Do you include/count calories from fruits &a veggies?

AnnPT77

Ericnutrition wrote: »

So if you make a normal-sized salad with five ingredients (say lettuce, cucumber, tomato, carrots, onions), do you really want to spend the time to weigh each item? I doubt it.

Weighing lettuce indicates an unhealthy compulsion. Enjoy life!

Nah.

I eat salads the size of a small village. It takes literally seconds to put the bowl on the scale, tare, add the lettuce and note it, tare, add the tomatoes and note it, tare, . . . etc. Last salad - just the lettuce, tomatoes, onion, cucumber - was 110 calories. Seems worth counting, and not even remotely unhealthily compulsive.

If you eat dainty little salads, that's different.

OP, while I find it easiest and most informative to weigh everything (at home), it matters how many vegetables you eat, of what types, and whether you like having accurate data to track your calorie needs vs. being more experiimental/approximate. I love my veggies/fruits. Nearly every day, I eat several hundred calories of them - over 400 yesterday, for example. It would be foolish of me not to track them. If someone only eats a couple of lettuce leaves and a tomato slice, no big deal.

seltzermint555

Try to forget about Weight Watchers points all together. This is a whole different method of calculation.

I log all fruit and most vegetables, like others have said, in time you become more comfortable with it. I'll never log a leaf of lettuce and slice of tomato on a sandwich. I'll always log the cup of frozen chopped spinach in my homemade quesadilla, and any oil used to cook it, if applicable.

hesn92

For the most part yes. I wont log a slice of tomato and lettuce on my burger for example. I don't log thr small handful of lettuce I put on my tacos. Etc. it's negligible. But in general yes you should log your fruits and vegetables.

alexiam1493

Thanks all for your responses! Very helpful- I knew to count a banana or avocado but I was really wondering about the tomatoes, onions, lettuce I put on a sandwich. But i got the answer. I'll just save 20-25 calories for those extra veggies & fruits that aren't too significant to log

cwolfman13

Ericnutrition wrote: »

So if you make a normal-sized salad with five ingredients (say lettuce, cucumber, tomato, carrots, onions), do you really want to spend the time to weigh each item? I doubt it.

Weighing lettuce indicates an unhealthy compulsion. Enjoy life!

When I logged, I just used a "garden salad" entry I created in the recipe builder where I weighed things out and built the recipe once...and then just used that and figured it was close enough...but it's still calories, and they count, so I logged them. My garden salad without dressing was around 50 calories as I recall.

Lillymoo01

I eat up to 10 serves of vegetables a day and 2 serves of fruit. Of course I weigh and count them. Otherwise I'd be overeating.

Seffell

Start counting them, and depending on the numbers apply common sense to see if you should continue counting them.

On average I eat a big chunk of my daily calories in the form of fruit and veg. So it makes sense to count them.

JRSINAZ

I count everything except maybe 100 grams of lettuce haha. A piece of fruit like a pear, banana or peach can be 100 calories. It adds up. Still a much better choice than a starchy food.

Alatariel75

I eyeball my veg (save for the starchy ones) but I still track them. Not only for day to day calories, but also so I know what the heck I ate on a given day. I recently went back through my diary at a time when I was most successful, so I could remind myself what I was doing right. If I'd not logged my veggies etc, it would have been a patchier diary to review.

theabsentmindednurse

I am a vegetarian.
Everything is counted.'
I put my regular salads and soups in my recipes so i know the exact calories and log it that way.
Much quicker and easier than logging every individual item.

And as others have mentioned. Calories are calories.

karahm78

I log them and if home ill weigh (yes even salad using the bowl/Tare/repeat method. In addition to calories I also track my fiber so I like to include fruit and veg.

I used to be a huge WW fan but the free fruit and veg sabotages and no longer meets my goals. My dad is currently making bowls of nice cream out of bananas using this Yonanna machine that people in his group told him about (ZERO POINT!!) Of course his losing has stalled :-/

estherdragonbat

I find that I may not always weigh out or log vegetables I grab to snack on like a handful of cherry tomatoes or a chunk of English cucumber sliced, but I also don't eat either in large enough quantities to really make much of an impact. The 15-30 calories I didn't log probably got burned off by slicing the vegetables. If I'm doing a salad from a recipe, I'll weigh everything out, though.

whosshe

Fruit I weigh, veggies I guesstimate. Unless it's frozen vegetables they have quite a bit of calories.

kimny72

I eyeball low cal veggies. I weigh fruit and higher cal veggies. It all gets logged

estherdragonbat

Because first I don't count the lettuce, then I don't count the salsa, then I don't count the croutons, and then I'm posting here wondering how long this plateau is going to last. It's not that logging or not logging the salad makes a difference to my daily calories, so much as it gets me into the mindset that logging lower-calorie food isn't necessary. Until my diary looks like I'm barely getting 1100 calories because I'm not counting the rest. Again, it's not the lettuce that's the problem. It's the mental shift.

TonyB0588

BusyRaeNOTBusty wrote: »

Fruit yes, veggies usually no. It's not worth the effort to log 7 calories of spinach (which is a whole salad's worth).

I count everything. It really isn't much effort to click a box next to an item when selecting the foods that made up a meal.

sarahthes

I guesstimate all but the really calorie-dense stuff like avocado or potato. If I'm plateauing it's because I ate 3 chocolate bars after dinner, not because I logged 100 cals of pears instead of 115 cals.

SCoil123

I guesstimate some veggies but not fruit. My apples I eat every day are 80-110cals. Being that I'm close to goal and have a 250cal daily deficit two apples could completely undo it if I didn't log them

Lillymoo01

Ericnutrition wrote: »

Who knew my little comment would get such a reaction.

So your goal is 1,700 calories. At dinner, other than the salad, you're at 1,625 calories. God forbid you don't count the lettuce and spinach and whatever, and go over and eat 1,725 calories that day. Guess what? You're not gaining weight!

Like I said, enjoy life!

You are smart enough to realise some track for more than just calories aren't you? You know, I really like to know how much iron, magnesium, potassium, fibre etc I am getting in a day and how can I know without weighing and correctly logging? Especially spinach which is low calorie wise but high nutrition wise. You do what you want if it works for you but to accuse others of having eating disorders because they track things like that is just wrong on so many levels.