to measure or not to measure?

CeeRgee

I use small amounts of lots of different vegetables in salads, pita pockets, and mini pizzas. Is there a good way to estimate the calories without weighing them all out individually? I find it horribly tedious. I measure all starchy and high fat vegetables. Thanks!

gabrielleelliott90

The good thing is veg doesn't have many calories. You can guesstimate if it is a small amount, but if it isn't I'd measure.

andrewelee1983

A lot of times for small stuff like cherry tomatoes, grapes...etc, you can find an entry on here that lets you use the number as opposed to weight. That's what I do.

For stuff like spinach or leafy greens and the like you can try using tablespoons....that's harder. Possibly just do a day total, cut up a whole carrot or shred it and then just log the whole thing, adding parts to several meal items?

SimaN2014

What I do for that sort of thing (e.g. mixed salads), is I weigh a typical serving once, add it to my recipes, and just use that (e.g. one cup of small vegetables). In my case with the salads, I have my worst case plain salad (loaded with every veg), my worst case dressing (normal amounts of oil) and my worst case mixed salad (salad + nuts + dressing). If I'm eating out, I estimate how much salad + dressing I'm eating with respect to my home-made amount and use a guess. The most important thing in this equation are the nuts + any cheese + oil. Similar circumstances to your bits of veg.

It's important to count them, but if you are off upwards by 2 calories one day, and down by 2 calories another and do a couple flights of stairs that you didn't count in your exercise, it will all even out. I would measure out a portion of veg (e.g. a cup or whatever you normally do) once, and add it to your recipes.

I know some people are really finicky about measuring perfectly. For me, I aim to get the oils, starches, proteins as spot-on (or even over-estimated if I am eating out), and the veg I try to do, but not as precisely.

I think the important thing is to be honest. If one day you do a lot more veg, or add in some cheese / nuts /etc. then add those calories in for sure.

It's been working, I've been consistently losing, so it does work out in the end.

headofphat

If you want to genuinely lose the weight and change the way you think about food you will probably want to measure everything out. As you get further into it and you're losing weight and you get more and more repetition you probably will not need to measure it out, you'll just know.

Just my suggestion. We all tend to underestimate or give our food a conservative measurement if we're not using science. Just my 2 cents...good luck.

martinel2099

Yes, measure and weigh your foods appropriately.

Solids should be weighted, even peanut butter should be weighted.

Liquids in a measuring cup.

IT's debatable to to weigh/ measure prepackaged foods, I personally do not as just make sure I'm consistent.

jkwolly

The good thing is veg doesn't have many calories. You can guesstimate if it is a small amount, but if it isn't I'd measure.

I measure it all

Every little thing!

AskTracyAnnK28

A lot of times for small stuff like cherry tomatoes, grapes...etc, you can find an entry on here that lets you use the number as opposed to weight. That's what I do.

Or you can try to google how many calories are in it and create your own entry? (i.e. 1 spear of asparagus has 3 calories, etc.)

I don't make myself so crazy over the calories in little things like lettuce, etc. A cup of kale has 33 calories - I can walk that off going to the mailbox

cirellim

Seriously buy a digital kitchen scale and measure everything out according the grams per serving on the label. You can maximize results this way and after a while it doesn't become too tedious.

username301

I don't tend to measure small salads, or the tomato/cucumber I put in my sandwiches for a couple of reasons:

1) eating the salad makes me feel more full and helps stops me eating things I shouldn't. If I start to worry about how many calories are in cherry tomatoes, I may stop putting them in my food and thus end up more likely to have more high calorific foodstuff.

2) the information we put into the system about our lifestyle is a guesstimate. As such the margin for error in that, calculating the calories for exercise and the calories in everyday foods is going to be higher than the calories in mysmall salad.

3) life, it's short enough already, if I obsess about salad then unexpected setbacks are going to be even harder to overcome emotionally.

I make sure I log in a consistent way each day and that I am losing weight, if I stop losing weight I will need to reevaluate my calories but am not going to change a salad.

Completely understand why someone would want to log everything though!

ChrisJMellor

Rightly or wrongly I sorry of work on 50 calories per 100g and really don't bother worrying about it. Veg as a rule just doesn't have many calories unless you look at starchy stuff but as I'm low carb I don't do potatoes or things like that anyways. Fruit yes, there are sugars in there that are useful to know about.

One thing that may saying your choice is if you need to measure nutrients and not just calories, in that case, I would suggest to weigh.

Any use?

CeeRgee

ChrisJMellor -yes, makes sense. Username301- that's the direction I was going. Thanks to everyone for answering. I'm going to average out the small veggies but work harder on accuracy for the other stuff. I have a kitchen scale and I use it most of the time..

Ready2Rock206

If what you are doing works for you then don't sweat the small things. If you stall out and can't figure out why you're not losing - then start looking at the accuracy of your diary.

Josalinn

I have many areas in my life that I consider myself a finicky perfectionist. Measuring salad veggies is one that I had to let go (also omelette veggies.) This was for my own sanity.

Currently I am eating salad with shredded carrots, cucumber, spinach and feta. I use half a bag of spinach, which according to the bag is 2 cups. I bring the bag to work, dump half in a bowl, stick the rest of it in the fridge. As for the rest, they go into my trusty divided rectangle by Ziplock. I buy the pre shredded carrots and eyeball it into sixths. I put 1/6 into each large section of the rectangle, down the center. On one of the sides I put 1/4 of a cucumber, chunked. On the other side I put 1/6 of the feta ( i get a small container and it works out to be a little less than 1 serving). In the medium compartment i fill with fruit. This week pineapple, next week, undecided. And in the smallest compartment I put a hard boiled egg.

When i made omelettes every morning, I would chop up a large onion, 8 oz of mushrooms, and a bell pepper or two and freeze them in a gallon freezer bag. I'd figure out how many cups the whole thing made and how many calories the whole thing was and then divide it by half cups. Then I'd pull a half cup of the mix out for the omelette.

Neither of these measurements are perfect, but it saves me time and it saves me from stress. While I could figure out how many tablespoons or grams each type of vegetable was in the half cup I pull out of the freezer, I would go batsh*t.

So TL:DR do what is reasonable for you and don't sweat it. Stress can make you gain weight you know. :flowerforyou:

Renosu

Whew - good thread! As a newbie I have been having the same issue with my multi-ingredient salads. It takes longer to add every little ingredient than it does to make it and eat it! I ended up using a generic salad entry and entering the dressing or proteins separately.

Kalikel

It's a big pain in the butt for me, too.

I think newbies should measure everything for a while, just to get a really good idea. After that, you make the call.

Sometimes I measure, sometimes not. Measuring every little thing I eat is more obsessive than I wish to be. BUT, I don't attempt to eat up or down to a number, either. If you're doing the math and TDEE and all that, measuring might be necessary. If I go to the fridge and grab a few raspberries, I don't run for the laptop to record them. Fruits and veggies here and there won't make or break me. If you're doing the number thing, you kind of need to be sure you're under it.

Liftng4Lis

Do it once and put it in your meals, then each ingredient is transferred over and you can delete and or add on that particular day. I'm to anal to not be precise on each entry so this works for me.

AquaticQuests

......, and mini pizzas. Is there a good way to estimate the calories without weighing them all out .....

As a pizza lover myself I hold the view that pizza is the enemy, and I avoided them like the plague during my loss phase!

But more on the point, you can estimate the calories via MFP, and I try to overestimate rather than underestimate! Then if scale results are not as expected resume weighing to confirm what you are putting in is accurate!

As you continue logging daily, you quickly get a feel for what the calories and sizes are using comparable dishes on MFP even not with the exact same ingredients as what you made!

Personally I never weighed my food once, but with the overestimation and exercise I hit the goals!