How many cals do you log for salads?

Weigh each item and log it....

This is what I do

I weigh each ingredient separately and log it.

If you didn't want to go to the trouble of weighing all the ingredients every time (say, only weighing calorie dense stuff like cheese, dressing etc like you say) then it would at least make sense to weigh it the first time you make it, so you at least have an idea of what your typical salad would be. I personally like to weigh everything, but I can't see you running into too much trouble making a rough guess with things like cucumber, lettuce etc, especially if you do a trial run.

I don't know that I could keep up being that careful.

I measure the cheese/nuts/dressing/high calorie things but I eyeball all greens and veggies (carrots/peppers/cukes/etc.)

I hardly ever enter a recipe. I just guesstimate using someone else's when I do a search. For me personally part of being successful is being able to reasonably accomplish it. Maybe when everything is more routine I'll find measuring every item and entering every recipe more doable. No promises, lol. There is limited time/energy to make changes - pick a few, get that in a routine, pick a few more, etc. That is my method anyway.

Question - is there a site you can enter ingredients and then get a nutritional (or just calorie) count for the food based on volume, not portion. I can measure out one cup. I am not able to look at a big pot of food and see if my portion is 1/10 or whatever. I suppose I could figure out how many cups were in the large serving but I don't see that happening :P

Enter each item line by line, log it all. A calorie is a calorie, they all count.

My homemade chicken caesar salad that I'm having for lunch is 543 calories and that's what I log it as. What a weird question.

Weigh each item and log it....

This is what I do

me too

I log all of them :-)

Seriously, use a scale because measuring salad with a measuring cup is crazy-inaccurate.

weigh each item and log it. Wow, sort of a repeating theme, who knew?!?

And that is why i don't eat salad, haha... So much work.

I measure and/or weigh what I put in my salads and enter the items individually. If it's a particular type of salad I make a lot, then I enter it as a recipe or a saved meal. Makes it easier for the future.

I eat a salad 5 days a week for lunch.....you can look at my diary if you would like:)

So I entered each item once, weighed out and slightly over-estimated beyond that. I then saved that as a meal. Now, when I eat a salad, I add that meal, which then populates individually (versus adding a recipe that doesn't let you change the individual stuff). When I make a new salad, I always weigh the cheese, toppings, meat, and dressings and any other high calorie items. I don't worry too much about things like cucumbers or spinach most days, but since I've got my bowl on my scale, I'm weighing them anyway as I go and double-checking against my standard saved meal.

Having the meal saves me from finding each ingredient each time, but gives me the flexibility to add, subtract, or change. It's a big time saver. since I put a lot of vegetables in my salad and I eat salad a lot

Question - is there a site you can enter ingredients and then get a nutritional (or just calorie) count for the food based on volume, not portion. I can measure out one cup. I am not able to look at a big pot of food and see if my portion is 1/10 or whatever. I suppose I could figure out how many cups were in the large serving but I don't see that happening :P

When I make my recipes, like soup or chili, I weigh and measure each ingredient as I make it. Then I decide how many servings it will be. Generally most of my soups and chilis are 6 servings. I put a big bowl on my scale, zero it out and then put the soup in the bowl. Then I divide that number of grams by the number of servings.

I feel like that sounds complicated but it's actually super easy! To collect the appropriate portion, zero the scale again with all the food in there and then take out the right number of grams. For example, the turkey chili I just made has 6 servings with a total of 1,452 grams. So each serving is 242 grams.

Without a scale to weigh, you'd just have to wing it and hope you're close enough. Many, many people have success without being so precise. Not me

Edited to fix typos

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I've used the site below a few times for a guesstimate. It doesn't list how much a serving of each item consists of though.

http://nutrition.saladworks.com/nutrition/CYO

I made a recipe for my green/garden salad and then i don't have to go through the weighing process each time.
If I add extras (cheese for instance) then I add that as a seperate line item.

That's what I did.

I don't know that I could keep up being that careful.

I measure the cheese/nuts/dressing/high calorie things but I eyeball all greens and veggies (carrots/peppers/cukes/etc.)

I hardly ever enter a recipe. I just guesstimate using someone else's when I do a search. For me personally part of being successful is being able to reasonably accomplish it. Maybe when everything is more routine I'll find measuring every item and entering every recipe more doable. No promises, lol. There is limited time/energy to make changes - pick a few, get that in a routine, pick a few more, etc. That is my method anyway.

Question - is there a site you can enter ingredients and then get a nutritional (or just calorie) count for the food based on volume, not portion. I can measure out one cup. I am not able to look at a big pot of food and see if my portion is 1/10 or whatever. I suppose I could figure out how many cups were in the large serving but I don't see that happening :P

You need a food scale. Weighing solid foods is the only way to be accurate with your calories. Measuring is extremely inaccurate, especially with dense foods. "eyeballing" is never going to be even close. Foods you consider to be vegetables are often fruits and have sugar in them and will be higher in calories than you think, so you will be consuming far more calories than you think you are by the end of the day. (think peas, peppers, etc).

I just bought a food scale a couple days ago so that works. Cucumbers, peppers, and greens have so few calories - I'm just not worried about things like that. I do log them but if I'm a little off I'm not gonna sweat it I guess. Carrots have more and I can eat my way through a shocking amount of them. I'll start weighing them. I didn't realize the measuring was so inaccurate.

I was reading other threads and it occurred to me I could weigh an entire pan of food if it wasn't to heavy for the scale (unfortunately not with the crock-pot of chili sitting on my counter today, lol). and then weight out a portion. That solves my portion problem That will be tricky with things you add water too but will be closer than just using someone else's data.

I try to be as accurate as possible because aside from really wanting to get as accurate an idea of how much I'm consuming (regardless if something has little calories or not), logging everything allows me to also see how I'm hitting my macros and micros.