Guesstimating calories -- Japanese

fougamou

We have a locally owned fast food restaurant that serves Japanese food. They grill the food right when you order it -- the food is made similar to what you get at a Japanese Steakhouse, but without the extra courses. Portion size is large -- one order fills a standard takeout container, with white rice, meat, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, and carrots ( I believe)

I cannot figure out how to estimate calories in this. I have tried to look up other restaurants, but I have no idea if the portion sizes are similar. The calorie counts look low to me (500 - 800).

I am thinking of either ordering everything without the rice, or setting half aside for a latter meal, which is making my guesstimating even more complicated.

So, I am reaching out to you. What do you do when you are in these situations?

amyann2

This is complicated, but what I would do is order it as takeout at least once, then take it home and deconstruct it and weigh everything using a kitchen scale. (I love the one I got from Amazon but you can get them lots of places -- really taught me portion control.)

Seriously, I would weigh the rice and each individual vegetable separately, then enter it into MFP as a recipe, adding some amount of oil (assuming this is fried or sauteed? if steamed, then no need).

Then once it's in your database, you could log the whole amount or just half, depending on what you eat. Or any other portion thereof.

Francesca3162

I would personally take the highest Japanese Teppanyaki Steakhouse numbers in the database.
There are several different Teppanyaki ones in database, that lists the vegetables, soups and entrees.
If yours is a chain you may find it in there.
If you eat half and take half, just half the portion size and copy the meal to the next time you eat it.

fougamou

I was thinking of doing the de-construction method, but i suspect that there is sauce or something in it that is adding calories...

amyann2

There probably is sauce. Maybe if you can ask them the name of the sauce, you'll find a generic version of that sauce in the database and can estimate the amount. If you explain to the restaurant what you are doing, hopefully they will be helpful and can maybe even guesstimate the sauce for you.

This is the kind of thing that makes counting difficult, doesn't it?! Kudos to you for your efforts!

fougamou

I just decided the meal was 1000 calories (most comparable items in the database were 600-700). I couldn't think of a better way of doing it. Because of exercise, I still finished below goal and ate without guilt.