Guess the Calories

tmoneyag99
tmoneyag99 Posts: 480 Member
edited September 2017 in Health and Weight Loss
So I just ate a meal that I know is going to put me at a surplus for Days. I might just eat ice for a week. But I also am trying to get in the habit of logging everything. This was a co-worker good bye meal and so a local restaurant meal that is not on My Fitness Pal.

What I propose is that for those times you just blow it, mindlessly eat at a luncheon, wedding, or while binge watching your favorite show. Don’t beat yourself up, Come to this thread, Post your meal, someone will reply, and whatever they reply with you have to put that to log your meals.

The rules:
Posters
  • 1) The meal must be so full of variety that the time to log is not worth the information provided
  • And/OR
  • 2) The meal/food must be fairly unique and difficult to find on MyFitnessPal
  • 3) The meal has to likely be over 1,000 calories.
  • 4) The meal has to clearly be unhealthful
  • 5) You can’t post one of these meals more than 1-2x a week.
  • a. I know this one sounds harsh. But we are supposed to be learning how to better eat and create new habits. It’s not really a new habit if every day you are getting some gawd aweful poor estimate from some random poster here.
  • 6) You have to input the largest estimate given to you.

Respondents:
  • 1) Make a serious attempt at accuracy. Don’t be a jack *kitten* and purposely over/under estimate
  • a) Questions for clarity are allowed.
  • 2) If you think this is a bad idea, don’t respond. If no one likes the idea the thread will die soon enough.
  • 3) No nasty comments regarding what a poster eats. Just give the number and move on.
  • The idea here is for us to acknowledge we do have setbacks and reduce the negativity around those set backs. And treat them more as learning experiences. Log the numbers given to you by more experienced ‘Pals which will probably be pretty damn close and move on. However, by having the more experienced ‘Pals give you a number to use so you aren’t “cheating” the learning experience.

I mean I already know that I shouldn’t eat a meal of Blackened chicken over 2 cup fulls of creamy pasta followed up with a large serving of pecan pie cake. Hey I had a diet coke. And yes… It was F*g awesome.


So give it to me how many calories do you guess that my 2 cups of Creamy Cajun Pasta with blackened chicken followed pecan pie cake
 which came from a local high end Cajun inspired restaurant.
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Replies

  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    edited September 2017
    I'm going to go with 900 for the pasta and 600 for the pie: a nice, round 1500.

    ETA: As a proud Midwesterner, I used Perkins as a guide. I did round down the pasta a bit because I think their portions are larger than two cups.
  • tmoneyag99
    tmoneyag99 Posts: 480 Member
    edited September 2017
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I would use Cheesecake Factory's Louisiana Chicken Pasta as a foundation for guessing.

    That's 2,050 calories right there.

    Are we allowed to ask follow up questions? If so, when you say a serving of cake, approximately what size are we talking about here and what was the frosting situation?

    Questions absolutely allowed. No frosting. It was Pecans, with a pecan pie crust and instead of pie filling it was a cake that tasted EXACTLY like the buttery sugary filling. I would say the serving would slightly more than fill a 1 cup measuring cup.

    And thank you for the Cheesecake factory suggestion.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    tmoneyag99 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I would use Cheesecake Factory's Louisiana Chicken Pasta as a foundation for guessing.

    That's 2,050 calories right there.

    Are we allowed to ask follow up questions? If so, when you say a serving of cake, approximately what size are we talking about here and what was the frosting situation?

    Questions absolutely allowed. No frosting. It was Pecans, with a pecan pie crust and instead of pie filling it was a cake that tasted EXACTLY like the buttery sugary filling. I would say the serving would slightly more than fill a 1 cup measuring cup.

    And thank you for the Cheesecake factory suggestion.

    I would guess 450 for the cake based on my rough estimate for yellow cake, pie crust, and some pecans.

    So that would be a total of 2,500 for the meal.

    (What a fun thread idea! I love estimating calories).
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,530 Member
    edited September 2017
    I disagree with the rule that the highest suggestion should be taken.

    Most insightful, maybe. Median? Possibly. Second or third highest? could be. An average of the 3 highest? Why not.

    But basically the poster should evaluate the responses and incorporate them into their logging.

    "highest" has an element of punishing the meal. Most accurate... well... that's what you want!

    Now. If your pasta was 2 actual cups it will range from 165 Cal to 237 Cal per cup (USDA standard reference values depending on type of pasta and whether packed or not packed in the cup). If your eye ball cup is deficient and this was three cups or one and a half...

    So 460 for the pasta.

    Was the chicken a half chicken? A quarter chicken? Breast? Double breast? Leg? Double leg? Did you eat the skin or not?

    My rotisserie chicken dissection chart :smiley: says 450 to 600 Cal per half chicken (no skin)

    Now let's add some butter/oil/cream for fun: 2fl oz of 18% cream 118 Cal and about 120 cal per tablespoon of oil or butter. And there will be some flour or something else in there... and maybe some cheese?

    So 400 for the sauce.... (which I certainly hope was plentiful! 2oz cream, 2 tablespoons of butter or oil, some flour)

    And we now get to the dessert. You are not really giving enough sizing information. A large slice can mean different things to different people.

    On average pre-portioned desserts in the frozen section at WalMart's and the Real Canadian Superstore range from a low of 250 Cal to a high of 900 Cal. If it was particularly large I could see something in the 600 to 900 Cal range.

    Hope this helps :wink:

    **By the way: I usually take a picture of my plate and estimate the calories of the components after the fact with the visual reminder in place.
  • DananaNanas
    DananaNanas Posts: 665 Member
    This is fun! I'll be back at some point lol
  • busyPK
    busyPK Posts: 3,788 Member
    My guess:
    Pasta - 1000
    Pie (if it truly a "slice") - 600
    Total of 1600
  • Tried30UserNames
    Tried30UserNames Posts: 561 Member
    edited September 2017
    I'm guessing about 2200 for the whole meal. I added standard pecan pie calories to Red Lobster calories then added a couple hundred calories just because. I actually don't think that's too bad for a huge splurge.

    Red Lobster's Cajun Chicken Alfredo is 1390 for a full serving. I suspect that estimate is a little low for the actual restaurant meal. I haven't eaten it in about 15 years, but I remember it seemed like it had more calories.

    And regular pecan pie is about 450-500 per 1/8th of a pie. Your dessert is probably similar in calories. Was there whipped cream or ice cream?

    So you take 300 calories out of exercise calories every day for a week and you're even. You don't even need to starve yourself all week.
  • tmoneyag99
    tmoneyag99 Posts: 480 Member
    edited September 2017
    @PAV8888 ... Ever hear of the financial approach called taking a "Big Bath"? Same principal here. Also conservatism applies (that's right I'm an accountant) When you have that large of a excess the day practically becomes a throw away day. So why not go ahead and book all the calories.


    Side note, how cool would it be if MFP treated calories cumulatively over a week's time.

    I'm going to log this as an average of the suggestions 1500, 2500. and 1600. It was SERIOUSLY RICH, and lots of it. Thanks for the suggestions!

    Im also going to change the rule to say an average.
  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    tmoneyag99 wrote: »
    @PAV8888 ... Ever hear of the financial approach called taking a "Big Bath"? Same principal here. Also conservatism applies (that's right I'm an accountant) When you have that large of a excess the day practically becomes a throw away day. So why not go ahead and book all the calories.


    Side note, how cool would it be if MFP treated calories cumulatively over a week's time.

    I'm going to log this as an average of the suggestions 1500, 2500. and 1600. It was SERIOUSLY RICH, and lots of it. Thanks for the suggestions!

    Im also going to change the rule to say an average.

    This is exactly why I use a spreadsheet in addition to MFP - the diary here is pretty much just for the database, then all my numbers go into the spreadsheet to be averaged by week and month. You can't cheat on your diet if the week is still in a deficit!
  • InkAndApples
    InkAndApples Posts: 201 Member
    tmoneyag99 wrote: »

    Snip...
    Side note, how cool would it be if MFP treated calories cumulatively over a week's time.
    End snip.

    It kind of does though, right? I use the nutrition tab on weekly view and go by the "net calories under weekly goal" figure as my guide. Some quick mental maths to make sure I'm not leaving myself with too few calories and I'm set. Of course I tend to eat heavily at the weekend which helps.

    Right now I'm looking at 4000 calories plus extras for activity for my weekend.. I'm at a wedding tomorrow so I may be back to this thread for some calorie estimations!
  • tmoneyag99
    tmoneyag99 Posts: 480 Member
    robm1brown wrote: »
    Eleven pints and 4 double g+ts (which believe it or not were logged accurately) followed by a takeaway of which the contents my memory has only partial memory of:

    - Definitely a 12" pizza as there was a pizza box
    - Two takeaway cartons one probably onion rings the other something else from the pizza place

    Are you looking for an estimation of the Pizza and the takeaway cartons? What was in the 2nd carton?
  • robm1brown
    robm1brown Posts: 71 Member
    tmoneyag99 wrote: »

    Are you looking for an estimation of the Pizza and the takeaway cartons? What was in the 2nd carton?

    This, I got the alcohol pretty accurately throughout (as best as you can in these circumstances).

    This game wouldn't be at all fun (read: pointless guesswork) if I knew what was in the takeaway boxes my friend.

  • Graelwyn75
    Graelwyn75 Posts: 4,404 Member
    Portion of chinese takeout special chow mein (pork, beef, chicken, prawn, noodles) minus the noodles
    slice of salted caramel cheesecake with Greek Yoghurt.
  • tmoneyag99
    tmoneyag99 Posts: 480 Member
    edited September 2017
    @Graelwyn75

    Chinese takeout sans noodles. My first response is 300 calories because that's about 1/2 of the calories of regular chinese. However, due to the fact that we don't really know, I'm going to add another 400 calories so we don't under estimate.

    Was your salted carmel cheese cake made with greek yoghurt or did you have a scoop with it.?

    If it is Salted caramel cheesecake I'm going to guess 250. kCal.

    So total meal 650. log it and be done.
  • DX2JX2
    DX2JX2 Posts: 1,921 Member
    edited September 2017
    Graelwyn75 wrote: »
    Portion of chinese takeout special chow mein (pork, beef, chicken, prawn, noodles) minus the noodles
    slice of salted caramel cheesecake with Greek Yoghurt.

    Might as well assign random numbers since no portion approximations are given.

    For the Chinese, I'll assume it was about 4 ounces of meat in total, 1 ounce of each type of meat. 250 calories for the meat plus 100 calories for cooking oil. 350 total.

    Assuming the cheesecake was a slice from a smallish supermarket cake, 350 calories.

    700 for the meal.

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