Tracking all fruit and veg?

gemtayls

Just wondering if everyone tracks every single piece of fruit and veg religiously and if not have they still had successful fat loss?
I just find it really annoying tracking every chunk of cucumber or half an onion and was thinking about reducing my Cals by 100 and not faffing around tracking salad green veg etc. Obvs potato’s / banana etc is different I just mean the very low cal stuff?
TIA

MelanieCN77

I tracked it all and lost weight on schedule and with no plateaus or surprises.

TonyB0588

I track everything I eat.

mmapags

It's food and it has calories. Why wouldn't you track it??

janejellyroll

Your body is going to record everything you eat. It's up to you whether or not you want to accurately log or not. I believe this could potentially work for people who don't eat many fruits and vegetables, but since I can eat hundreds of calories of them in a day it would be a terrible idea for me personally.

cmriverside

I created an entry named "small salad." I entered a bunch of my favorite salad ingredients, no dressing, no avocado, no cheese, no croutons, just vegetables. I gave it a weight.

When I eat mixed vegetables cold I'll use it, and weigh what I eat.

Otherwise, yeah, I weigh fruit and vegetables and enter them each time. Once you use an item it goes in your "Recents" list, makes it easy to re-use.

lemurcat2

When I'm tracking (I'm not now), I track everything (and certainly eat well over 100 cals of veg and fruit, even of just veg alone). However, I might not bother with something like a slice of tomato or lettuce on a sandwich (usually but not always), and I feel fine estimating amounts, since cals are low.

When I track, I do it at Cronometer, and one of the motivating things about tracking is I feel good seeing my nutritional goals met, so not tracking fruit and veg would be a big bummer. Even at MFP, however, I liked to be able to look and see how many veg and fruits I was eating, as that's an important part of my nutritional goals.

I don't find it more annoying to track low cal veg than anything else, and for me it's easier to track everything rather than pick and choose. (I do think the "small salad" idea is a good one.)

gemtayls

Yes creating the small salad is a great idea thanks I’ll give that a whirl.... I do use the recents etc it’s just a ball ache for me - I hate tracking but I know I have to haha! Thanks everyone who gave helpful replies

lynn_glenmont

I pretty much log everything. If I order a sandwich from some place that doesn't have nutritional information, and I have to mentally deconstruct and estimate amounts for logging, I might not bother logging the single lettuce leaf, thin slice of tomato or onion, and a little bit of pickle.

It's up to you how you handle it.

cwolfman13

When I was logging, I logged low calorie veg pretty loosely. I created a generic entry for "garden salad" that I used when I had a salad and then would just add whatever toppings like chicken or dressing or whatever on it's own.

gemtayls

Yeah that’s what does my head in it takes the enjoyment out of the food but I do realise it’s got to be done... I guess I was thinking along the lines of slimming world / weight watchers where you get the ‘free’ fruits and veg etc but it seems I’m gonna have to continue to track everything... oh well! Thanks guys.

cwolfman13

gemtayls wrote: »

Yeah that’s what does my head in it takes the enjoyment out of the food but I do realise it’s got to be done... I guess I was thinking along the lines of slimming world / weight watchers where you get the ‘free’ fruits and veg etc but it seems I’m gonna have to continue to track everything... oh well! Thanks guys.

At least loosely track them...I don't think it has to be as regimented as more calorie dense foods, but I eat a lot of veg and some fruit, so I at least wanted to log something, even if it wasn't some perfect amount.

The problem with comparing this to WW or whatever is that they have free foods, but also have a lower total overall points prescribed to make up for that...they also inflate points of other foods to compensate for "free foods". When you're talking about calories specifically, there really aren't any freebies.

gemtayls

Ahhh ok yes makes sense! Thanks 😊

cmriverside

...and after you do this for a while it's super fast and easy and for me it's a little game to make my macros fit and to hit under my saturated fats and to get enough Iron and fiber and Calcium, etc.

It's fun.

It only takes me a couple minutes per meal. Well worth it for the benefits I have gained by doing so.

80 pounds down, 12 years in Maintenance, very good health.

mjbnj0001

cmriverside wrote: »

I created an entry named "small salad." I entered a bunch of my favorite salad ingredients, no dressing, no avocado, no cheese, no croutons, just vegetables. I gave it a weight.

When I eat mixed vegetables cold I'll use it, and weigh what I eat.

Otherwise, yeah, I weigh fruit and vegetables and enter them each time. Once you use an item it goes in your "Recents" list, makes it easy to re-use.

I do something very similar: I created a recipe, "mixed salad veggies" that has a proportional mix of all my favorites. Then I log the amount consumed. Sure, it might vary a few calories from the real, precise, number, but the logging convenience is worth it. Likewise, when I cook with veggies, I enter them as used/eaten (i.e., a recipe with x amount of onions, carrots, celery, etc., into how many "portions" of x ounces, then figure how many portions consumed).

Fruit on the other hand (and for these purposes, tomatoes, cukes and other fruits that are commonly considered veggies are logged under veggies), I aim for precision, as they have more cals and sugars. Squash, potatoes, and other similar things I aim for some precision as well.

Since I'm not mixing rocket fuel here, I tolerate some inaccuracies to make the logging more convenient, and as long as the day's total cals is LESS than my budget, and the scale moves in the right direction, I'm content.

Since covid lockdown began, I'm down about 20lbs, which reclaims weight-loss territory I surrendered at the end of last year due to a number of challenging health circumstances. Overall, I'm between 70-80lbs down from my max. I have a good 50lbs more to go. My chief lockdown meal planning and logging is focused on ensuring enough protein, not too much carbs and not too much salt due to the limited palette of items we're getting delivered in our resupplies.

NovusDies

I am lazier than some people. I have logged countless veggie delight salads from Subway because I never bothered to create my own entry.

Ultimately you will develop some tricks to make logging smoother but I encourage you to spend some time logging everything the tedious way. It is important to learn your habits not rely on the habits of other people. I know the max amount of cooking spray I use is never more than 6g so that is what I log. I know the max amount of onions I put in a frittata is never more than 180g so that is what I log. I know this all works for me because I lose weight on schedule. If that changes I will return to logging every bite until I nail down the problem.

glassyo

I really thought this would be about weight watchers.

In the beginning I did weigh all my salad ingredients (which was basically just lettuce, tomato, and cucumber).

Now, I only have lettuce with some dressing to tide me over and I just log the dressing.

I'm in maintenance/trying to gain a little so I don't have to be as precise and I used to be and those few calories don't mean much.

I also log 200 quick add calories for handfuls of food I sneak or the extras I don't log (like the veggies!).

AnnPT77

gemtayls wrote: »

Yeah that’s what does my head in it takes the enjoyment out of the food but I do realise it’s got to be done... I guess I was thinking along the lines of slimming world / weight watchers where you get the ‘free’ fruits and veg etc but it seems I’m gonna have to continue to track everything... oh well! Thanks guys.

I'm going to risk going off on a tangent.

You're talking in these posts about counting being a "ball ache" and "it takes the enjoyment out of the food".

What goes on in your head is under your control.

Focusing on what a pain this is, as opposed to - say - focusing on how to make it easy, efficient, a no-brainer to do (which is pretty possible) . . . that's going to incline your thinking to stay in that "what a pain" rut. If I thought about how annoying it is to brush my teeth every single dog-gone day (more than once a day, at that!), I could probably talk myself out of doing it.

Sometimes it's just good to do the things we need to do for best results, try to get better/more efficient at them, and not ruminate on whether they're fun or not.

You can track loosely for a while, and see how that goes; or track tightly for a while to see how many calories veggies/fruits usually account for in your typical day, then loosen up; you can adopt a pattern of meals whose approximate calories you know will result in weight loss and repeat that pattern while not counting at all; or any number of other strategies.

If you decide to continue calorie counting while maintaining a "this is a pain, I hate this, it ruins eating for me" attitude . . . calorie counting may not be for you. For me, after having gotten fairly efficient at it, weighing/logging takes like 10 minutes a day, typically, and I get a big payoff from spending that time (almost 5 years at a healthy weight, after previous decades of obesity!). It's like brushing my teeth, just something I do, because it's good for me, and it takes only marginally more time than tooth-brushing.

I get it that it seems cumbersome at first, while figuring out how to do it. It will get more efficient, if you shoot for that. Or, you can pick another route.

Either way, best wishes for success!

gemtayls

Really appreciated your replies guys and your help.... I know you’re right and it probably is something I need to just get on with and just be more organised. I am definitely a lazy tracker but I like the brushing teeth analogy. I’ll remember that one next time I try cutting corners lol.

lemurcat2

I wonder if there are games you can create that would make it more fun. When I'm tracking trying to hit all my micronutrients (similar to trying to hit all your macros), and of course cals, is like a game for me, as someone else said above. I also enjoy weighing (often weigh even if I don't log), since seeing how closely I can predict the amount is fun, and chopping and then weighing actually tends to help me remember to do a mise en place, which makes the actual cooking process easier. Remembering numbers and putting them after also can be a memory test. Since all my normal ingredients are in recent (or the version of that at Cron, these days), the actual logging process is fast.

amusedmonkey

I track everything, even cloves of garlic and squeezes of lemon juice. If tracking them annoys you, you're on the right track - consider lowering your calorie goal a bit. Go back to your diary, see how many calories you usually average in vegetables (I would still track fruits because the margin of error is larger there), and you can reduce your allowance by that amount. If, along the way, your weight becomes less predictable, re-evaluate your average intake. You may need to go back to tracking when you're trying to lose the last few pounds if your progress stalls because there is less room for error the closer you are to your goal weight.

Edit: I'm of the opinion that the easier you make it for yourself the better. You don't need to do any specific thing if you are able to achieve your goal without it. As long as you are aware that tracking less (or even not tracking at all, for some people) may make your weight loss less predictable and you're fine with that, then by all means. Not everyone needs (or can sustain) the best practices. If you are still able to get the results you want with sloppy tracking and it makes dieting easier, then why not?