Fruit and Vegetables; calorie counting

Well, if you counted them then it would represent a more accurate assessment, right?

Yes I log everything. Fruits/vegetables contain calories. Some of them contain a lot of calories. This morning I had a green smoothie for breakfast, which has:

100 g banana-- 89 calories
100 g pineapple-- 48 calories
140 g blueberries-- 70 calories
30 g spinach-- 7 calories
50 g celery-- 7 calories

If I hadn't logged those I'd be eating an extra 291 calories that I wasn't logging.

Yes. The calories from fruit and vegetables can easily make your deficit disappear.

i wish fruits and veggies had no calories, I'd live on friggin' banana smoothies and jethro salads. unfortunately they do, so log them.

Laurend224 wrote: »

Count all the foods. Always.

Including cornstarch. Man it's annoying including cornstarch. All it does is change the texture, it doesn't even add to the flavor.

Yep definitely! It all adds up. I eat a lot of bananas so makes a huge difference to my overall calorie consumption. I log every single little thing I eat, even if it's just a bite of someone else's food.

Yes, of course. If you are counting, count everything.

I no longer calorie count, but when I was, all fruits and vegetables were counted as well. I know weight watchers doesn't count these as points and I don't agree with that.

I don't think you have to count them to lose. If you eat a consistent amount you can simply have a lower calorie level that doesn't include your average amount. (That's basically how WW works, as I understand it--the points are lower to account for the "free" fruits and vegetables.) However. I always wonder why someone wouldn't want to have the correct number, if possible. Also, I like seeing my real diet reflected and being able to see whether I was eating fewer vegetables than intended in a particular week or if my variety isn't as good as I'd like. It helps me see what I'm doing as simply keeping data and encouraging myself to eat a more nutritious diet overall, and not merely keep calories as low as possible or some such.

But I'm kind of a data nerd, which is why I enjoy the MFP approach and would dislike WW.

Of course. I weigh my dang spinach. I eat so many 10-20 calorie things, I'd be off by 100 calories or more if I didn't log them. And fruit is not really low cal-at least when I choose to eat it.

Beth_in_Mpls wrote: »

I'm questioning this too in regards to MFP. I lost 130 pound on Weight Watchers and ate a TON of fruit/veggies. I've been logging both MFP and WW to compare where I land on each system and go over on MFP if I log fruit/veggies (so far anyway, I will try some slight adjustments in my diet while still logging everything). I think every body is different, not counting them worked for me on WW (I lost an entire person!) but that might not be the case for others.

WW gives you less points than MFP gives you calories to make up for it though. If you use MFP, you HAVE to count your fruit and veggies. Yesterday I had 281 calories in fruit and veggies. That's quite a lot when your goal is 1800 calories.