With the holiday approaching, I'm finding myself with more and more "guesstimates" in my diet. You know...those great family recipes with no nutritional information? How do you figure these in?

For instance:
Heathbar coffee cake: made with buttermilk and crushed Heathbar candies. We'll have this for Christmas breakfast. How much can I have and stay within 200 calories?

Or, when I go to Chipotles and get a burrito in a bowl, I know the whole bowl is 565 calories. I eat ABOUT 1/3 of it, so is it safe to assume that's 188 calories?

I say if you have the nutritional info (like chipotle's) and know you ate ~1/3, then use a 3rd. Round it to 200 for easy counting though. And if you think maybe you ate more and are trying to get away with a third, say 2/5s.

For that cake you might guess a piece that is like a 2x2x2 inch cube or something for 200 calories. Baked goods are rediculously high in sugar and with the heath bar on top, its more so. I think fitday is the site that lets you choose a bunch of ways of calorie counting cake, such as by volume. Look up coffee cake, and find out how much various size pieces are, and then tack on an appropriate amount of heath bar (like, the equivalent of 1/4 a standard size bar, whatever it looks like by eye, I haven't seen this yummy-sounding cake)


For other things when I guestimate, I will sometimes go in the daily plate and take the highest calorie option for that food choice to 1) be safe and 2) everything has more calories in it than you think (except spinach leaves).

When in doubt for the holiday foods, guestimate and then tack on 20%. If you are seriously trying to keep on track during the holiday guestimation season, tack on a serious penalty to that guestimate, because I can guarantee you are eating more than you think if you don't actually know how much you are eating.

It all depends on how much time and effort you want to put into it, and how quick you are with a calculator.

I do estimate things like that burrito bowl... if I think I ate "about a third" of something, that's what I go with. I figure sometimes I'm probably guessing low and sometimes I'm guessing high, so it will even out eventually.

For the homemade stuff, if you have the recipe, you can calculate it yourself. Add it all into a calorie counting program, ingredient-by-ingredient, to get the total... then figure out from there how many calories per serving.

If you don't have the recipe, you can try to find a similar one online. Here's a recipe for a heath bar coffee cake that uses buttermilk, maybe it's the one: http://www.recipezaar.com/Heath-Bar-Coffee-Cake-74482 In this case, 1/15 of a 13x9" pan is about 300 calories according to that site... so the whole thing is 4500 calories... and to get 200 calorie pieces you'd need to cut it into 22.5 pieces -- that leaves you with a piece that is just a little over 2x2". (13" x 9" = 117 square inches for the whole cake, 117 / 22 pieces = 5.3 square inches per piece, square root of 5.3 = 2.3" per side.)

Whoa. You're good! And so much for my "family" recipe! LOL! I think that just might be it! And it is yummy.

So a 2X2 piece is what I get for my entire breakfast huh? Oh boy, this is going to be one very hard day....TWO days actually.

Perhaps this is the year I say, "Next year...it's not never again...it's I'll have this next year."

I try to count every thing separately. Eating whole foods makes that easier for me.

About Chipotle...Is the whole Chipotle bowl 565 calories without rice and beans or another way? I've counted the calories in Chipotle and never seen it be so low. I can't link (I'm new here) but Chipotle Fan dot com has a nutrition/calorie counter to count the calories, and to be honest, the serving sizes are underestimated by my count. I know when I go, they'll put more of whatever I ask for in my bowl! I figure a bowl is about 1,000 calories, really.

I like: tomato salsa, rice, pinto beans, cheese, lettuce and chicken. According to the nifty little counter you mentioned, that's 565 calories. No tortilla. I love it!

Guesstimates are a tough one. I do add a penalty for it by erring on the high side of similar foods rather than low counts. I am really enjoying the recipe analyzer on spark people. They are much more accurate than calorie counts in the cookbooks. Sparkpeople do not have a conflict of interest in fudging the numbers.

For me health wise, there is nothing I want more than to be in maintenance. So this is steering me through these land mines.

Karen

I always go to a recipe site like recipezaar and try to find the closest recipe possible and use it as a guide

Numbers geeks of 3FC unite! Reading this made me so happy...

Sometimes I go crazy trying to estimate what I ate in situations like these.

For me, it's easier to just turn it into a cheat day.
Christmas: I'm not even going to bother estimating, then back to plan the day after!

I try to find something similar to it online and just roll with it. I realize I can't get it exactly and that's ok with me. I am conscious though to eat more salads/veggies/fruits during this time so I'll be fuller and not eat so much of the sweet stuff.

I also do my best to estimate & estimate on the high side. Many restaurants have nutrition sites & I check there first. For recipes I go to All Recipes or any good site that gives you the nutro info with every recipe.

I type in name of recipe & from there, estimate my portion. Have leaned to keep a small notebook with a pen in my purse to keep track. That way, I can't forget when time to journal the days food.

Remember,a holiday is....as it says, a day....not a wk & I doubt any of us will gain from eating a bit more for one day.

True, and I have tried to eat lower calories to save up for this day.
Karen

I get two or three quotes online from different places, then I try to overestimate a little, to be on the safe side.

Hahah! I failed math, and I was three lines into it when I started to blink rapidly and feel nervous.