Do you count your veggies and fruit?

They have calories, so you need to log them. And yes, you can gain weight if you "eat a ton" of fruits and vegetables and it puts you over your calorie goal.

Of course. If it has calories then it should be logged. Fruits and veggies both have calories - some more than others.

sarahpro85 wrote: »

Obviously we know veggies and fruit add great nutritional value and very low in calories so you can eat a ton and not gain weight. But, does that mean we should add it to the diary ?

Log everything.

Weight Watchers has this thing where fruits & veggies are "free." But they are not (really) because you start with a lower daily calorie intake. MFP doesn't lower your calories......so log everything.

Yes, you should still log them even if you think they are 'low calorie' as lots of low calories going uncounted could add up to you going over your calories and then not understanding why you're not losing weight at the rate you expected or MFP predicted.

If you want to change how MFP is set up then you could monitor for a few weeks how many calories you typically consume of these foods that you do not want to bother to log, then of manually amend your calorie goal to be reduced by whatever that number is, perhaps plus a bit more for safety margin.
Eg if you add up you have 1 banana, 2 apples and some veg each day that, for example, comes to 300 calories then you could change your calorie goal from the 1600 MFP gave you to 1300, continue eating the same level of these foods and the results should be the same regardless. But, if you start having trouble with not losing weight as expected you might then want to tighten up your logging again.

Also remember if you do choose to do this that as you lose weight (depending how much you have to lose) MFP will automatically reduce your calorie goal since your daily BMR will reduce. That means you would need to reduce your manually set number too.

Definitely have to count them. People can gain weight by eating too many fruits and veggies just like anything else. You ever see paintings of overweight people from hundreds of years ago? They didn't get fat on processed food lol.

sarahpro85 wrote: »

I do not just eat fruits and veggies all day lol and I can see how someone could gain if they ate too much of just that, I guess what I was saying on normal servings a day, do you really need to add? But, I will from now on even though I did not really see a difference in weight when I was not adding. Calories are calories, I get it

Weight management isn't about eating too much of this or that...it's the cumulative effect of your overall calorie intake vs expenditure.

A calorie is a unit of energy...your body requires XXXX amount of energy to function optimally...when you consume more energy (calories) than your body requires, that excess energy is stored as body fat...it's basically your backup generator. When you consume less energy than your body requires, that deficiency has to be made up for...so your backup generator kicks on and you burn body fat.

Also, what do you consider to be normal servings? 6+ servings of veg and fruit daily is what is recommended...serving can be variable, but it's usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 - 100 grams.

At this point raw fruits and veggies make up a little under half of my diet, so yes, log them. Notice of course they do tend to be lower calorie so you can eat MORE of them compared to some foods and still be eating light. But they still have calories and your body doesn't care if you eat 100 calories of spinach or 100 of cookies, it's still 100 calories.