Tips for accurately tracking food when eating out?

ellabaldwin89

I'm just getting back into tracking after having my kids and I'm determined to make a good go of it this time. But my job has me out and about a lot, and there's a couple of days a week where I find myself grabbing something for lunch on the go. Up until now I've just been searching what I order and picking the highest calorie item so I don't go over, but sustainability has always been a big thing for me so I don't want to overestimate too much!

Lietchi

I have a folding kitchen scale to weigh items at work/on the go.
That way, there's not as much guesswork involved: even if I'm still not sure about the precise number of kcal/100gr, at least I know the weight.

Depending on the food, I will:
- log the ingredients in estimated proportions/weights (that's the way I handle logging my poke bowls, where I can clearly see the different ingredients)
- log similar foods from a restaurant chain or supermarket (for example lasagna, pizza, etc.)

yirara

I eat out so rarely that I accept that I'll be over. I might try to find something similar in the database, but honestly, I know waterweight will likely be up a bit the next day, and that's all.

For the sake of consistency I'm wondering whether to create a database entry 'eating out' with no nutrition because it's such a rare event it doesn't matter, but if I look back I see that I wasn't cooking and wasn't lazy with logging.

Retroguy2000

Plan ahead. Look at the menu. Hopefully they have a nutrition guide, or you can use a similar restaurants guide for a similar item.

Ask for less sauce in most cases. That can be a huge % of total calories on a sub/sandwich. Substitute, e.g. plain baked potato or mashed potato instead of fries. If the place brings bread to the table, avoid it.

If that's not enough to get a nutrition estimate, take a picture, so you can estimate the components yourself later.

If you do this with a few take-out favorites and add them yourself to MFP as saved meals, then it's trivial to add them to future days.

You can also add your own food items for "Stuff", e.g. I have a couple of private food items which are Stuff 20% protein and Stuff 4% protein, both 100 calories, one with 20 calories from protein and one with 4 from protein, the other entries are blank because I don't care. Rather than mess around adding one-time items and meals I just add that I had X "Stuff".

westrich20940

I personally would first see if that particular restaurant has a nutrition guide and use that. I will say that this is still can be off since the nutrition guide is based on the recipe that was formulated originally by the company/restaurant....and what you actually get in a restaurant may differ. And at that point, I just try to estimate how much of it I ate (maybe you eat the whole thing and log it all, maybe you just ate half and log .5 of that menu item, etc.).

If they don't have a nutritional guide - if the ingredients are visible and I can estimate those I'll do that. But otherwise, I put in the dish name and simply look through the database and get an idea of the calorie range for those items (ex. if I had General Tso's chicken -- you may find ones that are quite low in calories if they are a homemade version someone made or a 'healthy' Chinese restaurant version and you'll also find very high calorie ones too). I just try to see what most of them look to be and choose that.

I tend to try to choose what I see most commonly - not necessarily the highest caloric content I see, especially if that high of a caloric content for that dish isn't common. That way, if you are over or under logging - it isn't super significant. Over time, you'll be able to use what your weight is doing to help you know whether you are over or under logging for restaurant meals.

Looking at the menu ahead of time (as well as the nutritional value) and choosing what you are going to order ahead of time (and logging it along with the rest of your day) can help with staying within your calorie goal and it helps avoid 'panic ordering' which I have trouble with. No matter what my situation, if I know I'm going to a new restaurant that I've never been to I look at the menu ahead of time anyway (not bc I care about the nutritional info) bc I don't want to end up just blurting something out that isn't really what I might want.