When you can't use the food scale

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rainmandr
rainmandr Posts: 6 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello People I'm on the process of learning this macro counting and so far I'm loving it and the scale is too, but I'm having some problems estimating food contents when I'm out, at this early stage it can be done because im usually eating at home, but my job requires travel so any advice and maybe examples of ways to do it without the scale. Thanks in advance

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  • dredremeg
    dredremeg Posts: 202 Member
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    Chicken and Fish 3 oz. size of a deck of cards, 1/2 cup of rice-cup wrapper, shot glass-1oz (30ml), you can carry this items with you.
  • dredremeg
    dredremeg Posts: 202 Member
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    *cup cake wrapper
  • qubetha
    qubetha Posts: 83 Member
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    Unfortunately, if you are in a phase of your weight loss journey where you have to remain extremely strict with calories, the only way to truly know what you are eating is to carry the food with you in your suitcase. When I was doing a lot of travel in my job a few years ago I did exactly this. I even had to get a bigger suitcase to accommodate all the food. If I was travelling to a place where food transportation was restricted, I would stop at a supermarket after landing and buy my food for the week. Corporate dinners were not a big thing in my job however, so I can't offer advice if that is part of your problem. Even so, eating your own food for most of the day before going out to dinner would be far better than eating takeaway the whole time.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    Google "food serving size chart" and you'll get a bunch of images with visual guides for estimating. Save one to your phone or tablet or you could even put a tiny printed version of one in your wallet.
  • omma_to_3
    omma_to_3 Posts: 3,265 Member
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    Weigh your food long enough and you get pretty good at eyeballing it. The big thing with travel though is salt. You'll seem to have gained weight due to the higher salt content of eating out.

    Never heard the cupcake wrapper thing.
  • Lourdesong
    Lourdesong Posts: 1,492 Member
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    If you're eating out, you should be able to get the nutrition info of dishes.

    You could also get a pocket scale to weigh your foods when dining out, which would probably weigh less than a shot glass (but more than a cupcake wrapper (an idea I like)).

    You could also take pictures of foods/dishes that you're most unsure about and post them here and see what the community thinks.

    If you're getting your food from the grocery, just approximating based on serving size/servings per container should be fine for many things. Produce is generally low calorie so you could also get away with choosing "medium banana" or some such entries. I think I would feel better and it would be a lot less work and worry with a pocket scale though.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
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    Bring lunch and snacks that are pre-weighed from home when possible. Buy a pocket scale for traveling.
  • rainmandr
    rainmandr Posts: 6 Member
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    dredremeg wrote: »
    *cup cake wrapper
    Thanks so much, will try these
  • rainmandr
    rainmandr Posts: 6 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    Google "food serving size chart" and you'll get a bunch of images with visual guides for estimating. Save one to your phone or tablet or you could even put a tiny printed version of one in your wallet.

    Thanks :)
  • rainmandr
    rainmandr Posts: 6 Member
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    Lourdesong wrote: »
    If you're eating out, you should be able to get the nutrition info of dishes.

    You could also get a pocket scale to weigh your foods when dining out, which would probably weigh less than a shot glass (but more than a cupcake wrapper (an idea I like)).

    You could also take pictures of foods/dishes that you're most unsure about and post them here and see what the community thinks.

    If you're getting your food from the grocery, just approximating based on serving size/servings per container should be fine for many things. Produce is generally low calorie so you could also get away with choosing "medium banana" or some such entries. I think I would feel better and it would be a lot less work and worry with a pocket scale though.

    This is hard to do, I feel like it's not gonna be too fun to get my pocket scale out in a fancy rest in front of clients jejeje, but I will Def try grocery shopping when needed
  • rainmandr
    rainmandr Posts: 6 Member
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    omma_to_3 wrote: »
    Weigh your food long enough and you get pretty good at eyeballing it. The big thing with travel though is salt. You'll seem to have gained weight due to the higher salt content of eating out.

    Never heard the cupcake wrapper thing.

    Yes this is the idea, I'm trying to get ideas on how to become better at this fast so I can see and do a fair estimate
  • ncboiler89
    ncboiler89 Posts: 2,408 Member
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    Sometimes you just have to use your best judgment and your best judgment will improve the more you use your scales and log items into MFP. Until you get real good at looking at an item and guessing the calorie content just use this best judgment thing you are born with and multiply by 1.3...or so.
  • masterloafer
    masterloafer Posts: 16 Member
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    This is going to sound weird but using your hand as a size scale helps. Everyone's hands are different so to use the "one serving is the size of the palm of your hand" trick only works if you know how big your hand is compared to the measurements of food. So if you weight some of your favourite foods and hold it in your hand and take a picture its a handy visual reference (puns are great. i couldn't help myself).. however it does mean you'll have some strange pictures of yourself holding all sorts of food. for example, 30g of cheese is just about the size of my index finger and A teaspoon of peanut butter is the size of the tip of my thumb.. and somewhere in my phone is a picture of me with cheese fingers and pb thumbs haha have fun on your trip!
  • rainmandr
    rainmandr Posts: 6 Member
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    masterloafer wrote: »
    This is going to sound weird but using your hand as a size scale helps. Everyone's hands are different so to use the "one serving is the size of the palm of your hand" trick only works if you know how big your hand is compared to the measurements of food. So if you weight some of your favourite foods and hold it in your hand and take a picture its a handy visual reference (puns are great. i couldn't help myself).. however it does mean you'll have some strange pictures of yourself holding all sorts of food. for example, 30g of cheese is just about the size of my index finger and A teaspoon of peanut butter is the size of the tip of my thumb.. and somewhere in my phone is a picture of me with cheese fingers and pb thumbs haha have fun on your trip!

    This is hilarious, just picture myself passing through pictures and seeing pictures of all my measured foods, but this actually is a great idea will Def try it using my fist to measure the most common foods like, thanks!

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