Track fruits and veggies or not?

nj303

I track everything that goes into my mouth!! MFP has set a goal of 1800 calories per day. I try and hit 1500 instead. I started on 21 October 2012 @ 257 # and as of today (13 Jan 2013) weigh in @ 234.8. Not bad for 72 with COPD

nickiog

to the OP:

when i was on WW i had the etools and i tracked only my points foods on that one but on MFP i tracked everything mainly because i was curious as to how close they would be at the end of the day.

if you chose not to track your fruits and vegs. make sure you remind yourself that even if it says you have extra cals at the end of the day that you dont take that as a free pass to eat more. like another poster said, you pretty much have to pick the WW plan or the MFP plan and then track accordingly.


i lost 35 pounds in about 3 months on WW, got pregnant and had a baby and then lost an additional 30ish in 4 months on MFP for a grand total of about 60+/- lbs.

lucasriggs

Yes. Many fruit are very high in calories..its pure sugar. You need to track it.

bearwith

Absolutely - I made a veggie soup and I was kidding myself that it did not have any calls of any significance. If you are using things like root veggies and carrots - lots of carbs.

Also do not forget that fruit has lots of sugar - sugar is less easily absorbed from fruit but still adds up .

This does not meant that you hit the biccies - fruit and veg is far superior and should be the largest part of your diet.

DarrelBirkett

Track everything. Everything!

Its a good habit to get in to. That includes drinks as well. If you have milk in tea/coffee you need to track that as well.

Fruit is good but should be limited (and not all fruit is equal), Veggies are better.

alanindahlonega

In the mouth......in my diary!

In fact, posting fruits and veggies is my way if "bragging" to MFP friends that I am complying to the promise I made to myself!

Its not all about the cals.....a balance of carbs, proteins, potassium, and sodium is important also.

JDelphiki

Weight Watchers likes to manipulate what you eat by giving you lower or free points for healthy foods. The problem is, that at it's heart, WW is a Calorie restricting program. Allowing "freebies" to a group of people that might have restraint issues isn't a smart idea.

A few years ago if you ate a lot of fiber with your meal it could lower the points down to almost nothing. So people took it too far and started putting fiber powder in stuff that they shouldn't be eating, and they wondered why they didn't lose weight. So weight watchers changed their calculation so that you could only count up to 4g fiber at a time, and you could only get the benefits of that 4g once per day (if you ate high fiber bread, you could only eat that bread once use the fiber, after that one time you had to calculate points without it). This made it harder to game the system. Of course people just found a ton of fiber rich snacks and ate a ton of different ones to keep their points low.

Veggies were already free and so were most condiments. But Weight watchers as a group noticed that because food with fiber was so low in points people were avoiding (even lean) proteins. They changed their program again to include Protein, and Carbs into their calculation. Their new calculation reduced the amount of points for a lean piece of meat. But it also caused another problem (in testing the new program). Because they were now measuring carbs, a bunch of fruits shot up in point value. We all know that fruits are good for us, but people with low points would not reach for a banana, they would reach for a processed snack that hadn't gone up in points. So weight watcher's idea was to reduce the amount of calories you received every day and allow you to have unlimited fruit.

Remember what I said above about restraint?

alexbusnello

Even if something I ate or drank had no calories or anything, I still log it to see what I consumed that day.

Orient_Charm

Yes I do...

EdTheGinge

Log it all

JesterMFP

I choose not to add. WW fruits and veggies are free... I will need to eat alot of fruit and veggies to amount to the calaries/fat/sugars a piece of pie or something else would be. Fruit is good for you and its a good snack filler instead of candy/cookies/ice cream etc....SO...........I will not add them here.

Fruit is good for you, but it still contains calories and eating a lot of it can mean you're consuming a lot of calories, so if you're calorie counting, it makes sense to count them. It's my understanding that WW gives people lower calorie goals (albeit through the magical points system) because of the free fruits/veg thing. They expect people to consume a couple of hundred cals in fruit/veg, so they knock that off the base points goal.

In the end, it's up to you. Everyone has to find a way that works for them. If you don't count fruit/veg cals and find you're not losing, that might be something to look at.

MeeshyBW

Well, I took in 1,100 calories today… in NOTHING but fresh (non-processed) fruits and vegetables. I've never understood the whole "free" foods thing. They have calories and affect your macros…

Which is exactly why WW and Slimming World are fundamentally flawed.

I think people loose weight on WW because they end up eating more fruits and Vegetables or "free foods" as they are called than they would do normally.

If you eat or drink it, you log it. Thats my ethos.

jennifer_417

Did you eat it? Does it have calories? Log it!

slingshotsparro

I think if it is raw veg, it shouldn't count. Raw veg is so low calorie, that other than coffee, it is the only free food. It is more important to take in the vitamins and minerals in raw veg, that to cut out the 30 or less calories per serving. Am I really wrong?

grillingirl

I would track them...not only for calorie reasons but also to track the nutrition!

queenhiphop

I don't log JUST to see calories. I like to see my macros which are extremely important

dominoid747

I think if it is raw veg, it shouldn't count. Raw veg is so low calorie, that other than coffee, it is the only free food. It is more important to take in the vitamins and minerals in raw veg, that to cut out the 30 or less calories per serving. Am I really wrong?

It's dependant on the veg. Potatos and Parsnips and other starchy foods CAN be quite high in calories compared to come other vegetables and a lot of fruit is quite high. On WW, I would get through 3 or 4 bananas a day and I assumed the calories were minimal, in fact it's about 100 calories a banana so I'm being a bit more balanced with it now and sticking to one or two a day instead.

At the end of the day, it's down to what you want from your new food choices. I personally prefer to track everything, but that's for the nutrients as much as anything else.

KReduced

Well I didn't realize this was such a big deal! : ) thanks for replying and I'll start logging all my fruits and veggies! Thanks!

nguk123

I am drinking a green monster smoothie for breakfast and using almond milk the whole thing is about 60 cal if I am NOT counting the spinach, banana, and strawberries (or whatever other fruit).

So how many calories would it be if you add them in ? I'm guessing you would about double it.

projektai

I say log everything.

Not just for the caloric value, because there are calories in them, but for everything else in them. Fiber, carbs, etc.
Plus, if you ever wonder what you were eating a week ago because you're bored now, you just look back and see all of the delicious fruits and veggies you ate.