Eating other peoples food

beautifulsparkles wrote: »

I've started helping out with my sisters kids, and at the drop of a hat, I often end up at her house, often for several hours. She offers me food shes made, and I have no idea what is in it or how much it weighs. When I ask *cough*/interrogate people about what they have put in food, they tend to get annoyed, and rush through or not tell me everything they put in. My mum cooks most of our main meals, so I don't know what shes making either. I feel like I can only track about 65% of what I actually eat because I spend so much time at my sisters house or going out for family meals at restaurants. I don't want to miss all the good food or never eat sushi or gourmet pizza again, but the places we go don't tend to have nutritional information.

I also don't like making recipes up with the calculator on here, because when you use several ingredients and break it up into different servings, how can you possibly know if its accurate? one piece might have more nuts or tomatoes than another or something, unless its the kind of thing that's gone through a food processor.

What do you do when you can't calculate food? is it a regular thing for you?

Should I start preparing, measuring and calculating 100% of my food until I get to my goal weight?

When I was on Weight Watchers, they had rules like, get a smaller plate, eat 10% less than you usually would, drink lots of water etc, maybe thats what I should do when I can't track? the problem is, that its a regular thing, like I'm at my sisters at least 3 days a week. The food she offers is healthy, but I have no idea how to track it. I don't want to reject all of it, it seems like a restrictive, miserable way to live.

Sounds like a good idea to me. But there are 4 other days left in the week to prepare and eat your own food so that you know exactly what goes into it and how to track it.

beautifulsparkles wrote: »

What do you do when you can't calculate food?

I don't eat it. Eyes on the prize.

Eat a small portion and add your own side salad of lots and lots of veggies.

Sneaky way: Tell her that you are trying to build a recipe box. Fawn over how amazing her cooking is, and ask for the recipe.

Yeah, the recipe builder may involve some estimation, but it's bound -- for me anyway -- to be much more accurate that the estimation I'll do on my own.

I have a similar issue every Sunday when I go to visit my Mom. She loves to experiment in the kitchen and is always on some diet. It was Ornish, then Atkins for a while, then Bernstein, now I think it is keto. I never seem to know what to expect in terms of ingredients. I tried to track it all for a while then spent a couple years just assuming 2000cal for those dinners. In fact if you look at my diary you'll see most Sundays are blank. Over time I have been building up a database of her recipes though. I never interrogate though. I ask about and for the recipe. "Hey mom do you have the recipe for that? May I see it? I thought it was good/unique/interesting and I want to write it down so I can remember what's in it!" I've found that most people are delighted to share their recipes if I'm interested in something about the recipe. You can even use it as an opportunity to connect with those people. I also feel better knowing that I can join the meal without imposing or stressing.

Will the recipe you put into mfp be perfect? No, but that is ok. I don't view this as a temporary thing. I'm relearning how to eat for the long haul. As such we're constantly learning and constantly calibrating our measures. Being off by 20 cals today is better than approximating and being off by 200 cals yesterday, which is itself, better than not knowing at all and downing 2000 cals at dinner last week. We're not going to be perfect, so don't focus on being perfect every time. Just focus on doing it just little better each time. Also I'm more concerned with long term averages. It might have more nuts in it this time but there is as much a chance that it will have less next time. So on average the recipe should be close enough. If there is something that you know will throw you off, and I mean you have documentation that shows your loss is stalled when you eat that.. You can always suddenly find yourself "stuffed to the gills" about 3/4 of the way through and stop without offending anyone. If 3/4 is still too much, cut back a little more next time.

As for eating out... I eat out a lot and I happen to love sushi. My suggestion? Stick to the common rolls. Philadelphia rolls, California rolls, those are usually safe and we'll documented. Look up rolls on the menu and see if you can find an equivalent in mfp. If the Philly roll at your sushi place looks about the same as the Philly roll at the grocery, then you're golden, just assume it has the same nutritional facts. If you really want to explore the dark corners of the menu or if your grocery stores don't have sushi counters, have your sushi at one meal -assume 350cals per roll (700 for saucey crunchy rolls)- and eat absolutely known quantity foods (it'll take time to find these) for your other meals that day and just see what happens. If you don't lose, then you know to go with simpler sushi or less sushi. Experiment like that till you find the right amount of sushi for you. If you leave hungry from a sushi lunch every time, you could supplement with sashimi. That seems to be intense enough to fill the black hole in my stomach. -I went in once and ordered 700 calories of sashimi. They brought out a plate full of just raw fish. It took two days before I was hungry again. I still shudder at the though of it.- Same plan goes with pizza. I like to approximate based off the closest similar slice from a large chain delivery place and then I stick with known foods for the rest of the day and I'll see what happens. Will one messed up meal stall my weight loss? Maybe for a day or two, but with time and experimentation I've learned that I can usually get away with two slices and nothing else at the meal or a slice and a salad.


Finally as to prepping measuring 100% of your food till you hit goal, I have 2 questions. Is that practical for you? It totally is for many folks, but is it for your situation? What happens once you hit goal weight? Presumably one doesn't just stop counting calories. We just change the number of calories that we're counting too.


That's my $0.02 anyway

I would either just start packing my own food. Or offer to help in the prep to know what went into it. Or tell your family you are really trying to watch your weight and not to take it personally if you want to know how many calories is in something. Many times if they have used a recipe on the internet the calories are already posted or you can copy the ingredients into the calorie estimator. After you do this for a few month you begin to gain an awareness of how many cals are in things.

Francl27 wrote: »

First you don't have to measure everything. Lots of people lose fine just estimating. It's if you can't lose and really don't understand why that it can be useful.

For recipes you make, yeah the recipe builder will never be 100% accurate, if your portion has more meat or pasta or whatnot, but it's still pretty much the best you can do.

For food you eat at other people, honestly I look at the different entries for that type of food and pick the one that looks the closest (depending on how much butter or oil you can see in your dish etc). But I've been at this for 3 years so I'm pretty good at estimating now (I do weigh my food). If your weight isn't moving after a month, you can re-evaluate.

Very well said. It's all an estimation, even when you are weighing raw carrots at home. Some estimates have more margin for error is all. Do your best estimate in all settings. It's all any of us can do. It will even out. If it doesn't (i.e. your progress is less than you intended), then adjust. Stick with it, and it will work for you!