Are veggies a Free food?

Foods with calories have ... calories. If you are relying on calorie counting for weight loss, there are no free calories. Vegetables are good for you -- eat them, but log them. Truly, it's hard to make them add up to much trouble in your plan, though some starchy ones are higher in calories than leafy or watery ones. I'm especially careful with portioning potatoes, corn, and peas (or beans) for example.

If eating vegetables is making it hard to stick to your calorie goal, honestly I'd advise raising your calorie goal to account for it. Because a 1200 cal a day diet is very much on the low side. I know plenty of women who successfully lost weight on 1400-1600 cal a day diets. I lost lots of weight in my 40s on an 1850 cal a day diet (I'm very active, though). It took longer than a low cal diet but it was much easier to stick to happily, and didn't tempt me to do dumb things like try to make room for a delicious cookie by skipping vegetables. Furthermore taking a long time with a more sustainable diet plan did way more for me to build long-term healthy eating habits that have made maintaining nearly a breeze.

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Eat veggies for health, but I wouldn't recommend them for hunger....they have very low saiety for most people. They aren't free but you'd be hard pressed to eat so many as y9 amount to a lot of calories. Some are more calories than others though.

I make a stir-fry that, aside from about 20 calories of Teriyaki sauce and 50 calories of oil, has about 200 calories. It's a huge plate and it's all vegetables, but they still have calories that add up in volume.

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Eat veggies for health, but I wouldn't recommend them for hunger....they have very low saiety for most people. They aren't free but you'd be hard pressed to eat so many as y9 amount to a lot of calories. Some are more calories than others though.

agreed. like brocc is most filling with something like grilled chicken breast and whole grain brown rice...and carrot sticks with hummus or guac

red beets are pretty filling when boiled and topped w/evvo+balsamic

What would all herbivore animals live off if they were free? Seriously?

I think it depends how you want to do it. If 1200 already gives you a good deficit, then you may well have capacity to eat plenty of vegetables, say 300 calories a day worth, and still have a decent deficit. Obviously, it won't be accurate and you wouldn't lose weight at the rate expected. But I think the point of vegetables being free (on some commercial diets) is to encourage you to eat more, which is generaly a good thing! Just be aware that some vegetables (avocado, potato, etc) are quite calorific. Good luck!

Well, this is myfitnesspal. To accurately count calories, you have log to EVERYTHING.

Good luck ❤️.

Programs like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers which have 'free' vegetables will be adjusting for them in the allocation they give you (ie ProPoints for WW). They aren't free, they've just factored them in for you to encourage you to reach for veggies rather than something else. So your ProPoints allocation for WW might equal 1200 calories when MFP gives you 1400 because WW factors in that you will eat around 200 cals of veg a day.