Help!!! Fruit and Veg

Hi, i need some help. I have been doing myfitnesspal on and off for a while. But i stopped a month ago as i got fed up and was finding i was making bad food choices. I stopped eating veg and used the calories for that for a treat in the evening.

I have just read someone's post recommending it on facebook and they were saying the dont count fruit and veg except bananas, sweetcorn, peas and a couple of other items. Is this correct or are you meant to count it all??

Thanks in advance, really appreciate any help.

M
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Replies

  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,926 Member
    in real life i tend to be lazy on logging fruit and veg - especially veg.

    of course I know they have calories and I do log them - but I think every banana, for example, of about the same size is going to average the calories of the one I weighed ages ago - and I often just call any tomato,lettuce, carrot, and similar combination 1 serve of garden salad without weighing or checking each part. and things like a bit of lettuce in a sandwich I ignore altogether.

  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,816 Member
    How many calories are you eating a day? I'm confused as to why you would feel the need to cut out vegetables to save calories. While it is still a good idea to log them, many vegetables are very low in calories. You are not going to go over your goal by eating lettuce, tomato, broccoli, and green beans. Even fruit, while higher calorie than vegetables usually, is still pretty low in calories compared to other foods.

    A calorie is a calorie. No matter where you get it from, it's important to log. But there is no reason to cut fruits and veggies out of your life in order to "diet". In fact, eating more of them usually helps most people control their calories better.
  • Panini911
    Panini911 Posts: 2,325 Member
    edited May 2019
    i weigh and log it all. i eat well over 250 calories in vegetables daily. add the fruit. that can add up to almost twice my daily deficit.

    also, it's great to make room for a snack and for weight loss, a calorie is a calorie. but for overall health and nutrition it's best you not cut out ALL vegetable to make room for a snack most days.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited May 2019
    I don't log that much, and when I do it's on Cron and my interest is in whether I'm meeting my potassium goal and otherwise hitting all the micros, so not logging veg and fruit would be a disaster.

    When I was logging on MFP, I had goals about how I ate that included eating a healthful diet, getting in the amount of veg and fruit I think is desirable, etc., and I wanted an accurate record of what I ate (and it isn't that tough to get in lots of cals from veg and especially fruit if you eat a lot of them).

    Rather than blaming MFP for bad food choices, why not change your approach to something other than just calories. For example, also focusing on healthy diet or even macros. If I planned to have, say, 200 cal of ice cream after dinner, I could usually make it fit in my normal cals with a healthy diet. But if I felt like I needed to make room for it, I'd tend to cut some fat (added fat, maybe cheese) and carbs (what I consider optional carbs, like a starchy side) from earlier meals, usually just by varying potion size. I wouldn't cut protein (yeah, cheese has some, but it wasn't a big source of it for me) or veg.

    Or to make it even easier, maybe just think through how to get in your nutrients and still have some calories left for whatever else.
  • KathyL07
    KathyL07 Posts: 27 Member

    Panini911 wrote: »

    if you did not lose at 1200 the issue was very likely you were not patient enough, it was water fluctuations or problems in your logging.

    do you use a food scale for all foods?

    1200 is the MINIMUM a woman should eat and that assumes very short very sedentary woman. i recommend starting your own thread so we can help you trouble shoot.

    I started at 220 and, as of this morning, have lost 48.5 lbs of my 70 lb goal. I was not losing at 1,200 cal/day. I meticulously weigh food by the gram and log everything that goes in my mouth. I check and recheck nutrition labels against the USDA food database as there is a lot of incorrect info out there. I'm obsessed with accurate logging. 1,200 cals wasn't working even though I was walking 1-2 miles/day!
  • KathyL07
    KathyL07 Posts: 27 Member
    P.S, I'm 56 years old, 5'5", and started at 220 in Nov and down to 171.5, 48.5 loss.
  • glassyo
    glassyo Posts: 7,572 Member
    klucia07 wrote: »
    P.S, I'm 56 years old, 5'5", and started at 220 in Nov and down to 171.5, 48.5 loss.

    I'm 5'2", 54 years old, 105 lbs on a good day, and eat like crap (and have throughout my 120 lb weight loss). It's not the sugar.

    How long have you been stalled for?

    (But, yeah, open your diary and start a new thread :))
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,967 Member
    edited May 2019
    You're meant to count it all. Maybe the person you were talking to was referring to weight watchers.

    I'm a lot lazier when it comes to logging vegetables for the most part. Lettuce, tomatoes, etc. have such little calories that I just throw a random guess on my diary and call it good.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,843 Member
    edited May 2019
    I log low calorie veggies to encourage myself to eat more of them (and because that is how MFP is designed).
    • My target is 100 g of broccoli per serving - prior to weighing, I was probably eating less than 70 g.
    • My target for sandwiches is 28 g of lettuce and I was probably eating less than half of that before.
    • Etc.
  • KathyL07
    KathyL07 Posts: 27 Member
    glassyo wrote: »
    I'm 5'2", 54 years old, 105 lbs on a good day, and eat like crap (and have throughout my 120 lb weight loss). It's not the sugar.

    How long have you been stalled for?

    (But, yeah, open your diary and start a new thread :))

    Open my diary?? How do I do that and what benefits do I have by doing it?
  • nooboots
    nooboots Posts: 480 Member
    I have a little challenge with myself every day to eat as many of my '5 a day' as I can.

    So some days my veg count (I eat very little fruit, not keen) is around 250 to 300 calories. Thats a big chunk to ignore.