Howdy,

So I'm pretty good with my tracking. I bought a food scale a couple months ago, and initially it opened my eyes about portions. Pretty neat. I've sort of calibrated my eye so that when I'm away from home I can generally get a good idea of portion size. I plan to continue using the scale to keep my calibration up to date.

I don't always prepare my own food. Sometimes there's an entry in the databse that fits exactly what I'm eating. Sometimes I can make a reasonable guess to something that's close. An example is I sometimes get food for lunch from the hot bar/salad bar at a natural foods grocery. If I get multiple items, I can put the box on a scale between items and get an actual weight, and I write that down to enter later. Then, I can often find something CLOSE in the database even if it's from a different vendor. As an example, if I get some sun-dried tomato and spinach frittata, I can find something similar. I figure it's relatively close. It's harder for things like fried rice; who knows how much oil goes into it. In those cases, I will sometimes choose an entry that I ~KNOW~ is on the high side for calories relative to what I am eating just to keep my intake below my allowance. I am still in weight loss mode for a few more weeks, but I'm pretty close to my goal, so I'm going slowly.

Then there's times that I have no dog damned idea how to log my meal. As an example, we went out for Thai last night at a place we love. I tried something new -- Ruam mit talay. It's a stir fry with lots of delicious vegetables, squid, shrimp, mussels, scallops, and basil. And some kind of garlic sauce. Search though I may, I don't find anything that I think is an appropriate match. I could just roll a die or flip a coin or draw a number from a hat and pick one. I also would be guessing at portion size. So instead I just made a SWAG and did a quick add calories. I did the same today when I ate the leftovers. Of course that means I don't have any track of macros. Yeah. I know. And there's no way to even enter a wild guess about those unless I pay MFP some money every month.

So, how do YOU enter foods on your log when you really have no clue what is in the recipe?

At first, I did not understand how to register food from restaurants or cafes. At first, I tried to find similar dishes or manually calculate the total number of calories. A friend told me that waiters should know the content of calories, proteins, and carbohydrates in one serving of all dishes. So now, when I order something in an institution, I ask for information about the plate. It's more difficult in bars. But in the bar, where I often spend my free time, they answer all my questions about calorie content 강남셔츠룸.

Edited by user Monday, January 03, 2022 11:03:45 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified