How to count unfamiliar food?

lilawolf
lilawolf Posts: 1,690 Member
edited December 2024 in Food and Nutrition
I will be living in China for 5 months for work, and I know very little about their cuisine since it isn't my favorite (or at least the US versions aren't my favorite). I will get a buffet breakfast at the hotel/apt, a catered buffet lunch at my work, and my choice for dinner. I will be eating unidentifiable meats and veggies prepared in unknown ways with unknown sauces. In my experience, the servers will have extremely limited english so no help there. Whole foods, such as fruit and eggs, at the buffet or cooked on my own will be fine, but the dishes will be a mystery and anything packaged will have nutrition labels in Chinese which I do not know. Restaurants that I may go to for dinner or on weekends will also not have their nutrition facts neatly listed online.

Any suggestions? I feel like I am just going to have to quite MFP, try to really listen to my body and hunger levels, work out as much as I can after a 60 hour work week, and hope for the best.

Replies

  • kmb2522
    kmb2522 Posts: 48
    Instead of calorie count just write down everything you eat no matter what it is. That's what I did 3 years ago and lost 35 pounds. I made a spread sheet for each week and had it set up like mfp breakfast snack lunch snack dinner snack exercise and wrote down what ate for the day and what type of exercise I did and for how long. They've proven that even just quickly writing something down on a napkin and thinking about what you ate will help. Hope this helps!
  • lilawolf
    lilawolf Posts: 1,690 Member
    @Kmb
    Good idea though it would be a very strange spreadsheet.

    Breakfast
    2 eggs
    1 spoonful green veg
    1 sausage unknown meat

    Lunch
    1/2 cup Fish (?) in a reddish spicy sauce
    3 morsels off of a bony bite sized piece of chicken
    1/2 cup rice (?) noodles in savory brown sauce
    3 spiny red fruits
    ...

    lol
  • lilawolf
    lilawolf Posts: 1,690 Member
    Anyone else? What do you do when you eat a meal with unfamiliar ingredients at a picnic or foreign restaurant?
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