Calorie Estimation: The Slippery Slope

Cristofori44

So this is my off exercise day, so instead of sitting around I took a 45-minute walk round trip to Whole Foods today. Two thoughts struck me:

(1) Difficult to estimate the calories expended during the walk. I just typed in moderate pace because that's what it felt like compared to what I do when I am warming up by walking on the treadmill. I guess this is true of all forms of exercise, as even the machines in the gym can be off.

(2) Difficult to estimate calories when eating out. While the app is great for when you're cooking at home, or eating out at a spot where the app has the caloric information, everything else seems to be a guesstimate game. I found myself estimating the cups of peas, red peppers, spinach and artichoke hearts I put on my salad and then entering all that info manually. Maybe I'm off 200 calories for the day in either direction, but ....close enough, right?

(3) What also annoyed me was wanting a pizza slice and not going for it because I didn't trust the calorie information. The app came out with 280-400 calories a slice, depending on the vendor, but I imagine the Whole Foods stuff was less than that because the crust was indeed paper thin. Grrrrr!

lisabinco

Just finished "guestimating" my calories after eating out and I'm sure I'm way off. I deliberately kept my meal as simple as possible because I knew it would be hard to guess what to put in later. Yeah, it's frustrating. I will overestimate if necessary. I guess the bright side is I rarely eat out because it's just too hard to guess calories. Weight Watcher website has LOTS more nutrition info for eating out so if you can access that, it's better than this site for calories when eating out.

trinitrate

On #3 (pizza)... I pick a slice from a known chain and then change the portion to reflect the slice I'm looking at.. I.e. if a normal medium slice of meat / cheese pizza at my favorite place is 360, but the place Im at is serving a much smaller portion, I put the chain's value in there but change the portion size to .8 or .9 or whatever.

I know thats not perfect b/c the toppings may be a different density than the crust, but it's as close as I know how to get....

Thats also a lot of the reason I dont eat back all exercise calories.. I intentionally only eat back about 1/2... I figure the extra couple 100 calories will make up for any 'ambitious' estimates I might make along the way.

AZKristi

Get a HRM if you really need to know how many calories you burned walking. Or, if you told MFP you were active (or very active, etc). calories burned by activities like this would already be incorporated into your daily calorie allowance.

As far as eating out, I usually just try to eat places where the nutritional information is available online and plan my selection before going to the restaurant. If the info isn't available, I try to identify a similar dish at another restaurant that does publish nutritional data and go off of that.

Another option is to look at a similar packaged product like a thin crust pizza which often identify the weight of a serving. So, if a packaged thin crust pizza has 200 calories per 50g serving (totally just making up simple numbers - no idea) and you ate 100g of thin crust whole foods pizza, you could estimate that as 400 calories.

Nutrition labels aren't exact, some deviation will always occur.

Jennyisbusy

It's not a perfect system! I try to leave a bite here and there and maybe overestimate a pinch on the calories side. Then I slightly underestimate the exercise I do.

My suggestion would be to log things as honestly and accurately as possible. Give it some time and if you don't lose weight then log the same way but change your calorie goals just a bit and see what you get.

CynthiasChoice

You're fortunate to live so close to Whole Foods! I'd have to walk 10 miles. I understand your frustration with logging foods you didn't make yourself. Also, when you eat a wide variety of fruits and veggies, it becomes very labor intensive to log it all. Today was my longest dinner log ever - 18 items, and 508 calories. Whew!

I think it's well worth the time and effort though, because it makes me so much more mindful about what I eat, and it helps me to skip that pizza that I don't know how to log!

Best wishes.

Ziggyzambo

If you can be honest with yourself estimating is fine. Sometimes you'll be a little over, sometimes a little under, and it'll balance out. Many people have trouble with this though, and underestimate their calories consistently. I myself don't understand this, because fudging what you log doesn't change what you put in your mouth. If MFP gives you a range for similar items just pick a middling one and trust in the law of large numbers.

Bssh

I don't mind estimating as it's not an exact science. So long as I'm losing weight I don't worry about it.