Calorie question
 

How do you estimate calories of foods that you eat that do not have nutritional data on them?

I am trying to keep track of what I am eating these days and I am having a bit of difficulty. For instance, often I will eat at a bar or restaurant and have little clue as to the caloric content. Also, when eating a lot of the fruits, vegetables, fresh meats, etc. from the grocery store, there is no nutritional information either.

NATS is a decent calorie counting tool. It keeps track of micro and macronutrients for you too. Click on the NATS ver 2.0 link and follow the instructions. The database of foods leaves a lot to be desired, but if you can't find a specific food, you'll probably be able to find something similar.
More and more restaurants are making nutritional information available, either online or in print if you inquire.

http://www.calorieking.com is the best and most comprehensive nutritional listing that I know of, and also includes many restaurants.

You'll just have to learn how to eye-ball it jwells. If you are on a cutting routine you may just want to avoid restaurants and stick with home cooked foods. Sometimes it takes being that strict to get to sub 10%bf.

-jb

I think restaurants are supposed to have nutritional information on their foods available upon request, but I'm not sure if thats a law everywhere or what. A lot of the chains do have that available if you ask.

Hehe....it would take an awful lot more than that for me to get sub 10% body fat. At any rate, right now I am just trying to get an idea of how much I am really eating and perhaps make a few subtle changes. The biggest one is that I am trying to cut real pop from the diet which should help quite a bit since I used to consume between 4-7 cans a day.

Thanks for all of the suggestions thus far...seems like I should be able to restrict my calorie intake to ~2100 calories a day fairly easily which is a bit below my BMR. Should be interesting to see if I actually lose any weight. I am sure that I will be back pestering you guys for advice soon enough.