unlimited veggies

rybo

This "debate" is funny. If a person truly ate unlimited spinach, lettuce, broccoli, kale, cucumbers, carrots...they would be so full and not even close to going over on calories.

If you ate your caloric intake in other foods & then went 100 over in veggies, it's not the veggies that caused the weight gain.

If you would have eaten 500 calories in veggies first, you would be too full to probably even get within 200 cal of your goal.

Deipneus

i know the term 'unlimited' is a bit loose, but do people eat veggies and not bother to log them?

35% of my calories comes from vegetables so if I didn't count them, I'd be nowhere near my daily caloric budget.

littlesis1962

I log everything I eat. I live by the words of a very wise woman who once told me "a calorie is a calorie, not matter where it comes from" and the "you bite it, you write it" rule. Sometimes it's not always pretty but I have lost 24 lbs since joining mfp a relatively short time ago and man I feel fantastic!!! Good luck! :bigsmile:

llkilgore

I weigh and log veggies but don't limit the serving sizes of the non-starchy sort. I eat however much I want and then log what I eat, so in that sense they're unlimited.

littlelaura

I log everything.

sunshyncatra

Veggies have calories, so I log them. I'm not overly concerned with getting the serving size correct with low cal things like lettuce and celery, though.

SLLRunner

This "debate" is funny. If a person truly ate unlimited spinach, lettuce, broccoli, kale, cucumbers, carrots...they would be so full and not even close to going over on calories.

If you ate your caloric intake in other foods & then went 100 over in veggies, it's not the veggies that caused the weight gain.

If you would have eaten 500 calories in veggies first, you would be too full to probably even get within 200 cal of your goal.

This I agree with. :laugh:

Flabulousss

Sounds a bit like Eat to Live, where you eat 1lb raw & 1lb cooked non-starchy veg a day... But hardly anything else. I only lasted a week.

Veggies do add up, though I didn't count them much years ago when I was trying to eat more of them. Now I could eat 2 packs of frozen veg a day at about 200 calories each. They're not really that filling. And then there's all the fresh veg I eat... It wouldn't be hard at all to go over with them.

hookilau

So I tried this yesterday.

EPIC fail!!! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

I got me a bowl of raw broccoli florets and some dip...weighed out 4 oz into a bowl.
Ate till I thought I would burp up little green flowery things. :sick:

Then weighed the remainder.
I only ate TWO measly ounces :noway: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

To be fair, I had 1 oz of veggie dip with it made with full fat greek yogurt.

I'd venture to say that safely, for me, the poster who said it's unlikely one will overeat on veggies was on the money :drinker:
Not only that, in light of this thread and my recent tracking, I've noticed that I can eat up to 50-60 g of carbs from raw veggies and not have my blood sugar leave the 115mg/dl range. I anticipated a slower response, so I tested up to 5 hr PP and low and behold, no spike.

Hmph :ohwell: Time to re-think my macros :blushing: :laugh:

ETA: thanks MityMax!!!!:drinker: this opens up a whole new world for me!

NonnyMary

the benefit of logging in low calorie foods like veggies is to review your diary to see that you ate some during the week, if you are trying to include a wide range of foods in your diet.

NonnyMary

Broscience at it's finest.

i agree

NonnyMary

If it passes your lips it goes in the log. Veggies aren't free calories and depending on what your budget is they can add up. Even an extra 100 calories every day will throw your weight off.

Actually if it is green veggies (broccoli, kale, spinach, asparagus)......and not drowned in dressing.....just steamed and seasoned with salt/pepper
Then I say do it....pound them down and go 500 calories over your daily target

if you go 500 calories over in a day x 7 - it will mean a 1 pound a week difference in weight gain/loss. not a good idea to encourage that, imo.

leonaedithlewis

If it passes your lips it goes in the log. Veggies aren't free calories and depending on what your budget is they can add up. Even an extra 100 calories every day will throw your weight off.

Actually if it is green veggies (broccoli, kale, spinach, asparagus)......and not drowned in dressing.....just steamed and seasoned with salt/pepper
Then I say do it....pound them down and go 500 calories over your daily target

You have a point if your goal is good health beyond the numbers on the scale. I am guilty of neglecting the log them, especially when they are steamed, without butter, on the side. But also, I have plateaued in my weight loss goals, so maybe more attention to detail is a good idea. Eat 'em and track 'em.

samammay

I weighed and logged the spinach in my salad today. I ripped a piece in half to get to exactly 5.0. I might have issues.

leonaedithlewis

Pretty sure the idea of unlimited veggies comes from WW. All WW Point + system is is a calorie deficit weight loss program with rounding errors.

The idea behind unlimited veggies in WW is to get people to consume more of them so they arent spending all of their points on snacks because they are still hungry.

Yes, veggies have calories and in theory they could offset your goals by X amount. Will that happen? Probably not because if you are eating 500 calories of steamed broccoli, you are probably pretty full and not eating 2000 calories of deep dish pizza at 10pm because your 750 calorie dinner didnt fill you up.

Should you log your veggies? Yeah. Will it break your diet if you dont? Probably not.

This is the best answer so far.

meeper123

I log them shrug

Ang108

i know the term 'unlimited' is a bit loose, but do people eat veggies and not bother to log them?

I log mine.....
But the thing to keep in mind is that with veggies (like broccoli).....most, if not all of their carbs cancel out, because they are made up of fiber.

So you can basically eat veggies non-stop and not gain weight.....more likely the opposite because the amount of calories you burn digesting them is gonna be more than what they put in you.
And I am speaking of broccoli, asparagus, spinach, kale, etc.....

I am surprised that this rubbish is still perpetuated. There is not one food item on this planet that " Burns " more calories than it introduces into the body.

kyleekay10

I log everything I eat. Especially because the macros in veggies are important to me. It only takes like 10 seconds longer to input your veggies along with whatever you're eating, so no big deal.

MityMax96

i know the term 'unlimited' is a bit loose, but do people eat veggies and not bother to log them?

I log mine.....
But the thing to keep in mind is that with veggies (like broccoli).....most, if not all of their carbs cancel out, because they are made up of fiber.

So you can basically eat veggies non-stop and not gain weight.....more likely the opposite because the amount of calories you burn digesting them is gonna be more than what they put in you.
And I am speaking of broccoli, asparagus, spinach, kale, etc.....

I am surprised that this rubbish is still perpetuated. There is not one food item on this planet that " Burns " more calories than it introduces into the body.

celery??

MityMax96

Here is an article talking about the "negative calorie" food myth:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4322
Go ahead and read it.

Now the point I will make about that is this.....
This guy goes through the process of saying they don't really exist.....

So he talks about the thermic effect in regards to food

The next thing to understand is what's called the thermic effect of food. This is the rise in metabolism needed to digest it. We all have a resting metabolic rate, when we're not doing anything, and that's what gives our test man the BMR of 1,607 calories. But when we exercise or our body takes on some other duty, such as digesting food, that rate rises. Thermic effects are very different depending on the food, and just as different depending on the individual person. Fat, for example, is really easy to digest, so it has a low thermic effect and usually contains a lot of calories; thus fatty foods are (in general) a poor choice for weight loss. At the other end of the scale are foods that are high in protein. Proteins have to be broken down into amino acids in order to be digested, and doing so takes energy. Similarly, foods containing complex carbohydrates and fiber require extra work for your body to reduce them into the needed building blocks. The body has to call upon additional biochemical resources to digest such foods, so high-protein foods and high-fiber foods often have a high thermic effect.

Then after that, he negates his argument by saying this::

However, the possibility that some foods, under ideal circumstances, can be negative calorie for some people is not discounted. The fact is that a negative calorie food does fall within the range of possibility, in the leanest people, with the lowest insulin resistance, and with the exact right food. Celery is often described as the poster boy of negative calorie foods, and it's true that this is probably the best candidate. Celery is almost all water, so it has very few calories to begin with; and what it does have is mainly fiber. The unraveling and digesting of fiber does have a high thermic effect. For a few very lean, very healthy people, eating celery may actually reduce their daily calorie count. But if and when it does, we're probably talking only a single digit number of calories. Other foods often cited as negative calorie, such as some citrus fruits, are much less likely than celery to ever actually be negative calorie in the real world.

Ok, then he comes back and makes the argument.....well those foods that are candidates for "negative calorie" foods don't satiate your
hunger....so you will just eat other stuff...

Another problem with foods with high thermic effect is that most of them are not very satiating. You can eat celery for an hour and still feel hungry. To trigger the biochemical reactions that tell your brain that it's happy and well fed, you have to eat some of those foods that are disappointingly high in calories and low in thermic effect. This is one reason why cravings are usually for those yummy foods high in fat.

That is not the point, you are rewriting the argument.....the fact is that yes, if you were to eat just celery, it would result in negative
calories.....
The minute you start including other foods to validate your point...then your point is no longer valid.

Which this is my point.....So for me....I think anybody can fill out their daily diaries, and hit their calories....whatever that is.
And if they have 3 servings of brocolli, but don't include that in their diary.....then 5.5 weeks down the road, they will not be 1 pound
heavier than what they otherwise would have been.

Read the article I posted by Lyle McDonald.

KANGOOJUMPS

silly
log it all