What items do you not calorie count?

Yes to lettuce, no to non-salry herbs and spices. I do track sodium, so salt and soy sauce and the like get counted

I don’t count lettuce if it’s on a sandwich or something, but I do if I am eating a salad. I don’t count tea, but I do count the half and half I put in it. I never count spices unless I am using the recipe builder, then I include them in the recipe. I am also not 100% precise when weighing things. As in, I might log something as 30 grams, but it actually weighs anywhere from 28-32. I eat a lot of the same things over and over so I figure it all evens out over time.

It's fine to be a bit looser with your tracking if it triggers obsession. The goal of tracking is weight control, so the rule of thumb is: if your weight is behaving as expected, then your current way of tracking is perfectly fine and you don't need to make any changes if you don't want to. Track however you want, and evaluate what your weight is doing in a couple of weeks. If your weight is not behaving as expected after that, either tighten up your tracking or add/remove some calories from your budget to make up for tracking errors.

Personally, sometimes I'm painfully precise to the gram other times I round up/down and track several ingredients as one ingredient or skip logging an apple because "yesterday I had leftover calories". Most of the time I'm somewhere in the middle, precise enough, but not quite 100%. I just like to watch micronutrient numbers, so curiosity wins out sometimes and I find myself adding even herbs (I don't usually track them, but yay for today's 1 gram of dried thyme which fulfilled 19% of my vitamin K needs and 7% of iron)

I don't count black coffees, teas, herbs and spices or the odd splash of milk here and there in scrambled eggs etc ..
I don't count salt either.
I weigh everything else as I'm awful at eyeballing portions.
Everytime I have a weekend of guessing calories I gain weight - I'm usually way off.

I don't do low calories vegetables if on a sandwich like lettuce, spinach, pickles or tomatoes, mustard, zero calorie or diet drinks, stuff like that

amusedmonkey wrote: »

It's fine to be a bit looser with your tracking if it triggers obsession. The goal of tracking is weight control, so the rule of thumb is: if your weight is behaving as expected, then your current way of tracking is perfectly fine and you don't need to make any changes if you don't want to. Track however you want, and evaluate what your weight is doing in a couple of weeks. If your weight is not behaving as expected after that, either tighten up your tracking or add/remove some calories from your budget to make up for tracking errors.

Personally, sometimes I'm painfully precise to the gram other times I round up/down and track several ingredients as one ingredient or skip logging an apple because "yesterday I had leftover calories". Most of the time I'm somewhere in the middle, precise enough, but not quite 100%. I just like to watch micronutrient numbers, so curiosity wins out sometimes and I find myself adding even herbs (I don't usually track them, but yay for today's 1 gram of dried thyme which fulfilled 19% of my vitamin K needs and 7% of iron)

This.

I have only used a kitchen scale for baking and checking out of curiosity to see how it measures up against my volume/eyeball guesses (usually either I OVER estimate a serving size or it's about dead on). The scale makes me obsessive and unhappy so I use cups and spoons. Or well, used cups and spoons. At this point I don't use much but eyeballing.

Early/in active loss I tracked everything but what I call 'edible garnish'. Some leaves of lettuce, a slice of tomato, that sort of veg on a sandwich. Never with a scale, always just a measuring cup or measuring spoons. I thought I'd have to tighten it up or accept a higher weight once I got into the healthy BMI range, but that turned out not to be the case.

I'm now down to 126-127 pounds and just aiming to maintain (between 125-132ish). I only track the more calorie dense stuff (ie: I'll track the steak and baked potato loosely based on eyeballed weight, I'll use a spoon to measure the butter on the potato. I will not track the veg side/sides at all. Won't even log them. I log a chicken quesadilla or something as a convenient full item entry that's roughly right in the database rather than breaking it down. I'll track my 'treat' foods - candy bar, donut, ice cream whatever, to make sure that doesn't get out of hand/take over my diet) or something with an easy number on the back of a package (like a single serve can of soup). Otherwise I just shrug at it and carry on. It's working for me but I ALWAYS knew I was going to have to, for my mental health, find a compromise between rigidly tracking and doing nothing. Right now, this is working fine. Next step will be JUST tracking the 'treat' stuff, and seeing what happens, because numbers and I hate each other (or rather my brain LOVES them just way too much and uses them to make me miserable) If it stops working I'll re-evaluate.

Lots of people here like and enjoy strict tracking and precision and they are right when they say that if you're not losing as you expect/want that you need to change something and often that something is being more careful with your tracking. But it isn't necessary and if it does bad things to your head there are other ways.

I usually don't count any spices or seasoning or water enhancers. Sometimes even condiments, unless I am using a lot of it.

Wow, not logging oil for cooking would have stopped my weight loss dead in its tracks (granted, I was/am aiming at a small deficit). Heck, I've made vegetable dishes that had more calories from oil than from the veggies themselves. I'm too generous with my oil for that to work 🤪

I log everything, because it's been amazingly useful to have an accurate picture of what I ate on specific days to see patterns. But very low cal items where the difference in serving size measurement might only be 5-10 cals, I often eyeball rather than strictly measure.

It's really important to understand why you over eat (or under eat, if your goal is gaining) and how logging actually helps you. Some people can get away with eyeballing servings or logging just the big stuff, because they naturally estimate well. Some people can get too obsessive if they become too detailed.

LOL, I think my burn is generally a tad bit higher than any of the estimates on what I "should" be eating, hence why I've been able to get away with not tracking some things (like cooking oil). I do track butter and sauces, but generally that's an add on for me to begin with - grapeseed (preferred) or olive oil is what I cook with. Most consistent loss averaged about 3/4 lb/week (some weeks more, some less) so not a drastic cut, but I was going lower carb at the time, which was the most sustainable loss-diet for me.

I've tracked enough over the years to learn that my "needs" are generally a bit higher than what most of the calculators give me, or if that number is accurate, it is without me tracking those specifics listed above. I tried tracking my cooking oil for about a month once and was losing more than I wanted (and the hangries were real since that was less "food" I was getting lol).