So, I'm planning reeeeaaaallly far in advance here but-
Its a Christmas eve tradition to have Chinese food, but short of making it myself (yuck), I have never been able to find a good restaurant that actually has nutrition facts.

Any ideas? All I really want is some good fried rice (no exceptions, this is my one time this year treat!). I live in columbus, ohio, so I have quite a few restaurant options.

Have any of you ever found a Chinese food chain with calorie counts?

I found the NI for Panda express in the restaurant.I asked and they gave me a brochure.

PF Changs is delicious and you can find nutritional info on the web. Just do a search. I think Livestrong.com has some of the info. I always get the chicken lettuce wraps.

We usually have Chinese food as well. Not sure if we are doing it this year. Enjoy yourself...in moderation.

Commercial places like Panda Panda (or Panda express) and PF Changs (or Pei Wei) will probably have calorie counts. Or you could try to make it yourself from a mix of some sort or just make it yourself. Fried rice is easy and generally pretty caloric. I'd say forget about counting calories for that meal and eating lower calories before and after that meal to balance it out.

Many Chinese restaurants around here advertise they use minimal oil or what not, do any near you do that?

I go to a pretty healthy Chinese restaurant almost every week.

I eat fried rice at least twice per week. I eat the Lean Cuisine Fried Rice bowl
and add cabbage to it. For 280 calories, it makes me happy.

I love chinese food, that & pizza are my weakness'. I allow myself once, maybe twice a month to eat chinese food. I kinda count it as a free meal, just because I, like you, have no idea about the nutritional info for it. But I know some people don't like to have "free meals" or "free days". Matter of personal preference I guess. I find it helps me to not "cheat" most days.

LOL...sorry, I just had a flashback to the movie, "A Christmas Story"

FAH, RAH, RAH, RAH, RAH!!!!

I WISH I could think of chinese food like that, I'll just avoid it, bravo to you! I can not avoid chinese food! It's so yummy!

I used to work in a Chinese restaurant. It is, by far, the WORST food imaginable when it comes to fat, calories, and sodium content. Awful. There is 16 cups of sugar in a batch of honey garlic pork. No, that isn't a misprint.

What you can do however, is personally request a meal that has no added oil or sugars. When I worked in the restaurant, we would eat steamed rice with pork and cabbage prepared with no salt or oil.

Honestly, you will have to request to get a healthy meal. It just isn't there.

Sacha - 16 cups is a lot of sugar, but that's relative to how big "batch" is. How many servings in a batch of the stuff? Cause there's no way in **** there's 16 cups of sugar in a serving of honey garlic pork.

OP: Try checking Calorieking. It's not specific to the place you're ordering from, for sure, but it'll give you a better estimate point.

I find that I always gain after Chinese, but I think it is the sodium. I agree that it tends to be high in fats, and deceptively healthy looking but calorie loaded.

I have a different thought though. This is a Christmas tradition. (For my family too.) Why don't you think about focusing on portion control and not particularly calorie counting for that meal? Yes you will likely eat more calories than you normally do (or want) but it is a meal, not a week or a month! If you focus on a single serving of items...you won't completely go bananas...as many calories as it is there are just so many that can fit onto a single plate!

I'm doing WW, so I have to find out calories, fat and fiber to figure out points. It is pretty hard to find that info for Chinese, so what I do is go to a few different nutrition websites...gather the info for 3-4 different versions of the same food and average the totals to get my points. Definitley not a precise science but it works for me.

www.nutritiondata.com
www.nutri-facts.com
www.thedailyplate.com
www.peertrainer.com

I like The Daily Plate and Peer Trainer the best.

Hope this helps. AND I'd go ahead and eat the yummy food, guestimate if you have to but enjoy yourself!!

Hey ladies, I noticed last month when my hubby and I went for fondue I gained THREE pounds in one day. It came off a couple of days later but I can't believe it was that high in sodium!

According to CalorieKing one cup of fried rice is 320 calories.