Unlimited veggies?

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505n8v
505n8v Posts: 20 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
some meal plans allow unlimited non starchy veggies, do you count your veggies as part of your daily calorie needs or do you enjoy them as much as you want?
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  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    edited March 2015
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    If you are doing a calorie counting diet like MFP then you count the vegetables as well.
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
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    Vegetables have calories.

    So they are not unlimited.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    You need to give up everything you think you know about dieting if you're calorie counting and just calorie count
  • ruggedshutter
    ruggedshutter Posts: 389 Member
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    I count them to an extent. I don't add in a leaf of lettuce on my hamburger but I'll add some if I'm eating a salad.
  • Terrytriesharder
    Terrytriesharder Posts: 50 Member
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    Add it all, veggies are surprisingly high in sodium and that can easily have odd effects if you aren't expecting it.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    505n8v wrote: »
    some meal plans allow unlimited non starchy veggies, do you count your veggies as part of your daily calorie needs or do you enjoy them as much as you want?

    If you're counting calories, count them ALL
  • LAWoman72
    LAWoman72 Posts: 2,846 Member
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    If you're on a specific plan that "allows" for unlimited non-starchy vegetables, then I'd say go with that. But if you're doing MFP (or simply counting calories as a total...doesn't have to be MFP to do that) then no, veggies won't be unlimited; they'll be part of your daily calorie count.
  • bhealthy1516
    bhealthy1516 Posts: 54 Member
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    I've been on plans before, where non-starchy veggies are free, I would count them sometimes and if you have some and you don't want to count it, leafy greens but I make smoothies so I put fruit in there too so I'm going to count it.
  • DaneanP
    DaneanP Posts: 433 Member
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    I go back and forth on this. A few years ago I had some success on Jenny Craig and this was how they operated. I don't feel that I abuse it so occasionally I will not count a handful of raw veggies or even enter my tossed salad (I always enter the dressing). It doesn't seem to have impacted my relatively new success so far. But I do find myself adding them in more and more over time. But it isn't something I stress out about. If I'm going to forget to log something, I'd prefer it be a veggie than a slice of bread. ;)
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
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    505n8v wrote: »
    some meal plans allow unlimited non starchy veggies, do you count your veggies as part of your daily calorie needs or do you enjoy them as much as you want?

    Vegetables have calories so yes I would log them. I would still eat as much as I wanted and it would fit my calorie goal.
    I would not stress if I had a few extra green beans or a single lettuce leaf that didn't get logged occasionally.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    I eat so many veggies most days, it would wipe out my deficit... so yes...
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    vegetables have calories. therefore, they are counted.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited March 2015
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    I eat as many veggies as I want--in fact, I usually make an effort to eat extra veggies. However, that does NOT mean that I don't log or count them. I think not logging them or counting them is weird. My reasoning is (1) if you are logging the goal is to know how many calories you are eating, and non starchy veggies have calories; and (2) I am not logging only to count calories or restrict myself to a certain calorie number, but to understand how my diet affects me and to try to achieve certain nutrition goals, one of which is to get a variety of veggies, ideally at every meal. If I didn't log veggies, how could look back to see how successful I'd been?
  • CA_Underdog
    CA_Underdog Posts: 733 Member
    edited March 2015
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    It depends--are you calorie counting OR following some other meal plan?

    If you're calorie counting, count them. If you're following some other meal plan, then you should ask on that other meal plan's forum how to handle them. Usually, other meal plans have some extra restrictions to counter-act the several hundred calories in vegetables they're not counting.
  • bainsworth1a
    bainsworth1a Posts: 313 Member
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    I also go back and forth on this one. Today I had a big salad so I counted the romaine lettuce which is actually not bad at all. but the rude awakening is 4 green olives are 25 calories and 4 kalamata olives are 50 calories. not to mention the salad dressing.

    I was on ww for many years and they do not make you count green beans broccoli etc. I did not get fat from eating too many green beans but I agree with what someone said about the sodium content of canned veggies so I take that into consideration. AND if I eat a cup or more of something I definitely add that in to my diary for the day.
  • booksandchocolate12
    booksandchocolate12 Posts: 1,741 Member
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    CA_Underdog wrote: »
    It depends--are you calorie counting OR following some other meal plan?

    If you're calorie counting, count them. If you're following some other meal plan, then you should ask on that other meal plan's forum how to handle them. Usually, other meal plans have some extra restrictions to counter-act the several hundred calories in vegetables they're not counting.

    ^^This. Recently I've begun double-tracking.....I log my food here, and on Weight Watchers.

    In my WW tracker, I do log the non-starchy veggies, even though they are "zero points" because I want to make sure I'm getting in enough servings. Not everyone does, though, figuring "they have no points; why bother?"

    In my MFP diary, I count the calories of everything. I don't leave out the non-starchy veggies just because I know that on WW they are "free". (They're not really "free", but that's another topic).

    IMO, not a good idea to mix plans.


  • arditarose
    arditarose Posts: 15,573 Member
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    I weigh all my veggies. I've even subtracted some (but kept the protein) so I could get more dessert :)

    I don't weigh my lettuce or spinach though. Personal preference.
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
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    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    I eat as many veggies as I want--in fact, I usually make an effort to eat extra veggies. However, that does NOT mean that I don't log or count them. I think not logging them or counting them is weird. My reasoning is (1) if you are logging the goal is to know how many calories you are eating, and non starchy veggies have calories; and (2) I am not logging only to count calories or restrict myself to a certain calorie number, but to understand how my diet affects me and to try to achieve certain nutrition goals, one of which is to get a variety of veggies, ideally at every meal. If I didn't log veggies, how could look back to see how successful I'd been?

    They are definitely unlimited for me as well.
  • JoRumbles
    JoRumbles Posts: 262 Member
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    I count them but I usually guess the amount- ie I don't weigh broccoli, cabbage, lettuce etc. I can afford to do this as I have my daily limit set to 1,200 and can probably get away with 1,400 anyway. As someone else said, eating large amounts of broccoli wasn't what made me fat. I pile my plate high with my non-starchy veg or salad.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
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    If you're using MFP, everything counts.

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