Advice needed on logging food...

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glittermini
glittermini Posts: 7
in Getting Started
Hi all,

When you go to a restaurant, what is the best way to log in food? I have been logging in all week and it's been fairly straightforward (greek yogurt...bananas...oatmeal, etc) but what do you do when you go to a restaurant and you have dishes that you aren't 100% sure what's in them? Do you log projected ingredients and their approximate amounts separately? What I ate yesterday at an italian restaurant simply isn't coming up since they were little bites of food but clearly with a lot of different ingredients. Any advice would be great on logging "eating out" food! Many thanks:)

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  • xenu01
    xenu01 Posts: 117 Member
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    I wish I had good advice. I try to do the best I can, and I usually don't trust the serving sizes in the database, so if I have a bowl of Pho, for instance, I'll do like 1.5 bowls if a single bowl only says 300 calories in the MFP database.

    This is ok for me because I'm ok with going over, though.
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    Lots of restaurants are in the MFP database. Or check the restaurant's website for nutritional information & add your food. (In the app, settings > my foods & exercise > my foods.) Or choose the closest match. The database is chockfull of incorrect listings. Choosing a low-calorie listing will never get you closer to goal.
  • Timorous_Beastie
    Timorous_Beastie Posts: 595 Member
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    I try to find a similar dish at a big chain restaurant, and log that. Same goes for eating at friend's house, rather than grilling them about every ingredient.

    The big chain restaurants are usually enormous serving and higher in calories than home-cooked or a non-chain place, so it's probably an overestimate or worst case scenario.

    But unless you eat out several times a week, it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. One meal isn't going to undo a week's worth of being on-point, even if you're off by a couple hundred calories.
  • glittermini
    glittermini Posts: 7
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    I noticed that the database wasn't completely accurate either which also was a bit confusing when logging... But yeah, this meal yesterday was at a local restaurant (not a chain) so I just did the best that I could. I am not eating out much these days so I shouldn't run in to this too often! Definitely also gives me more incentive to eat at home, it's refreshing to know exactly what's in your own food when you're the only one cooking it! Thanks for your help.
  • chilly1470
    chilly1470 Posts: 178 Member
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    How long have you been doing this? If you have some experience, just use your best judgment. Also, the bigger name restaurants and chains will have stuff online, or you may ask your server for nutrition information. By law they have to provide it. If it's a mom and pop place, you may just have to wing it and err on the side of caution and go higher, that way you don't go over your limit.
  • pmcbrady
    pmcbrady Posts: 31
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    there is a website called dotti's weight loss zone that has a large collection of restaurants listed. I try to check there or the particular website as the databsse is not always correct. I will find something comparable at a chain if we are at a local place and just use that as "close enough".
  • parkparksarah
    parkparksarah Posts: 59
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    logging food? What is that?

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