tracking salad

keziak1
keziak1 Posts: 204 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Just curious, do you measure and record your salad ingredients all the time? I feel like this is where counting gets way out of hand and (for me) hard to sustain. I've been on and off calorie (or points) counting several times these past years. I'm perfectionistic for a while then I get tired and give up.

So I'm compromising and creating my own recipes in my database for "green salad" and "cabbage salad" to include the amounts I eat and a sampling of added vegetables like carrots and tomatoes that I eat a lot. I still count separately my dressing and sunflower seeds though.

Replies

  • GiveMeCoffee
    GiveMeCoffee Posts: 3,556 Member
    I count everything, I do save my typical salads in my meals so that I can just modify it from there. Go for consistency over perfection.

    But I definitely have to add my salads as they usually total around 700 or more calories depending on how much bacon I add to them
  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
    I estimate on the low calorie stuff like greens. I weigh the cheese, salad dressing, and anything that is more calorie-heavy.
  • debrakgoogins
    debrakgoogins Posts: 2,033 Member
    It can all add up so I track it. Today I had a tossed salad with tuna. Not counting the tuna, that meal was 80 calories for lettuce, tomato, onion and black olives. If you have those a few times a week, you could be jeopardizing your weight loss. Plus, if you are adding salad dressing, that adds many calories as well as sodium, fat and sugars.
  • SephiraRose
    SephiraRose Posts: 766 Member
    Like you mentioned it is easier to make recipes for the salads you eat often. So much easier to log.
  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
    The grocery store near work has a salad bar where you pay by weight. No easy way to weigh each ingredient as the only scale by the salad bar is not digital. I throw in spinach, iceberg, other greens. It has grape tomatoes - so those are easy to count. And the other things I may add (like cucumbers w/ peel and broccoli) don't have major amounts of calories. I add each ingredient to my tracker but its an estimate. Whether its one cup of spinach or .75 or 1.25 I don't know - but the difference in calories is maybe 20-30 a day I figure. I take that back to the office and I use the postage scale to weigh out in grams my shredded cheese and dressing. I don't mind paying $5.99/pound for 1/3 pound of fresh salad. But buying a bag cheese & bottle dressing is more cost effective and lets me control those calories.
  • RToland45
    RToland45 Posts: 57 Member
    I purchase the double chicken salad from Subway and use fat free dressing. Calories are already calculated and I split the salad for two meals. Not bad for $5.00!
  • leggup
    leggup Posts: 2,942 Member
    Last night I had a salad that was 438 calories. Every ingredient was 70 calories or more, apart from the baby spinach. I have gotten very good at measuring and eyeballing my salad greens and frequent add ons, like feta and croutons. I test myself each time and try to get, for example, exactly 14 g of croutons without looking at the scale. I think I'd be close to accurate a a weight-based salad bar, so long as I stay away from the pastas.

    The only things I don't log are black coffee and black tea.

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