Everything but the salad....

Katie_Y89
Katie_Y89 Posts: 330 Member
in Food and Nutrition
When logging a homemade salad, is it okay to only log the stuff that dresses it up and not the veggies themselves??

Will log the dressing, meat, cheese, ect. But not the lettuce and such since it's soo low in caloric value anyways

Anyone else do this??

Replies

  • age_is_just_a_number
    age_is_just_a_number Posts: 631 Member
    I just put in one entry for garden salad, then reuse it all the time regardless of what is actually in that salad (I mean the veggies) because the overall calories and nutritional content of green or red peppers is not going to make a major difference in your overall tracking. I do add for the ‘toppings’
  • Terytha
    Terytha Posts: 2,097 Member
    It's fine. I log it for the nutrition/fiber counts more than the calories personally, and I've completely stopped weighing out my spinach/cucumbers anyway. I just eyeball it, since the whole 10 calories or whatever I might be off by is negligible.

    Higher calorie veg like carrots I do weigh, but lettuce is whatever.
  • a_candler
    a_candler Posts: 209 Member
    I rarely log veggies, UNLESS theyre the starchy ones like corn, beans, potatoes. Lettuce, cucs, carrots etc I don't log
  • shaf238
    shaf238 Posts: 4,022 Member
    I won't log stuff that's so minimal it won't really make a difference in terms of total calories for the day, so very much like you. Obviously if you want to keep a track of your vitamin intake that stuff like veg gives you, I'd recommend logging.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    I suppose this could work if you're having tiny side salads or you have a big margin for error in your logging. But when I have salad I like to have lots of vegetables, so it wouldn't work for me. I could easily add a few hundred calories in vegetables, so I don't want to just ignore them.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I suppose this could work if you're having tiny side salads or you have a big margin for error in your logging. But when I have salad I like to have lots of vegetables, so it wouldn't work for me. I could easily add a few hundred calories in vegetables, so I don't want to just ignore them.

    Same. If you're talking about a bowl of iceberg with those paper thin shavings of carrot, it probably won't make more than 25 cals difference. That's not my salads, though :)
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I suppose this could work if you're having tiny side salads or you have a big margin for error in your logging. But when I have salad I like to have lots of vegetables, so it wouldn't work for me. I could easily add a few hundred calories in vegetables, so I don't want to just ignore them.

    Same. If you're talking about a bowl of iceberg with those paper thin shavings of carrot, it probably won't make more than 25 cals difference. That's not my salads, though :)

    Yeah, I just checked yesterday (a pretty representative day) and if I hadn't logged the vegetables in my salad, that would be about 150 calories that I was unaware of. Eating 150 calories more than planned on a regular basis will absolutely result in weight gain (when I'm maintaining) or cancel out a good chunk of my 250 calorie deficit if I'm losing. And these were all low calorie vegetables (cabbage, cauliflower, dill, romaine, cucumber).
  • bighoopattitude
    bighoopattitude Posts: 37 Member
    I actually just made a personal rule that I won’t log anything under 15 calories. It’s too overwhelming at the beginning stages and depending on what you’re logging it’s very difficult to get an accurate intake. I buy bagged salads and I usually eat half in a sitting so I just take the base amount from the information provided and divide it in half. It’s a cop out, but it’s somewhere to start while getting the hang of things. I log things if I add them (dressing, cheese, nuts, etc.) because those are higher in content and much easier to estimate.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,225 Member
    edited June 2020
    Your call, depending on how clean you want your calorie data to be, how much nutrition tracking matters to you, etc.

    Me, I log everything. With how my brain works, the less thinking I have to do, the better: If I'm constantly thinking "does this have enough calories to log", it requires attention. If I skip it sometimes, then sometimes I'll skip in unintentionally, when I really should log it.

    My routine is to put the bowl on the scale, zero the scale, drop in the lettuce/greens, note grams; zero, drop in cucumbers, note grams, zero; . . . all the way to . . . add shredded cheese, note, zero; add seeds; note, zero; add dressing, note; eat. No real thinking, just the mechanics. Personally, I prefer to note on the back of a junk mail envelope, and record in MFP later, so I don't have to think about getting my device goopy. I like easy, automatic, no thought.

    I'm also one of those "hundreds of calories of non-starchy veg daily" people, besides.

    Different routines work for different people for different reasons. What works is the key thing.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    I eat a ton of veg so get lots of cals from veg (not lettuce so much), and one of the motivators for me to log is hitting all my nutrition targets, which I would not do if I didn't lot veg.

    But there are lots of different ways to log and be successful. One I did years ago was just writing down what I ate and aiming to hit maxes of some kinds of foods and mins of others (like veg). I did even that loosely, but it worked -- this was back when we didn't have smart phones and options like MFP and counting cals more accurately was a pain.
  • Mazintrov13
    Mazintrov13 Posts: 135 Member
    I log absolutely everything to the gram even spinach leaves and salt but you absolutely do not have to!
    Do what works for you, I’ve none plenty of people who’ve lost weight simply by eating less and moving more without tracking or logging anything. I find it super helpful and love collecting the data but it’s not for everyone.
    Bottom line is if your are still slowly losing and feel good then keep doing what your doing. If you hit a plateau (a month or more with no loss) then you’ll likely need to tighten your logging or otherwise reduce intake
  • Mazintrov13
    Mazintrov13 Posts: 135 Member
    *known not none
  • shaumom
    shaumom Posts: 1,003 Member
    Personally, I think it's worth logging veggies at least one time, so you can see how many calories they actually have. And then log the ones that may impact your calorie counting noticeably, because some veggies can do so, you know?

    Like, lettuce and spinach might not have much, but, as some examples, a tomato has around 24 calories, a cup of chopped kale has about 33 calories, a half cup of peas has around 59 calories, 1/4 cup shredded beets or 1/2 a zucchini has 15 calories, and obviously avocado is very high in calories.

    Especially if you have salads more than once a day, it can be possible to end up more than 200 calories off in your calculations, if veggies aren't included.

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