Weight Gain

hi everyone-

this question im sure has been asked before, but how do you estimate non-chain restaurant food?  for instance, i went to a regular restaurant and had a chicken wrap, lettuce, tomato, mustard something or other.  how do you tally the calories when when i look it up in the database, the amounts that they show range by so much?

thank you

Do you know how the chicken was cooked? Was it breaded etc?? All you can do is find something similar.. but should it even matter if you're trying to gain weight?  Thats a good step eating something you dont know the calories of!! I know its hard though coz I'm trying to do the same thing but I'm always so curious haha

hey, so since im trying to gain its fine i suppose if i eat more 1 day or whatever, but  the thing is, i dont want to under eat either, so i was hoping that there was a method or something ppl do to guess the cals of a meal so they know how to plan the rest of the day.  i want to learn to be more comfortable w eating out and how to adjust my day accordingly. 

it was like strips of skinless chicken w/ a mustard, i asked for mustard not mayo but it actually came out sort of creamy, i dunno.  i figure i had about 3/4 of the wrap-200 cals?  all the chicken-150?  and the sauce-150?

 thanks

I'd probably guess slightly less than that but then again I don't know how big it was/how much sauce/chicken etc..sorry to not be of much help !!

Maybe try and not worry about it. I know that you are trying to gain and sometimes we get too caught up in the calories. Focus on how you felt when you were eating it and if you became too full. Although I know that when you are trying to gain, you feel full like 85% of the time!

thanks guys, the thing is, i think i first over estimated how much i ate which would then lead me to undereat the rest of the day-not a good thing.  i scarfed down the wrap, most of both sides of it, and was stuffed afterwards for a while.  i sort of forced myself to have the snack which then triggered my appetite, but i dont think i would have had the snack if i wasnt trying to gain.  if i knew how to estimate better then i would know how to plan my day better i think.  its so hard when eating out though bc then ill come home and look something up, and a wrap for instance, just the bread part, can range from like 60-300+ cals??

Maybe just choose one of the lower cal similarities. I do this in the opposite. Since I'm trying to loose, I'll over estimate how many calories I've eaten of something if I'm not sure what was in it just so I won't wolf down something even worse for me later on! And at the end of the day, I know the calories are maybe over or under by 100 but that's okay. It doesn't have to be exact, I feel. There is no real way to know exactly everything you're putting into your body anyway, IMO.

If I were you I'd log it as half a boneless skinless chicken breast (if you think that's about right, less if you think it was less.) Then 2 tablespoons of mustard. One wrap. (If you don't know what kind, choose one on the lower cal end or the generic one that comes up.) A slice of tomato. A half a cup of lettuce.

If you under estimate a little, and come up a little behind that day and you're worried about it, go eat a tablespoon of peanut butter on some celery. =)

Also, the wrap my vary because I've seen thin, almost tortilla like wraps, and then on the other hand you have thick, almost pita like wraps. Tortilla would be less cal then pita, so go by what you ate and choose a lower cal or high cal one depending. (Or just choose the lower cal one and eat more later. Easy for me to say, haha!)

Restaurants aren't going to likely go the low cal route, so if the pita you're looking up is a "low cal" kind or something, you should know that's not likely and not log that one.

Good luck. =)

tin-thanks!  lol, yea, taste over health in restaurants for the most part.  i know that there is no way of truly nowing the cals at a restaurant, its just frustrating when i look up wrap or whatever, it was thin not like a pita, and the cals listed seriously range from 60-300!  big diff! lol  i need to be able to gauge restaurant food better so that i dont undereat the rest of the day, or wahtever. thanks!