Newbie with a question on figuring calories

Kerryirving

I love My Fitness Pal! So far it's been very easy to use. However, I'm not sure what to do when I eat at a restaurant and have absolutely no idea how many calories are in something, and it's not in the database. Like say Thai food. How do you even begin to figure that one out? Has anyone else had an issue with this? What do you do in that situation? Any advice would be very appreciated. Thank you!

Kerry

meggonkgonk

You google the dish, get your best estimation and enter it (and try not to have un-estimateable food too often)

Bauer77

Kerry,

The first thing I do is politely ask. what ingredients are used in the food. Sometimes they will even give you the recipe, or they may have nutritional facts on it already. If they don't I usually guess at a high rate over what I normally would think it is. If I think its 800, its probably 900..hehe.

BriannaSkye

Do they have a website? If so you could proberly access the nutritional value for your dish. If not google it and get an average idea and use that number

melsinct

Between the MFP database and Google you will be able to come up with a reasonable calorie count. By the way, regarding Thai food, my favorite noodle dishes have much more calories than I imagined. Tom Yum soup is a good low cal option.

Kerryirving

Thank for all the advice!