The Salad Bar for lunch
chrissywelsh10
Posts: 66 Member
I heaped a load of veg into a small salad bar container. (7 inch circle)
Quinoa
Roasted courgette - with olive oil
chickpeas curried
boiled cauliflower
Shredded carrot
couscous
sunflower seeds
cucumber with dill
Sweet potato
Eaten half of it... and here is the rub... no way do I know how to log this.
I have eyeballed it & used some "starbuck roasted vegetable bowl" guides but I have no clue and I don't have a scale.
Logged as 475 calories (even though there is half left as i don't want to under log)
I figure I have to chalk this up to experience,... but at my work there is only the canteen and this salad bar, how do other people do this?... there must be a way to log it or things to steer clear off from a salad bar?
Any advise?
Quinoa
Roasted courgette - with olive oil
chickpeas curried
boiled cauliflower
Shredded carrot
couscous
sunflower seeds
cucumber with dill
Sweet potato
Eaten half of it... and here is the rub... no way do I know how to log this.
I have eyeballed it & used some "starbuck roasted vegetable bowl" guides but I have no clue and I don't have a scale.
Logged as 475 calories (even though there is half left as i don't want to under log)
I figure I have to chalk this up to experience,... but at my work there is only the canteen and this salad bar, how do other people do this?... there must be a way to log it or things to steer clear off from a salad bar?
Any advise?
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Replies
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Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!6
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DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
Ya, this is how I'd do it - just make best guesses at quantities of each item.
Also, after all this time, I kind of have a sense of how full I am after a certain amount of calories from certain types of food. If I log after dinner, I'll say to myself, yes, that did feel like 400 or 600 or 800 calories worth of food.1 -
I eyeball everything and log separately though. 475 seems low though, considering that there's seeds, potato, couscous, chickpeas, quinoa and oil.6
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When I eat a salad bar, I estimate my portions. The veggies are pretty negligible, so lets worry about the grains, seeds, chickpeas and sweet potatoes. Based on the size of your bowl, this is what I would likely think the portion sizes would be. But, that all depends on how much you put in of each ingredient. Remember, 1 cup of grains is roughly the size of a tennis ball.
1 c. Quinoa - 225 calories
1 c. Couscous - 175 calories
1 Tbsp. Sunflower Seeds - 100 calories
1/2 c. Chickpeas - 200 calories
2 c. Veggies - 100 calories
Total: 800 calories
So, based on my estimates, if you only ate half of that, it would be around 400 calories.
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I hit the salad bar every day for lunch. It was the biggest change I made to my diet when I decided to lose weight, and it was very helpful in that process.
By logging each ingredient separately (as best I could), it gave me an idea of what I really wanted/needed on my salad. I had been piling sunflower seeds and dried cranberries onto my salad at first, but when I saw the calorie difference they made, I decided I didn't like them enough to waste a few hundred calories on just those two ingredients. It can be eye-opening if you break it down.8 -
Am I the only person wondering: "Your work has a salad bar?"9
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DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.0 -
Am I the only person wondering: "Your work has a salad bar?"
Ha, mine does. A great perk here is that they have free lunch for us everyday (and dinner when we work late)...big salad bar, in-house catering with lots of choices. It's pretty nice...although I realize most people don't have that.
Honestly, it's a reason new employees here tend to gain weight...free and unlimited food.5 -
DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.
That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.3 -
yeah- quite probably higher...a good half of your list are calorie bombs.2
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Find volume-based listings for the stuff you added and guesstimate the volume you added. The leafy greens, cauliflower, carrot, cucumber will be close to nil, but the other stuff is very calorie dense.1
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DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
Yeah this is what I do too. Theres a grocery store down the road that has a hot food bar and a salad bar, so Ill get a salad and some roasted veggies. I just log each item (over estimating a little bit) separately. It hasnt impacted my weight loss thus far.2 -
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I brought my food scale to my office and weighed the individual components of my salad for about a week.
Then, I added the individual components of my salad bar choices into MFP "my meals" as a work cafeteria salad.
Now, I simply select this meal when I log on MFP, and it puts all the individual components in my diary. It's quick and easy to remove an item I didn't select that day, or to modify the weight of an item if I took more or less of it that day.
It took some time to set up, but I eat a salad almost everyday at my work cafeteria. It was well worth the time invested upfront. It makes logging lunch much easier and more accurate. It's shocking how many calories are really in some salad bar items!5 -
Salads are the move1
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AllSpiceNice wrote: »I brought my food scale to my office and weighed the individual components of my salad for about a week.
Then, I added the individual components of my salad bar choices into MFP "my meals" as a work cafeteria salad.
Now, I simply select this meal when I log on MFP, and it puts all the individual components in my diary. It's quick and easy to remove an item I didn't select that day, or to modify the weight of an item if I took more or less of it that day.
It took some time to set up, but I eat a salad almost everyday at my work cafeteria. It was well worth the time invested upfront. It makes logging lunch much easier and more accurate. It's shocking how many calories are really in some salad bar items!
I do this as well for our work salad bar. Just swap out the protein choice for the day. Veggies remain the same unless they're out of something.2 -
DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.
That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.
Got a little experiment for you. Grab your scales, a cup and some flour. Get a cup of flour and pour it into a bowl and weigh it. Now grab another cup of flour and weigh it. Donit a number of times. You will rarely get the same weight. Now grab some frozen veges or something and do the same thing. Does a cup of frozen veges weigh the same as a cup of flour and how much difference are you getting from one cup to the next? With solids the volume can include a lot of air and you rarely put in the same amount each time.
You should weigh all solids and only use volume for liquids regardless of whether you live in the US or elsewhere.2 -
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I've found that any time I eat a salad "out" somewhere it will be much higher in calories. I don't know why but it always is. Unless it's just lettuce basically with cucumbers and tomatoes of course.1
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Lillymoo01 wrote: »DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.
That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.
Got a little experiment for you. Grab your scales, a cup and some flour. Get a cup of flour and pour it into a bowl and weigh it. Now grab another cup of flour and weigh it. Donit a number of times. You will rarely get the same weight. Now grab some frozen veges or something and do the same thing. Does a cup of frozen veges weigh the same as a cup of flour and how much difference are you getting from one cup to the next? With solids the volume can include a lot of air and you rarely put in the same amount each time.
You should weigh all solids and only use volume for liquids regardless of whether you live in the US or elsewhere.
You do realize this has nothing to do with what I said or the question the OP asked. If you want to go in the kitchen and start randomly weighing things, have at it.5 -
DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.
That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.
I'll just leave this here for you...
http://www.differencebetween.net/science/mathematics-statistics/difference-between-fluid-ounces-and-ounces/0 -
Lillymoo01 wrote: »DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.
That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.
Got a little experiment for you. Grab your scales, a cup and some flour. Get a cup of flour and pour it into a bowl and weigh it. Now grab another cup of flour and weigh it. Donit a number of times. You will rarely get the same weight. Now grab some frozen veges or something and do the same thing. Does a cup of frozen veges weigh the same as a cup of flour and how much difference are you getting from one cup to the next? With solids the volume can include a lot of air and you rarely put in the same amount each time.
You should weigh all solids and only use volume for liquids regardless of whether you live in the US or elsewhere.
1 oz of food by weight in the US is different from 1 oz of food by volume though. Like, ounces by weight can be converted to grams (1 oz = 28g although it's sometimes rounded to 30g). You can weigh in ounces. It's not as precise on most scales but it's still a valid unit of measure. Also, 1 oz by volume is not a valid measurement for solid foods unless you haven't got anything else to measure with in which case it will at least come closer than eyeballing.2 -
Everyone is missing the point of my post. Please read the post to which I was responding and quoted. That was my only point.1
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OP - if this is a one time thing, just quick add a swag guess and what happens happens. Moving forward if the salad bar is the best or only option, you need to learn what serving sizes look like for these foods. Healthy or whatever, quinoa and beams can add up fast.0
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Lillymoo01 wrote: »DebLaBounty wrote: »Here's the painstaking way I've done it: log each item separately. For instance, I record 1/4 cup chickpeas, one carrot, 1 oz. cauliflower, 1/2 of a cucumber, 1 T sunflower seeds, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I'm still inaccurate but I am trying to get in the habit of recording as well as I can. I think I'm developing an eye for what an ounce of food looks like because I've been using a scale at home for awhile now. Don't give up the salad bar!!
I think I'm stating the obvious here, but an ounce is a unit of weight, not volume, so it's not really something you can eyeball across different types of foods.
That's just wrong. In the U.S. it can be either. There are 8 oz in a cup. That's volume. There are 16 oz in a pound. That's weight. This was originally based on the volume and weight of water.
Got a little experiment for you. Grab your scales, a cup and some flour. Get a cup of flour and pour it into a bowl and weigh it. Now grab another cup of flour and weigh it. Donit a number of times. You will rarely get the same weight. Now grab some frozen veges or something and do the same thing. Does a cup of frozen veges weigh the same as a cup of flour and how much difference are you getting from one cup to the next? With solids the volume can include a lot of air and you rarely put in the same amount each time.
You should weigh all solids and only use volume for liquids regardless of whether you live in the US or elsewhere.
bwahaha.. Picturing someone in line at the salad bar with their portable scale.0 -
Am I the only person wondering: "Your work has a salad bar?"
Seriously! I'm jealous too
OP, when I had the luxury of a salad bar not far from my office, I'd cook chicken (or whatever lean protein you like) at the beginning of the week and just bring a portion of that to add to my salad everyday. Oh and I always stuck to vinegar and olive oil for dressing, but that's probably a no-brainer.0 -
500 is probably a safe bet for half, but you'd probably be pushing 600 calories depending on the total WEIGHT of the salad. You got a lot of high cal foods, but with decent nutrients. Quinoa is pretty high cal being appox 120 cals per 30 grams.0
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