Hi everyone,
I just completed my first week of my calorie count and I do find it very helpful especially in helping me to realize how my portion control was affecting everything. I go to many restaurants that are NOT chains and I have a real hard time determining the nutritional info of my meals from these establishments!!! (eg, I go to many Asian restaurants like Vietnamese, Cambodian and Indian). I realize an estimate is good as well, but I want to make sure that I at least get a good guess in. How do I go about this????????!!! Also, I tend to buy stuff like fresh bread that are from mom and pop establishments and do not have the nutritional info on them.
If you want to lose weight, eating out a lot is something that I think has to take a back seat for a while. It's almost impossible to log the calorie count because you have no idea what's going into a dish and in what quantities. Just an extra slug of oil in a dish is another 100 cals... bang. Even restaurants that display their nutrition information aren't much use because their cooks can't be expected to reproduce every dish precisely.
Maybe limit your restaurant eating to once a week and try to cook/prepare food yourself the rest of the time so that you're more in control? If you pay attention to portions and start seeing which ingredients are bumping up the calories you'll get to a stage where you can judge which restaurant meals are the better choices and whether the amount served on the plate is more than you'd normally have.
Good luck
Thanks for the good and logical advice. I am going to do my best to pick healthy vegetable choices when I do go out and take brown rice vs. white rice, fish over red meat, etcetc. I think I eat out 3 -4 times a week but I will try to limit it to twice a week at most!
Hey Run,
First - Welcome!!! I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you know there is a ton of support herew so it should work if you use the wesbite a lot (I do) 
For Indian I eat a ton of Indian food, and it is hard to fnd everything online, but I use other websites to help me out. I eat Chicken Tikka Masala a lot, and so I found a nutritional data for it online and the ingredients were similar to the ones I was eating, so I put int he nutritional data manually and "tagged" the ietm so I can quickly add it again since I eat it probably close to 2x a month.
Second - Try making this stuff at home... I have some great recipe's for Indian dishes so if you ever are in need let me know. I am pro-home-cooking, and anti-eating out because I know what's in my food and also it's burning more cals when I cook vs letting someone cater to me.
Good luck with everything and make sure to utilize other websites.... not everything is here on cc but it's a great site for support and to track everything :)
Mmmm...chicken tikka masala...yum...
Anyway, even local establishments will sometimes have estimates for the calorie counts for their dishes on their websites. Look at their websites and see if there is nutritional information. If you ask nicely, many restaurants will give you some information that will help you log the meal. Additionally, if you're eating at home a lot, you'll eventually pick up on how big servings look on the plate. I ate at an Italian restaurant last night and I feel pretty good about my estimate of the calories I was eating.
