Dining Out

the OP is right, if its a chain restaurant then either A: the calories of all their menu items are online, or B: all their menu items are on MFP database already.
I'm not sure if you're asking that question tho. If you are saying does anyone else feel amazed/overwhelmed when confronted with the huge number of calories these restaurants have in their food, then YES. My solution is to work out and bank negative calories if i'm planning to go out. You can shave off a few calories by reducing condiments. I was surprised about how many calories "soy sauce" has. If you cut out catchup, soy sauce, mayo, etc from the food you can reduce the calories a lot. Mustard has almost 0 calories per serving. Do you like mustard?
If its not a buffet you can always just eat 1/4th of your dinner and take the rest home and divide it into breakfast-lunch-dinner for the next day.

I want to enjoy myself when I go out to eat, especially since I am spending more money than I would for an equally delicious meal at home, so it's a tricky balance sometimes. Tonight I guesstimated almost 1200 calories for my restaurant dinner, and that was with taking half of it home. My daily calorie allotment is 1380, so a 1200 calorie meal is not the kind of thing I want to do that often.

For burger places, taking off the bun (or half the bun) and cutting the burger in half and having fresh/steamed veggies or fruit on the side instead of fries helps cut the calorie load. If I spy something on the menu anywhere that could sub in for a side, I don't hesitate to ask for it (say they serve wings with celery sticks but don't have celery sticks listed as a side...I've never had a restaurant tell me I couldn't have celery in place of fries, and since I like celery it works out).

The one thing I refuse to do at restaurants is eat "healthy" food that I do not enjoy because in that case I would 100% rather eat something at home. I don't mind a good salad, but 95% of restaurant salads are a sad waste of my calories and money. Much harder to mess up chicken breast and steamed veggies, so if I really need to go lower calorie I'll go the plain meat + veggies route.

Most of these things I mentioned are my personal preferences, my husband gets a salad at many of the same places where I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole, so you will have to figure out for what kind of compromises you are willing to make on the "eat the biggest thing on the restaurant menu 3 meals a day" to "never eat out again and only eat food blessed by a pegasus on a full moon" scale. But if you keep at it, you will eventually find what kind of balance works for you.

I felt the same aversion to dining out when I started eating healthier. Problem was that my family LOVES dining out. My family used to eat out 4-5 times every week! That's just how they were; they preferred eating out. And that was one of the reasons why I gained weight in the first place. So I was forced to deal with the dining out issue on a regular basis. I had 3 choices: I could go back to how I used to live eating deliciously unhealthy meals at restaurants almost everyday with my family, I could ostracize myself from my family and never go out and eat with them, or I could go out with my family but carefully select healthier entrees at the restaurants. I chose option 3.

Most chain restaurants have the nutritional information for their entrees available on their website. Many other chain and local restaurants have a special section of their menu with a list of 5 or so "healthier" or "under ___ calories" entrees. But still, some restaurants don't have either of those options. So when all else failed, I followed this plan:

1. Make sure to get a workout in that day. And try to eat less throughout the day if you know you'll be eating out for dinner that night.
2. For dinner on MFP, either make your best guess for the foods you had or make a rough overestimated guess on Quick Add Calories of what you'll consume while trying to eat healthier. I would usually guess something like 700-800 calories, sometimes even 900-1000, when I put in a Quick Add.
3. When there's absolutely NO guide to calories or which entrees are healthier on the restaurant's menu, I always used one of two tricks:
-Trick #1: Half your plate for half the calories! Basically, divide your plate in exactly half the moment you get it. Eat ONLY half and don't touch the other half. Voila! Half the calories! Pack the other half and you have a free dinner the next night.
-Trick #2: You're pretty much ALWAYS SAFE with a leaner meat (6oz of grilled chicken, a lean fish like tilapia, or sirloin) that has no special or fatty toppings on it (i.e. not topped with cheese, bacon, and mushrooms lol), along with a side of steamed veggies like broccoli or something. You can even have a small baked potato (or baked sweet potato!) with a tiny bit of sour cream on the side too. Almost every restaurant either has an entree like that or can make one for you. And a meal like that is rarely outside of a 400-800 calorie range, so you're usually pretty safe using this trick!

This has helped me tremendously, so I hope it helps you! Using that plan of action, I've been able to continue enjoying time with my family dining out, but still lose 50 lbs and maintain it for a year and a half now. So it's possible! Best of luck!

P.S. I said that my family "used to" eat out 4-5 times every week. Well, it seems as though they're now being forced to change their ways too. They're realizing what I realized years ago: that kind of lifestyle is NOT healthy and eventually it catches up to you. Recently, my dad has been having some problems with his health, which has forced my family to start preparing more healthy meals at home. Now they rarely dine out. And my dad seems to be doing a little better, praise God! I'm just happy that they realized this and changed their ways BEFORE it become too late!

Also, often the local family places will be helpful if you telephone them to ask about low calorie options on (or off ) their menu. Usually they are willing to accommodate whether it be by phone or in person.

I hear this advice once and think it makes a lot of sense: Go out to eat and try to look up the nutritional info. If it's not available do your very best to honestly estimate what you ate by either finding a similar listing or manually entering the ingredients. Yes, you may be off by a couple hundred calories but you didn't become over weight by occassionally eating a few extra calories, you became overweight by consistently over eating and not monitoring what you ate.

I try to live by that so I don't freak out about everything. It's hard to do but it is all part of the journey.