Tracking While Eating Out

SouthWestLondon

Hi guys - been measuring and tracking everything I've eaten for the past two and a half weeks, and it's going really well. Really managed to curb my cravings, and seeing everything tracked and recorded has been really very helpful.

But on Saturday we're going for dinner and games at a friend's house.

I'm not too worried about overindulging - I've been deliberately keeping my calories a bit low this week, and trying to burn a bit extra through exercise, because I know I will probably go a bit over my goal calories Saturday. But my question is how do you manage to track your calories if you're eating at a friend's?

There's two issues - first, my friend will be making dinner (a curry) so obviously I can't measure and weigh each ingredient, and also won't be able to weigh my portion at the table. Second, we'll also be doing games, with the usual snacks for grazing.

So for dinner, is there a sensible way to try and accurately record calories in? Or do I just have to write the evening off and start again on Sunday?

For things I'm grazing, it might be a bit easier because I can just add for however many pringles I have, or how many M&Ms etc. A bit of a pain to try and remember, but at least that's something I can quantify.

But any tips welcome - as I say, I'm less worried about keeping calories under goal than I am about keeping up the process that has worked really well for me so far.

Lietchi

For cooked dishes I either estimate the ingredients (if they're clearly identifiable) or (for more tricky dishes like curry sauces) I'll look up a similar product produced by a supermarket. I'll estimate the quantity based on previous experience (which is probably horribly off but better than nothing ).

SuzySunshine99

An estimate is better than not logging at all.

You can either enter a similar curry dish from the database, or, for a little more accuracy, you could ask your friend for the recipe and then log the ingredients individually.

It's not going to be perfect, but it's something you have to learn to deal with when eating any food that you did not prepare yourself.

heybales

Biggest tip is be mindful, hold back on some stuff, and forget it as a logging day so as not to even stress over it.

Make a big note in the meal diary about the day being so inaccurate nothing to log.

It would be like weighing yourself some odd morning with your pajama's and a coat on when you normally don't.
Why would that known inaccuracy be useful compared to all the other days of accuracy.
It would throw numbers off, averages, graphs, and not be useful to anything upon review.

Don't weigh on Sun or Mon of course, maybe not even Tue. Increased sodium water weight can hold on for several days - especially if you've been eating lower sodium to be lower water weight normally.

janejellyroll

In situations where I'm eating what someone else has cooked for me, I will either estimate my portion of each individual ingredient (assuming it's relatively simple) or find a restaurant meal that looks comparable and log that. Assuming the rest of your logging is relatively accurate, I have found that it's not at all harmful for me to have occasional meals that are just a rough estimate.

I personally find that writing the evening off is a negative thing for me mentally and I wind up consuming more (under the illogical "it's all free now!" assumption), but there are people who also have success with that method. It's all about what you think will work best for you (and you can always try something, decide it doesn't really work for you, and do something different the next time).

cwolfman13

When I logged I either just gave it my best estimate from something similar in the database or I just didn't bother if it was something that was really pretty infrequent and not really material to the bigger picture. My biggest thing was just to remain mindful and not sit there and shovel everything into my mouth. I haven't logged in years, and things like these kind of occasions helped me along the way to just remain mindful and taught me that I didn't necessarily need to log every last gram to be successful.

SouthWestLondon

Thanks all that's really helpful.

I'm not worried about overindulging on the curry, since I'm not actually a huge fan of curry. So will have no problem in keeping my portion sizes small. I will try and record something as close as I can find, because I think mentally it will be harder for me to slip out of the recording habit if I record something.

Now to work on my impulse control later in the evening when I'm surrounded by Pringles and M&Ms