Tracking fruit
shazia20
Posts: 18 Member
On 1200 calories would you track calories for fruit. Its healthy i know - but the amount of calories are quite high like a banana being 105 calories and this puts me off. Would I lose weight if i had 12 00 calories for everything else but had maybe 2 or 3 pieces of fruit a day without counting the calories.TIA
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On any calorie goal, including my quite-high calorie goal (for a li'l ol' lady in maintenance), I log fruit. I log everything, the only exceptions being something like a small lime wedge in my morning matcha, or a literal dash or two of bitters in my sparkling water. To me, simple-minded soul that I am, if I'm calorie counting, I should . . . actually count the calories, not just some of the calories.
On top of that, it's not super unusual for me to eat several hundred calories of fruits some days.
Why do you want to skip logging fruit?
We can't know whether you'd lose weight eating 1200 calories plus 2-3 pieces of fruit, because we know zero about you, about the characteristics that help predict calorie needs: Age, height, weight, daily life activity level, exercise type/frequency/duration, etc. If we knew that, we might be able to give you a guess, that's all.
There's a popular myth that all women need to eat 1200 calories or fewer in order to lose weight. It's just that, a myth. Some women do need to eat that little. (Those women tend to be smaller, older, sedentary, not very overweight, etc.)
Even as a 67-y/o woman of 5'5", low 130s pounds, sedentary outside of intentional exercise, I'd lose weight like a house afire at 1200 calories plus exercise calories, and at a pretty good clip on 1200 calories plus 2-3 servings of fruit. I admit I'm a mysteriously good li'l ol' calorie burner, but I'll bet you're younger, with more weight that you want to lose.
The only way to find out if you'll lose weight on 1200 plus 2-3 fruit is to try it for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycle) and see, honestly. Many women would lose weight doing that, but not all.6 -
i put my fruit on a food scale and weigh it by the grams5
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Log it would be my vote. Fruits are in fact good for you and most people don’t eat enough however keep in mind that they are higher in carbs so for you to be a little more aware of your full nutritional practices just log them. Do not be surprised at the end of a week or several months. Let’s say you eat 200 cals of daily fruit calories over just 30 days that would tally 30*200=6k calories. Not bad calories, but over time a significant amount of unaccounted calories.3
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I would log it. It adds up… it also depends on what type of fruit you are eating. For instance as you know- medium banana has approx 100 calories, a few dates or figs depending on weight are 30-60 calories each. (I can never stop at 1- so 5 later I have over 200 calories worth of fruit.) over time it adds up and if you are watching ever calorie.. it pays to calculate it all.2
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Most fruits and veggies should be logged. Things like onions, lettuce etc, not so much.2
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Are there any foods that are free from calories? I’m new to this so any advice would be great.0
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donnabrom43 wrote: »Are there any foods that are free from calories? I’m new to this so any advice would be great.
Pretty much just water. There are a few things that say zero calories on the label, but in the US the label is allowed to say zero if there are fewer than 5 calories for the named serving size. Therefore, you may see zero on a label of something like some vinegars.
You need nutrients to thrive, right? Nutrients bring calories along with them. Maybe think in terms of foods that pack in a lot of nutrition for the number of calories?1 -
Log it.
I saw Randall's had grapes on sale for 99c/pound. I got to the counter with nearly 8 pounds of grapes, lol, and I must have had as least 2 pounds in the last 24 hours. It may be fruit and mostly water, but that's still over 600 calories. Worth it imo!4 -
I log everything, so I vote to log it. Sure, bananas may have 100+ calories, but they're good for you.0
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On 1200 calories would you track calories for fruit. Its healthy i know - but the amount of calories are quite high like a banana being 105 calories and this puts me off. Would I lose weight if i had 12 00 calories for everything else but had maybe 2 or 3 pieces of fruit a day without counting the calories.TIA
Since unless you are very very short AND sedentary, you can eat more than 1200 calories and lose weight just fine, sure, you could likely stick to 1200 calories plus fruit.
As far as I'm concerned, it makes more sense to have a more reasonable daily calorie budget and log your fruit.
The 1200 Calorie Diet For Losing Weight: Myths vs Facts3 -
I would also log it. Those 3 servings of fruit could be 3-400 calories, which then puts you at potentially 1600 calories. Why wouldn't you track it?3
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My kcal target is all over the place. Minimum I have to eat is 1200. Maximum on sedentary days is 1600kcal. Every 1000 steps gives me 50kcal. I eat loads of fruit on active days, body needs fual. Do I weigh it on a daily basis? No. I just take note when I buy it. I don't buy more than 1400 kcal a week.0
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LOG IT ALL
Not logging a food group reminds me of the WW practice of "free foods" and Zero Point foods. Eat as much as you want of certain things (I.E. eggs) and they don't need to be tracked. But calories are still there.
I log everything, weigh everything (ok, I don't technically measure out my water but I know how much my containers hold so..) Another old WW habit (a good one this time)...if you bite it, you write it.5 -
You'd only be sabotaging your own efforts by not logging it, what's the point?
Weigh everything, be accurate and that's the only way that you're gonna guarantee results.
Your body doesn't care if its a healthy calorie or a bad one. You can eat 1000cals of bananas in a day or 1000 cals of chocolate in a day and you will still lose weight.
Skip weighing the 3 pieces of fruit? Say at 100 cals each for the sake of it - that's 300 over what you should be eating to hit your deficits... would you eat 300 cals in two chocolate bars and not bother to weigh them? (Hopefully not...!)1 -
So, it seems everyone is voting to weigh and track the calories in fruit (I am in agreement). This is helpful not only for the amount of calories that you plan to eat for any particular day, but also for knowing your caloric intake over time. This way, you can better tweak your diet (what you eat and the calorie count). This is especially important when you get closer to your goal weight.0
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Everything u eat and drink gets tracked.. Including every coffee, if you are a coffee drink1
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Live others have said .. log what you consume, all of it. as best you can.
Because ...
This is not WW, where you get a few types of food as free from tracking. This is a calorie counting ap.
PS .. some people prefer to look at what their macros stack up to be, but even that's calorie driven.1 -
Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Haha "coffee drinker"2 -
Is it possible 1200 calories is too low a goal for you? If you set your plan at 1400 or 1500 calories you would have a little leeway to enjoy that fruit you track, plus you would still likely lose weight.0
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May I ask your motivation for not tracking it? I ask bc depending on what that is, you may personally be better off not tracking it.
I’ll get to that in a minute, but first to your question about whether you’ll still lose weight. That depends on your personal calorie needs. It takes 3,500 calories to lose one pound of fat. So, for example, if your body maintains its weight at 1,700 cals a day, eating 1,200 means you’ll lose about 1 pound each week (a daily 500-cal deficit x 7 days). If this is you, and you eat, say, 300 calories of unlogged fruit each day, your daily deficit would be only 200 calories. In that case, it would take you about 2.5 weeks to lose 1 pound, instead of just 1 week. This was just to give you an example to show variables to consider. You’d most likely still lose, but there’s a strong chance it would slow your pace a bit. Also, keep in mind that this example assumes that your other calories that you’ve logged were all precise. It’s likely that even conscientious loggers are a bit off at times. Adding on unlogged calories leaves less wiggle room for unintentional mis-logs.
Back to my first point about your motivations. Meticulously tracking calories isn’t for everyone. For some, a general “eat less, move more” works beautifully. At the other side of the continuum, some people do best with logging every single thing they consume, every single day. Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint. Doing it in a way that’s sustainable *for you* is important. If you’d get sick of tracking calories if you had to log everything, deliberately not logging some foods would possibly be the better choice for you. Then this part of your life wouldn’t feel like such a chore to you (if that’s a kinda annoying practice to you). There are other possible issues with tracking too. For some ppl, meticulously tracking calories can trigger a feeling of being overly restricted, which exhausts them psychologically and/or triggers a binge. So there are some ppl for whom it’s not necessary and/or good to track everything. But because weight loss is a numbers game, not just a psychological process, if you go the less-meticulous tracking route, it would be a wise idea imo to do what you’ve already shown signs of: be calorie conscious of fruit. I’d personally rec tracking the fruits that are relatively high in calories and/or that you typically eat a large enough serving of to pass 80 or so calories. Some fruit, like strawberries and watermelon, are very low in calories. I eat massive servings of watermelon, and it still doesn’t add up to many calories.
So overall, I’d say do what makes the process something you don’t mind sticking with, but be aware of the math involved.
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In the world of counting calories, all calories count, simple really.0
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Yes, it all adds up. Have an apple with breakfast, grapes with lunch, and some berries for dessert after dinner - that might be 250-300 calories.
I log just about everything, including the vitamins I take in the morning (20 cal a serving) and the "zero sugar" lemonade I drink (10 cal a serving). I may skip logging a slice of tomato or a handful of lettuce because I know that's likely to be super low calorie and also those are usually served at a time when I can't weigh them. But then, I don't track every single step I take, so mathematically it comes out in the wash.
Realistically everything has calories except water (and black coffee and pure tea). The lowest calorie foods are a stick of celery, a leaf of lettuce, and those little packages of salted/dried seaweed (5 cals a package). So you gotta write it all down and be honest, or else how will you know?2
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