How do you Estimate calories in food ?

Steve21

Steve21

New member
Hey,

May sound a bit silly, but generally how do you go about estimating what food items count as when you aren't cooking them yourselves?

Example, I normally get a baguette for lunch at works canteen, and obviously this doesn't come with pretty stickers telling you calories etc :)

Do you normally just "over" guess rough weights of items within the food and get generic calorie values?

Thanks,
Steve
 
I use an app called MyFitnessPal to count calories. It has all the different brands of foods and as for your canteen food you can search the individual items you get on your baguette and then save them as a "meal" so you can look back on it. The app also adds up all your calories for the day and accounts for calories lost during exercise. Overall, it's a brilliant weight loss app to track your progress and keep track of what you're eating and your exercise.
 
Bambiie said:
I use an app called MyFitnessPal to count calories. It has all the different brands of foods and as for your canteen food you can search the individual items you get on your baguette and then save them as a "meal" so you can look back on it. The app also adds up all your calories for the day and accounts for calories lost during exercise. Overall, it's a brilliant weight loss app to track your progress and keep track of what you're eating and your exercise.
Click to expand...

That's pretty cool. Will have to have a look.

Thanks!
 
I use a calorie counter called ShapeUp Club, it has a ton of different foodstuffs listed as well. It's handy for me since many of the foodstuffs are Dutch, so I can find my brands more easily.

What also helps me a lot in estimating calorie totals is having made quite a few homecooked meals where I tallied the totals of all the ingredients, so I have some experience, and I've spent quite a bit of time looking up various foodstuffs. Since I've done it a few times, it gets easier and easier.
So to take your sandwich as an example, I know how much calories are in a slice of bread and in a bun, so I can start there. All the lettuce, tomato, cucumber and whatever other vegetables are on the sandwich add to about five kcalories, meats depend on the type of meat and how much is on it. Most sandwiches have 30-50 grams of cheese on it (if any, 50 grams is a generous serving for a large sandwich), which is 100 to 150 kcal. If there is any mayo on the sandwich, add 50% to the total (mayo is almost pure fat, even a little of it will add a lot of calories), other emulsified sauces add 50-100 calories, ketchup a little less. Herbs, pepper and salt add nothing, and that should more or less complete the sandwich.

So keep trying - I now carry a little notepad with me in case I need to write something down in case I need to check it online, and I have several calorie listing webpages bookmarked. It gets easier with experience.
 
Anyone can have a free account from and it can be used for working out not just your calories but your calorie balance and all your macros...

I must admit that I dont eat out very often - but this is the counter that I tend to use most of the time (when I count)... I like the way that you can see how you are going with your targets and you can add custom foods for packaged things not on the database. Also there are a number of ways of quantifying a lot of things without necessarily weighing everything...
 
I'm another firm believer in MyFitnessPal. I've used it for about a year or so, and love it. It's been the only calorie counting method that I've ever stuck with. I use it on my phone, but you can also use it on the computer. And if I don't have the nutritional info for a specific item, I just break it down into the major components, and find the info for those. There might be a little bit of guessing on weights and such, but I usually just guess on the high side if I'm not sure.
 
I used to carry a little notebook around and used online searches for calories on my phone, but the notebook was retired when I found fitnesspal. It's awesome and easy to use once you get it figured out. You can also enter exercise, weight, measurements, fluids, notes, and probably more that I'm forgetting. It has a facebook-like social aspect to it if you want, but I disabled all that as I would like to choose what details I share with people and my diary here allows for that.

There is some guessing on weights, but here is how I am getting good at guessing. I have a food scale at home. I get a serving of something, guess at the weigh, and then weigh it. That way I'm "calibrated" when I have to guess when eating out or at a friends. I'll also measure say a 1/4 cup of trail mix and then put it on a plate or bowl and look at how that amount looks. That way I can have a snack at work and know it's close enough.
 
Counting calories is as easy as knowing the number of grams of each nutrient and fat in the food and calculating from the known values.
 
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