How to input food in the diary...?

NYPhotographer2021
NYPhotographer2021 Posts: 510 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Say you're at work and your coworker brought in bagels, donuts, fruit & coffee for everyone. All you pick is a small plate of fruit - a couple of red grapes, some cut up honeydew & cantaloupe. No way to measure or weigh. How do you enter it all in the food diary? It looked more than a cup's worth. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Replies

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,965 Member
    Two options for me:
    - eyeball it (it gets easier when you've been logging for a while) - for foods that aren't very calorie dense (like fruit) this can be a perfectly viable option
    - use a portable food scale
  • NYPhotographer2021
    NYPhotographer2021 Posts: 510 Member
    I will have to get a portable scale. So I just calculated 1/2 cup for the honeydew & 1/2 cup for the cantaloupe, and then 2 red grapes. I was having a brain fart! LOL! I had searched for assorted fruit and didn't come up with anything that seemed correct. Then I broke it up. I probably ate more than what I came up with, but yeah, it's fruit.
    Thanks!
  • nooshi713
    nooshi713 Posts: 4,877 Member
    I am pretty good at estimating and do so for cases like this. To be on the safe side, I overestimate a bit. A portable food scale is an option if you want to be more accurate.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,148 Member
    NYPhotographer2021 wrote: »
    I will have to get a portable scale. So I just calculated 1/2 cup for the honeydew & 1/2 cup for the cantaloupe, and then 2 red grapes. I was having a brain fart! LOL! I had searched for assorted fruit and didn't come up with anything that seemed correct. Then I broke it up. I probably ate more than what I came up with, but yeah, it's fruit.
    Thanks!

    That seems pretty perfect.

    Good life balance is important, and estimating is plenty close enough, for those unusual cases. Over time, using the precision methods when they're practical, like weighing foods at home, we can get better and better at estimating. It can help to make a game of it, guess the weight before one looks at the readout.

    I've seen people here avoid social events, give up experiences/treats they enjoy, because they can't know the calories accurately enough. To me, that seems like a slippery slope.

    You've clearly absorbed the idea that worrying over an estimate, *especially* one that at worst errs by a tiny fraction of one's daily calorie needs, is (heh) fruitless, unnecessary, stressful. Exactitude is impossible: One apple is sweeter than another, and that sort of thing, so even our careful measurements are estimates when one gets right down to it.

    I've been logging for well over 6 years, in fact maintaining for nearly 6. Estimating has a role in good life balance IMO, and IME it'll work fine to estimate when that's most practical.
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 921 Member
    Just estimate it as best you can. There is no need to get super anal about it - especially if it's not an everyday thing. You may under or over estimate...but are you really going to be overestimating by more than 50-100 calories???

    Unless you are, there's no need to feel like you need to be exactly accurate. You need to be fairly accurate and consistent but ... don't sweat it too much.

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