7 ms·

> If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. uh, why not? i'll do it right now for yo

> If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. uh, why not? i'll do it right now for you off the top of my head, which anyone can do after they look them up for a while. 100g of white bread = ~ 250 calories / 2 tbsp of mayo = ~ 200 calories / 4 oz of deli turkey = ~ 100 calories / 1 tbsp mustard = ~ 10 calories / 2 slices (2 oz.) of cheese = ~ 240 calories / 2 slices of tomato = ~ 20 calories / 1 slice of lettuce = ~ 5 calories / 1 bag of chips = ~ 280 calories (probably on the bag) there. 1105 calories total. is that perfect? no, but is that useful? yes, a whole lot more useful than "it's too hard, so i might as well not do it." as an aside: this is why people are fat. a sandwich and a bag of chips is insulin-spiking can easily be over 1k calories, and most people would probably guess it's 300 calories, and 'not fattening', whatever that means. throw in a soda and you've got a recipe (literally) for disaster.

rlanday 10y ago
A can of soda is only about 140 calories. I.e. half the calories in the bread. I think it gets a way worse reputation than it deserves.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  What about a medium sized soda at a fast-food place? Those places use consumer surplus as an incentive to get a larger drink, so seeing people with huge cups, presumably filled with soda is very common. Besides, 140 calories is a lot, considering it has about the same calorie density as milk and the number of great drinks available to you at 0 calories, like black tea, green tea, coffee and plain water. Soda is sugar only, always, so it's much easier to throw your daily balance of carb/protein/fat off with soda than any other drink (e.g. milk).
OtterCoder 10y ago
One time, as a continually hungry teen, I did a one day calorie count for a scout project. I was suitably horrified to find out at the end of the day that I had consumed around 10,000 calories.
matwood 10y ago
I was about to start writing a similar comment, but you saved me the time. I just wanted to emphasize that this is why people consistently under/over estimate how many calories they eat. Every single person who has asked me for help either gaining or losing weight has thought they knew how much they were eating until they actually started counting.
jackvalentine 10y ago
You're literally guessing the quantities of the ingredients of the sandwich. (and mixing measurements... grams AND ounces?) How is that counting? That's my point. You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting. No, that's exactly calorie counting in the real world. This is not advanced math or chemistry lab, and you don't need to get to even 80% accuracy for everything. Just to be consistent and get a good feel.
- fredophile 10y ago
  It's close enough to get results. Nobody is going to put a sandwich from the local sandwich shop into a bomb calorimeter to figure out how many sandwiches they can eat and still lose weight. If you're going to get hung up on the term calories let's call them approximate calories (or ACs) instead. If I eat mostly the same foods all the time I can use reasonable guesses to get the ACs in each food. Foods I eat infrequently will probably have a greater deviation between my ACs and the actual calories but that doesn't matter much because I don't eat them very often. Foods I eat frequently will probably have less error and the error doesn't matter much as long as I'm consistent with the numbers. Let's say I decide I want to lose weight. I can start off with the general rule that for a male of my age, build and activity levels I need about 2500 calories a day to maintain weight. Since I want to lose some weight I'll set my daily AC allowance at 2000. After a couple weeks I check how the weight loss is going. Am I losing weight too slowly? Drop the ACs a bit. Am I losing weight too quickly? Increase the ACs a bit. Keep checking and adjusting every couple weeks until I'm happy with the weight loss. This approach works in the real world. I do weigh and measure some of my food but if I had to weigh everything down to the last gram to make sure I ate exactly 1947 calories per day for ideal weight loss I'd quit pretty quickly.
- flat6turbo 10y ago
  mixing g and oz - that's a novel and interesting excuse to avoid the work of weight loss. usually people just blame their thyroid but this bullshit excuse at least has some kind of passable scientific pedantry behind it. i'll have to file that one for later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

rlanday 10y ago

A can of soda is only about 140 calories. I.e. half the calories in the bread. I think it gets a way worse reputation than it deserves.

antisthenes 10y ago
What about a medium sized soda at a fast-food place? Those places use consumer surplus as an incentive to get a larger drink, so seeing people with huge cups, presumably filled with soda is very common. Besides, 140 calories is a lot, considering it has about the same calorie density as milk and the number of great drinks available to you at 0 calories, like black tea, green tea, coffee and plain water. Soda is sugar only, always, so it's much easier to throw your daily balance of carb/protein/fat off with soda than any other drink (e.g. milk).

OtterCoder 10y ago

One time, as a continually hungry teen, I did a one day calorie count for a scout project. I was suitably horrified to find out at the end of the day that I had consumed around 10,000 calories.

matwood 10y ago

I was about to start writing a similar comment, but you saved me the time. I just wanted to emphasize that this is why people consistently under/over estimate how many calories they eat. Every single person who has asked me for help either gaining or losing weight has thought they knew how much they were eating until they actually started counting.

jackvalentine 10y ago

You're literally guessing the quantities of the ingredients of the sandwich. (and mixing measurements... grams AND ounces?) How is that counting? That's my point. You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting.

coldtea 10y ago
>You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting. No, that's exactly calorie counting in the real world. This is not advanced math or chemistry lab, and you don't need to get to even 80% accuracy for everything. Just to be consistent and get a good feel.
fredophile 10y ago
It's close enough to get results. Nobody is going to put a sandwich from the local sandwich shop into a bomb calorimeter to figure out how many sandwiches they can eat and still lose weight. If you're going to get hung up on the term calories let's call them approximate calories (or ACs) instead. If I eat mostly the same foods all the time I can use reasonable guesses to get the ACs in each food. Foods I eat infrequently will probably have a greater deviation between my ACs and the actual calories but that doesn't matter much because I don't eat them very often. Foods I eat frequently will probably have less error and the error doesn't matter much as long as I'm consistent with the numbers. Let's say I decide I want to lose weight. I can start off with the general rule that for a male of my age, build and activity levels I need about 2500 calories a day to maintain weight. Since I want to lose some weight I'll set my daily AC allowance at 2000. After a couple weeks I check how the weight loss is going. Am I losing weight too slowly? Drop the ACs a bit. Am I losing weight too quickly? Increase the ACs a bit. Keep checking and adjusting every couple weeks until I'm happy with the weight loss. This approach works in the real world. I do weigh and measure some of my food but if I had to weigh everything down to the last gram to make sure I ate exactly 1947 calories per day for ideal weight loss I'd quit pretty quickly.
flat6turbo 10y ago
mixing g and oz - that's a novel and interesting excuse to avoid the work of weight loss. usually people just blame their thyroid but this bullshit excuse at least has some kind of passable scientific pedantry behind it. i'll have to file that one for later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis