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One of my biggest challenges when I’m tracking calories is trying to determine the “cost” of restaurant meals.
Last night, we met some friends at Gino’s, our favorite local Italian place. Gino’s offers good prices, ENORMOUS portions, and delicious food. I’m particularly fond of their clams, which are boiled in a mixture of butter, wine, butter, garlic, butter, pepper, and butter. Every time we go to Gino’s — which is about once a month — Kris and I share these, dipping great wads of buttered bread into the broth.
There is nothing better in this world.
But how on earth do I track the calories for this dish? I don’t know how much of each ingredient is present here. I ate about 20-25 clams, but what does that mean? Each one has a different amount of meat inside.
My main course last night was one of my staples, Grandma Jean’s pasta: penne slow-cooked in tomato sauce with pork ribs, beef, and thick hunks of pepperoni. Served piping hot (as is most of Gino’s food), this dish grants me five or ten minutes of transcendent experience. When I eat it, I’m in another world. A better world.
But again — how many calories am I eating? I have no idea.
In days past, I might have been tempted to eat all of the pasta at once. I’m shifting into “get fit slowly” mode, though, and so I ate until I began to feel full. Then I stopped. I asked for a box, and should get two more meals from the leftovers. I did not order dessert. (And, of course, I had no wine. I drank an entire pitcher of water by myself.)
It was a wonderful meal, but I’m sure it cost me many calories. How many? I don’t know.
It’s not just restaurant meals that are difficult for me to track. Often, I can’t make heads nor tails of those dishes I prepare from scratch (especially if they use whole foods). Exactly how many calories are in my clam chowder, anyhow?
Mac
19 responses so far ↓
1 Red // Dec 20, 2007 at 2:09 pm
I struggle with this as well, I believe this is what makes fitness so much more of a struggle than personal finance. There are almost always numbers to turn to in personal finance, you *always* know how much something is going to cost you.
In fitness, there are times when intuition and ball-parking are the best you can do without a lab.
2 Lauren Muney // Dec 20, 2007 at 2:10 pm
JD… are you wondering out loud or truly asking for calorie/portion effectiveness assistance…?
3 Nuggie99 // Dec 20, 2007 at 2:14 pm
For Gino’s, it won’t be much help, but for most chain restaurants and fast food, Dottie’s Weight Loss Zone ( http://dwlz.com/ ) has gathered up the data. The site is geared toward Weight Watchers, but it’s still useful. She also has a section on ethnic foods, etc.
4 J.D. // Dec 20, 2007 at 2:43 pm
5 Lauren Muney // Dec 20, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Well, there’s a little biology of “fullness” which you may need to consider: when humans (or other animals) are accustomed to eating large portions, the size of the stomach has expanded to fulfill a typical meal size. So if the stomach is biologically supposed to be the size of 2 fist-sizes (let’s say), the eater who has stretched his/her stomach to 3-5 fist-sizes of food (think: the local pasta place who serves on huge plates), won’t feel too full on a lower size.
That’s the biology, and some stomach-stapling methods use this principle of reduced-stomach size to allow the patient to feel fuller, faster.
That’s an aside, btw - this wasn’t the real question you wound up asking. It sounds like you are truly asking, “When I am with friends in a restaurant, what do I do to keep remembering my goals of staying on track with portion control?” (this is a cool, powerful question!)
Let’s throw this back in your corner, JD - what do YOU think are some good strategies which have worked for you (or you have read about) about the social aspects of keeping your portion/calorie goals?
6 Lauren Muney // Dec 20, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Oh, and I wrote too fast to explain about the stomach-filling idea:
The stretched-stomach does shrink back to regular stomach size when given proper portions. So the person with the stretched stomach can learn how to apply quality eating habits and thus become accustomed to normal sized meal. In a nutshell, having eaten large portions in the past is not an indication of ‘always’ eating large portions! You can see examples of this in the Men’s Health magazine feature called “Belly-Off Club”.
7 elisabeth // Dec 20, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I worked with a nutritionist who identified eating out as THE weak point in my diet–partly because of portion sizes, and partly for things like how a restaurant tuna sandwich will have a lot more mayonnaise than I would put in at home. She really suggested brown-bagging all my lunches.
But when one is eating out socially, her advice was not to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the exact calories, but to do an approximation: “pasta and meat sauce averages X calories/serving” and then learn what a serving size looks like (it’s pretty humbling to see what a “serving” of pasta looks like… no restaurant in America is going to serve that small a portion as an entree…) and control one’s intake that way. It’s interesting, in some ways, if you’re out eating as a social event, it can be easier to not eat too much, after all, there’s a lot of distraction available, and you’re more likely to be eating slowly (the old idea that you need 20 minutes to feel full), and there are people to share items with…
8 TosaJen // Dec 20, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I can’t offer much to help you estimate calories. We eat out so seldom these days, that I do the best I can and don’t really count it. We try to split entrees, dine on appetizers, or take a lot of it home. If you read a few cookbooks, you can get an idea of what goes into different dishes and how that works out with calories.
Sometimes it’s totally worth the calorie splurge, so long as it’s a gourmet splurge, not an eat-until-you’re sick splurge.
When we’re travelling and eating out a lot, I end up ordering a lot of salad, soup, and children’s meals (when they let me). I also always ask for the fries/chips to be replaced by a veggie or fruit of some kind, even for more money.
9 Dave // Dec 20, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Maybe you should eat some more of that “calm chowder”, then you wouldn’t be worried about how many calories were in your meal!
(Sorry, a lifetime of proofreading won’t let a typo like that slip past me without comment) Maybe the way to handle this is to allow yourself the occasional night off. If you are eating healthy and getting exercise most of the time, a meal like this now and then shouldn’t derail you. you already said that next time you won’t order the clams and the pasta, so that is a step in the right direction, right?
10 Blubba // Dec 20, 2007 at 7:42 pm
There might be some rule of thumb to calculate your calorie intake, but that’s probably still going to be inaccurate. Let’s be honest, we need to go out and have a meal with friends (calorie bomb or not) once in a while. From your description of the meal, you’re obviously a foodie (like many of us on the path to fitness). The challenge is being able to still enjoy the foods we love from time to time without falling off the rails. I think your instinct to have smaller portions is the right way to go (and you can have lots of leftovers to use for small meals).
11 Uncle Midriff // Dec 20, 2007 at 11:16 pm
This has been my problem this whole month. Ice storms knocked power out at my house for a few days, so my wife and I ended up staying with relatives. That disruption of routine plus the stress of not living in my own house for days led to a big change in eating habits. I was eating more food and different food, eating out more than usual.
My wife and I are back in our house with power, but now the problem is that there is holiday food everywhere. Holiday social gatherings, coworkers giving me candy, etc. It’s all very hard to turn down, and then when I go to log it, I have no idea what to log.
I’ve ended up just not logging anything and eating way too much. I’m not blaming anything or anyone other than myself…but dang it this month has been a difficult one for dieting.
12 Ricky Buchanan // Dec 21, 2007 at 6:39 am
According to my flatmate who is trained as a chef, you can’t rely on the chef to know about the calories of a dish for even a ballpark figure because although it’s part of the training nobody ever uses that bit so they forget :/
Stuff you cook from whole foods should be fairly easy though as long as you measure stuff you put in - whole foods are in the databases. It might take a bit of calculating the first time (”write down every penny”!) but after that you’ll know that homemade X has Y calories per cup or whatever so you only have to do it once.
I also agree with the suggestion that you ballpark your restaurant meals and write down your best estimate of the calories instead of sweating about it. You can look up “standard X food” calories in your DB or online or whatever and then you’ll know if it was richer than normal to add some… and you’ll quickly learn to eyeball portions.
I guess this is one area where calories and money are different - you don’t get charged a bizarre $50 fee for overdrawing your account by $1 with calories so ballparks are OK. The important part is be aware that it matters, keep a food diary even if you can’t extrapolate accurate calories from it, and don’t beat yourself up for slip-ups - just pick yourself up and try again the next time.
Missing one mortgage payment may cause bill collectors or other nasty things - eating that tub of icecream will cause guilt and calories but in the long run if you stick to 80% of your diet for 80% of the time you’re WAY better off than if you stick to 0% of it 0% of the time!
I am really enjoying your writing here (both of you) and finding it’s motivating me. Are you interested in featuring reader stories here too? I might email you about writing one up if that’s OK.
13 Dusty // Dec 21, 2007 at 7:13 am
If you take the recipes you make from scratch and upload them to Allrecipes.com, you can get an automatic calorie count for it. If you’re wondering what a certain meal might contain calorie-wise, I’d also recommend looking at Allrecipes to see if you can find a similar meal, at least you’d get a rough approximation.
14 em // Dec 21, 2007 at 7:59 am
http://www.recipezaar.com is a great resource when you are cooking from scratch and want to know the nutritional info of your recipe.
15 Rick Francis // Dec 21, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I think the best you can do is estimate the calories based on the type of food… However, it’s really easy to add a lot more calories by adding butter/oil/fat which is a cheap and easy way for a restaurant to make food taste better. To combat this you really have to work on the portion size.
Unfortunately, I’m on a see food diet.. When I see food I eat it.
I’ve been contemplating a variant of pay yourself first for dining out: “Pack you leftovers first”. I think this is a better way of limiting portion size, as I tend to try to finish the food in front of me. The idea is to ask for a to-go box when the food is brought out, then BEFORE eating any of it decide on a reasonable portion and hide the rest away! This makes the portion choice a logical decision rather than a feeling and prevents you from over eating until you really feel full. Also, it should save you some $$$ too as you can choose to save at least half to have another full meal. With some of the portion sizes you could even get two meals out of it. Also, be sure to tell your waiter NOT to bring out any more complementary bread/chips either.
-Rick
16 Leslie // Dec 22, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I think the important thing here is to at least TRY to estimate it. No, it probably won’t be completely accurate but it is better to at least try than just say it is too hard to figure out and not estimate at all. I figure that about half the time I over estimate and half I under estimate(I used to under estimate most of the time but I have gotten better at it over time). If I am at least trying then it will all balance out over time. The big thing is to pay attention to your portion sizes. If you are controlling that then you have won half the battle right there.
17 Lazy Man and Health // Dec 28, 2007 at 5:05 pm
It’s worth noting that the restaurants don’t want to help you with this either. Take a look at Men’s Health’s 16 Secrets the Restaurant Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know. Yes it’s about chains, but its a great related read.
18 Jeremy // Jan 1, 2008 at 7:02 am
What great questions! I’ve been on a calorie-counting diet for the past six months. When I read this post, I laughed out loud, because I know exactly where you’re coming from.
Counting calories at restaurants, especially Mom & Pop places, is really tough. There are websites that can help, but I usually either estimate (on a “diet day”) or ignore (on a diet “day off”). For cooking at home, I purchased a food scale to help me figure out the calories.
Dieting is hard, hard work. Congratulations for taking up the challenge, and good luck to you. I’ve lost about 40 pounds over the past six months, and if I can do it, you can do it. I count every single calorie that goes in, I track my progress daily (Hacker’s Diet Online and Physics Diet), and I allow myself plenty of days off to enjoy the decadent meals that I love so much.
19 Darren // Jan 2, 2008 at 10:44 am
I’ve been researching how to deal with counting for home-cooked meals as well. Some things are fairly easy — staples like flour and meats are pretty easy to weigh and get a reasonable calorie count. Other things are harder.
Particularly difficult are those recipes that have small amounts of many ingredients. I’ve stumbled across several “cookbook” applications that let you enter your recipes, then interface with the US .gov’s nutrition info database to do nutritional analysis of your recipes. So far, my research has brought me to the Living Cookbook (http://livingcookbook.com) as a very good choice.
I haven’t yet used any of these apps, so this is based only on user reviews and comparison of feature lists. If you decide to try one or more of these, I hope you’ll share your thoughts on them!
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