Stop counting green veggies!!?

I weigh my fruits and veggies, unless I'm just putting a little lettuce/spinach on a sandwich or wrap. It barely registers as 1g, so I just add a couple leaves and call it good.

If I'm building a salad, though, I'd weigh it.

~Lyssa

If they are a major part of my meal such as a stir fry or veggie stew I count them. If they aren't a major part (small tomato slice on a sandwich and/or leafy (i.e. Spinach or lettuce), I may choose to skip them or estimate rather than being exact. I think the % error is much smaller if I overestimate. However, your nutrient levels tracked may not be right but it depends if you care or not.

endlessfall16 wrote: »

I have never heard anyone gaining tens, hundreds of pounds from eating excessive green veggies, eg broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, bell pepper, zucchini...

I think I am gonna stop counting calories of these items. Does anyone do that?

Please tell if that's a good idea.

They still have calories...if you're not accounting for them, you cans till go over your calorie targets. No one particular food item makes anyone fat...it's the accumulative effect of too many calories from all sorts of food items.

That said, I guess it would depend on how much you eat...my lunch alone usually has anywhere from 60-100 calories of veggies...so does my dinner....I also eat veggies with my breakfast, etc...I can pretty easily eat 200-300 calories per day in veggies. If my calorie target is 2300 calories and I track 2300 calories of other food but not my 300 calories of veggies, guess what...I haven't eaten 2300 calories, I've eaten 2600 calories...so you see, my body is still counting them and doesn't give a *kitten* if those extra calories came from veggies.

Always count. My salads are just veg (not counting dressing and meat) and come to about 200 calories, then I eat about 200 more of veg throughout the day. I guess it depends if you only eat small amounts. If I just ate a small side salad with dinner and raw celery and small portion broccoli I probably wouldn't count.

endlessfall16 wrote: »

I have never heard anyone gaining tens, hundreds of pounds from eating excessive green veggies, eg broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, bell pepper, zucchini...

I think I am gonna stop counting calories of these items. Does anyone do that?

Please tell if that's a good idea.

I think this might be the answer you're searching for. A lot of the responses in this thread say to count everything. I think it's good to count everything initially so you can understand how many calories are in certain ingredients. By now I am assuming that you know that vegetables are quite low in calories compared to other energy dense foods so counting them seems trivial.

I want to highlight why I stopped counting fruits and vegetables. I love eating a huge quantity and variety of fruits and vegetables on a daily basis, and logging each vegetable and fruit for me is a total pain in the *kitten*. Hell, if I ever felt a "binge episode" coming on, I simply binged on celery, romaine lettuce, or really any other leafy greens as these were quite hard to overeat. I mean eating 12 celery stalks is like a whopping 100 calories. I'd be so full from the water and fiber content that I wouldn't want to eat anything else. This is why fruits and vegetables are ALWAYS included in any weight loss diet. By eating fruits and vegetables, you fill yourself with so much fiber and water that you naturally tend not to consume any more excess calories.

Additionally, vegetables contain insoluble fiber. INSOLUBLE FIBER CANNOT BE ABSORBED, THUS IT DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE CALORIES. I am not saying that vegetables do not contribute calories, BUT IT IS THE INSOLUBLE FIBER COMPONENTS IN VEGETABLES WHICH ARE THE PARTS THAT DO NOT CONTRIBUTE CALORIES. There are also studies that support that insoluble fiber may block calorie absorption. So if you ate 100 calories of fat, consuming insoluble fiber may only allow you to really consume like 85 calories instead, the other 15 comes out as poop (these aren't real numbers, they are for illustration purposes only). Also, eating fruits and vegetables uses more calories for digestion compared to like a candy bar. I doubt anyone logs in "digestion" to their exercise category. As a result, counting calories are never truly accurate, which gives basis as to why I don't really pay too much attention to the actual calorie numbers.

And here are some literature to support my stance. Fun reading!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257631/

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/nutrition/pdf/rtp_practitioner_10_07.pdf

*Edit "total pain in the butt," I guess I can't type the a word

I dont count them, but I dont go mad either.
The reality is the dressing or oil they are cooked is going to be more calories than the veg.
I count that.

Once upon a time, Id weigh a clove of garlic, dont bother now.

I track everything I eat. Even romaine lettuce has a few calories. Even if it's less than 10 calories I still add it. Some of the veggies also have fiber and sodium and what not as well. All of that factors in for your day when entered on your food diary.

I also weigh and measure every thing, even veggies. I don't guess on the portion sizes. That's how I got to the point of being overweight to begin with. And I know I didn't get 'fat' off eating veggies or the green stuff but if I stop tracking some things then I will get more lax in tracking other things as well. I don't want that to happen.