do you need to count the calories in supplements

sharonburgess8

I was wondering if you needed to count the calories in my supplements? also, on my food log some of my entries have a green emblem next to them, what is that green emblem standing for please?

AnnPT77

Your body counts the calories in your supplements. Should you? 😉

Some people do. I don't. I kinda checked out the supplements I take, none of them amount to enough calorically to worry about. If I were using fish oil or something like that, or if you're talking about things like protein powder as supplements, things that might have more than single-digits calories, then I'd probably count them, if it were me.

I'd probably log supplements like vitamins if I was worried that I was coming up short, wanted to track those nutrients. However, some of the food entries in the database don't have accurate micronutrients, so it can look like we're short, when we're not. I've spot checked some of my days, plus try to use accurate entries, and know I tend to get the micros I need from foods, so I don't bother to log any vitamins I take on top of that as nervous nellie bet hedging.

By green emblem, do you mean the green check mark on some food entries? It means that several MFP-ers have clicked a box saying that the food's details (calories, nutrients) are correct, in their opinion. Does that mean they truly are correct? Higher odds, maybe, but they could be correct for that product 5 years back and it's now reformulated, or correct for that product in some other country because the site is international, or something like that. Best accuracy comes from checking details against an authoritative source the first time we log a food. After that, things we commonly eat stay in our recent/frequent foods, come up first when we search, so it isn't constantly checking everything.

I'm making this all sound harder and less reliable than it actually is, I think. It works plenty well enough, IMO. I don't think it takes me as much as 10 minutes a day to log foods, after getting practiced at it, and that seems like a small price to pay for staying at a healthy weight, in my case. 🤷‍♀️

yirara

Supplement here don't have nutritional information. Gaviscon which I sometimes need doesn't have nutritional info. Thus I have no idea what I'd be logging. If I could I would though.