Do you count your vegetables?
Gozomalta28
Posts: 18 Member
Wondering what is everyone's take on this. I understand to track vegetables like potatoes, corn etc...but how about zucchini, tomatoes, lettuce etc...Thanks!
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Replies
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Absolutely! Fruit, veggies ... everything.
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Yes. Among other reasons, I look at my micronutrients occasionally.5
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If you eat it. Log it.8
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is this a joke? lol0
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Most definitely! I had a big salad yesterday. Two romain lettuce hearts were 80 calories. One would like to think a lot of these veggies have virtually no calories, but they do.4
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Yup. Although I've been told that I eat ridiculous amounts of vegetables. Which I think is an unfair assessment.
Plus, I roast most of my vegetables, so I need to add the oil from those as well. But I eat 100-200 calories per day of vegetables alone usually, which can really eat into my deficit if I ignore them.5 -
I'll count and log them but to be honest I don't weigh things like leaf greens that are super low in calories. I generally overestimate them though (ex. four cups of spinach when I probably ate closer to two).5
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Yes this isn't weight watchers they aren't free5
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Yes! Reasons:
- I track fiber & some micronutrients, so I want "credit" for what's in that zucchini.
- I have a small deficit, so small margin of error. And yes, I can eat enough vegetables to blow my deficit.
- I'm kind of a data geek & my data means nothing if it excludes something I eat a lot of.
Friends were triathlon training, and their nutritionist told them not to count onions, garlic, celery, things used in quantities to season, but they still counted vegetables eaten as part of a meal, and they had gobs of cardio. FWIW3 -
thank you everyone!
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I've stopped tracking ginger and garlic because I don't usually eat more than 10-ish calories worth of each in a day, but everything else gets tracked to make sure I'm staying in a healthy calorie range (high or low). I'll likely ease up once I've been at my maintenance range for a while, but for now I've got too much more to lose to be monkeying around.2
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Gozomalta28 wrote: »Wondering what is everyone's take on this. I understand to track vegetables like potatoes, corn etc...but how about zucchini, tomatoes, lettuce etc...Thanks!
There are programs that give you "free" or "unlimited" veggies, Weight Watcher's comes to mind. Only the veggies are not really free. These "free" items are built into the initial calorie allotment.
MFP (My Fitness Pal) gives you calories before exercise.....not calories before veggies.
Like @Keladelphia ......I don't measure lettuce, celery or cucumbers very carefully.4 -
I count everything that has calories. Even if there are very few. Like some of the others I'm not always as precise about weighing veggies like lettuce, cucumbers, etc.1
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I would say I'm not super accurate when measuring fruits and veggies (I'm working on it), but I do need to long them since I can literally eat enough to cause an impact. This is especially true with carrots and tomatoes (I've been known to eat too many tomatoes, to the point where the acid makes the inside of my mouth pretty sensitive).0
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Keladelphia wrote: »I'll count and log them but to be honest I don't weigh things like leaf greens that are super low in calories. I generally overestimate them though (ex. four cups of spinach when I probably ate closer to two).
I don't weigh things like romaine either.
But I weigh and count everything in my diary.0 -
I certainly do log them, but like others have said, I don't weigh low calorie veg like lettuce or cukes. I mean really, for me, eyeballing a handful of lettuce is two cups is fine IMO.0
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Your body counts those calories even if you don't log them. I don't see the point of logging anything if you're not logging everything.3
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yes, of course0
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If you're counting calories, then yes, you'd count those too.0
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They say vegetables a "free" food. I am sure I have proven that one wrong. I can eat shameful amounts of vegetables in the blink of an eye. I have always been a vegetable lover.0
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I had nearly 100 calories of veg (onions, peppers and mushrooms) at dinner last night. I'd log 100 calories of yogurt so I log veg. I am lax with amounts of salad greens and such, but usually over estimate. I even log 3 baby dill pickles...but that's more to keep any eye on sodium.1
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Yup. The calories can add up!0
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Yep- if you eat it, log it!
I've gotta say this, though: logging everything has worked wonders to get me out of any illusions about there being "good" or "bad" foods. There's just food, with different macros in, and depending on what I need at a particular time I should probably have this, or I can definitely get away with that. Veggies are great for some things- like when you want to fill up your tummy with a lot of food, or, of course, for different kinds of nutrients. But, like, at the end of a day when I've a couple hundred calories left (and I know that I do 'cause I logged every single gram of broccoli I had with my dinner), I feel absolutely no guilt at all over using up the last of my allowance for the day on a few cookies or a bowl of icecream. I think that's a fabulous thing about MFP- there's no 'good' or 'bad' food, there's just the food you eat and what it contains and how that fits into your goals.
So... yep, weigh and log that lettuce! Just like you'll weigh and log that cake too
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I'm not going to weigh and log salad ingredients each time I make a salad, I might do that once or twice just to get a general idea of how many calories are in the salads I tend to make. Then I'll just log a generic salad entry that has what I estimate to be the right number of calories for what I made.
Dressings and higher-calorie toppings get added separately of course.4 -
As many before me have said, I also log everything but feel good about my choice to eyeball serving sizes for most green/non-starchy vegetables - I also try to err on the side of overestimating, and even if I somehow ate twice as much as I logged (highly unlikely), it's at most, what, a 15-20 calorie difference for a typical serving? Not stressed. Sure, that technically can add up, but not to very much if you're generally making reasonable estimates on reasonable portions.
Probably doesn't need to be said, but obviously any toppings/dressings or starchy vegetables get weighed/measured as appropriate.0 -
When I logged I did count them, but I didn't go to super great lengths to be 100% accurate...like I didn't weigh every little thing that went on my salad...I basically made a generic entry in my recipe builder for salad for XXX calories based similar sized salads I could find without dressing in the database or elsewhere and then I'd log the dressing seperately. I wanted to log something, but really being spot on wasn't a huge concern...definitely bigger fish to fry dietary wise.0
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AoifeFitzy wrote: »Yep- if you eat it, log it!
I've gotta say this, though: logging everything has worked wonders to get me out of any illusions about there being "good" or "bad" foods. There's just food, with different macros in, and depending on what I need at a particular time I should probably have this, or I can definitely get away with that. Veggies are great for some things- like when you want to fill up your tummy with a lot of food, or, of course, for different kinds of nutrients. But, like, at the end of a day when I've a couple hundred calories left (and I know that I do 'cause I logged every single gram of broccoli I had with my dinner), I feel absolutely no guilt at all over using up the last of my allowance for the day on a few cookies or a bowl of icecream. I think that's a fabulous thing about MFP- there's no 'good' or 'bad' food, there's just the food you eat and what it contains and how that fits into your goals.
So... yep, weigh and log that lettuce! Just like you'll weigh and log that cake too
Meh, I see diminishing returns on weighing lettuce. I skip weighing very low calorie items. Of course, I use packaged lettuce, so it's easy to get a rough estimate. If I ever stop losing at the rate I expect, then yeah, I might have to tighten up my logging, but for now, I'm going to do what is working.1 -
I don't measure, weigh or count my green veggies at all. I have as many greens as I want. I don't really log them since I have no idea how much I'm using. I just throw in enough for whatever I am making - spinach in my eggs, etc. I really don't think broccoli is going to be what does me in. I do however weigh/measure carrots, fruit, etc.1
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