Calculating restaurant calories?

Ok, so when you eat out at restaurants, how are you supposed to calculate the calories of an item if you get it without certain ingredients, or special order something? Example:

Today, I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant and got the lunch-portion chicken fajitas. Got all black beans, no rice, guacamole, no sour cream, and didn't eat the tortillas it came with. So, basically is was just grilled chicken, red and green bell peppers, onions, black beans, salsa and a small amount of guacamole. How do I figure out how many calories? Obviously, I can't go off of the restaurant's nutritional info or Calorie King or CC's numbers, cause it's not an exact match. Do I just estimate?

Generally, I'm not too obsessive about counting exact calories, just try to focus on eating healthy, but I am trying to really keep track for about a week, cause I think I may be eating too few calories, so I'm trying to figure this out....

Any suggestions?

I, myself, am pretty meticulous about calorie counting. So when I go out to restaurants I try to estimate.

For instance, try looking up black beans, guacamole, and the chicken on CC. If you cannot find a certain amount that you are sure is pretty close to what you ate (say you find the calories for chicken but it's for chicken cooked in olive oil and you're pretty sure the restaurant used butter), try googling "calories in chicken". There are a ton of other great calorie counting websites that have more extensive calorie databases. 

So try to estimate each item (guacamole, chicken meat, black beans) and just add it as you go; like checking off a grocery list.

I hope this is helpful~! There are a lot of people who are glad when they are eating little but don't think about the health concequences of it, so I think it's great to see you are interested in your health; that's wonderful~!

-Kat

I agree it is hard to calculate. I try to limit eating out but when I do I stick to what I KNOW. Such as no cheese, no sc, no gauc. I love the taco salad w/ fajita beef, lettuce, grilled onion/peppers, salsa for my dressing.

Also most larger restaurant have thier nutritional info online if you google it.

You have to be careful for the added butter, oil etc they use for flavoring. For the most part if I know I'm going out I do the best I can and/or call it a free day and get back on track the next day.

Good luck :)

Thanks for the tips! I will try just breaking it down and adding it all up separately. Or, maybe I'll just call it a free day and start again tomorrow, haha. I've never really been very diligent about logging exact calories, but, I figure if I'm serious about losing weight and getting healthier, I need to have an idea of how many calories I'm taking in everyday....

I usually estimate each item in the meal and then add about 50-100 calories for hidden oil and other cooking ingredients.

I eat out ALOT.  too much probably.  What I do is estimate how much I'm eating by the cup or tablespoons.  When I log them from CC, I may need to do conversion of oz or grams.  There are several website that will calculate the coversion for you.