When eating out with friends at a place where you can’t track the food on MyFitnessPal

akafful
akafful Posts: 64 Member
edited November 2021 in Food and Nutrition
Ever happen? How does this work?

Replies

  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 865 Member
    edited November 2021
    3rd option --- actually don't log it. Unless this is a situation that is happening fairly often, it's gonna be ok if you don't know how many calories you ate one day. It's more important to have consistency over time. I guess it will depend on your and your regular diet as far as how many times per month makes it worth worrying about or not.

    So yeah, if you look real quick and it seems there's some options that look good to pick do that. I personally wouldn't go through and do anything individually just because it's kind of tedious.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,879 Member
    My wife and I and our friends rarely eat out at franchise chains, so pretty much that happened anytime we went out. I usually just found something similar in the database from a chain or didn't bother at all and just maybe threw in some quick add calories. Eating out was a pretty rare thing when I was in my weight loss phase, so a one off once in awhile wasn't really a big deal.
  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 978 Member
    I eat out at least once a week and my most frequented restaurant definitely doesn't post calorie info. I go with a best-effort of finding similar entries from other restaurants. They may not have been cooked the same way, may not use the same ratio of ingredients etc, but it's closer and more accurate than not logging anything. I'm now in maintenance and have been for over 18 months, but logging 'something' meant I never derailed my weight-loss progress.
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    Most of the restaurants I eat at have calorie information on the menu, so if nothing else, I just Quick Add whatever the number is and maybe put something in the notes explaining what I had.

    I will also +1 finding something similar from a chain or guesstimating as best you can at each component of a dish. I usually err on the side of overestimating.
  • mjglantz
    mjglantz Posts: 487 Member
    I usually do what @SuzySunshine99 does and estimate as close as possible. The other thing I'll do is just estimate the calories and do a quick add. I won't get the nutrient info, but when I look back at the week I can see the calorie trend.