impolite to do if someone has invited me to their home for dinner (unless I had diverse and really difficult food allergies, or something like that).

Social relationships are important, too, and enjoying one's friends' best cooking is part of that. IMO, reasonable portions, and guesstimated calories, provide a reasonable enough result.

Others may do as they choose, of course.

cebreisch

I’ll do a “best guess’ if someone else cooks it, or some restaurant cooks it. Most restaurants have nutrition info available on websites, unless it’s a little “mom & pop* restaurant. I’ll try to find a “high” and a “low” and shoot for just above average. THere are things you’ll know about the food though....like with sesame chicken....you usually get just chicken and not “lots of other veggies” like you might with garlic chicken.

I would LOVE to be able to get people’s recipe’s and put them into the recipe builder, but some people get weird if you ask them too many questions about their recipe’s. Sometimes you have to go with “close enough for government work”.

Lillymoo01

I do one of two things. Find the best guesstimate and the database which is somewhere in the middle but on the upper side, or if I can't find something I like I go online and look for a recipe that closely matches the ingredients I know I am eating. Copy the URL into recipes here and add from there.