Tracking fruit

Log it would be my vote. Fruits are in fact good for you and most people don’t eat enough however keep in mind that they are higher in carbs so for you to be a little more aware of your full nutritional practices just log them. Do not be surprised at the end of a week or several months. Let’s say you eat 200 cals of daily fruit calories over just 30 days that would tally 30*200=6k calories. Not bad calories, but over time a significant amount of unaccounted calories.

Most fruits and veggies should be logged. Things like onions, lettuce etc, not so much.

donnabrom43 wrote: »

Are there any foods that are free from calories? I’m new to this so any advice would be great.

Pretty much just water. There are a few things that say zero calories on the label, but in the US the label is allowed to say zero if there are fewer than 5 calories for the named serving size. Therefore, you may see zero on a label of something like some vinegars.

You need nutrients to thrive, right? Nutrients bring calories along with them. Maybe think in terms of foods that pack in a lot of nutrition for the number of calories?

I log everything, so I vote to log it. Sure, bananas may have 100+ calories, but they're good for you.

I would also log it. Those 3 servings of fruit could be 3-400 calories, which then puts you at potentially 1600 calories. Why wouldn't you track it?

So, it seems everyone is voting to weigh and track the calories in fruit (I am in agreement). This is helpful not only for the amount of calories that you plan to eat for any particular day, but also for knowing your caloric intake over time. This way, you can better tweak your diet (what you eat and the calorie count). This is especially important when you get closer to your goal weight.

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

janet2030 wrote: »

Including every coffee, if you are a coffee drink

I like coffee, but I do not identify as a coffee drink.

Haha "coffee drinker"

May I ask your motivation for not tracking it? I ask bc depending on what that is, you may personally be better off not tracking it.

I’ll get to that in a minute, but first to your question about whether you’ll still lose weight. That depends on your personal calorie needs. It takes 3,500 calories to lose one pound of fat. So, for example, if your body maintains its weight at 1,700 cals a day, eating 1,200 means you’ll lose about 1 pound each week (a daily 500-cal deficit x 7 days). If this is you, and you eat, say, 300 calories of unlogged fruit each day, your daily deficit would be only 200 calories. In that case, it would take you about 2.5 weeks to lose 1 pound, instead of just 1 week. This was just to give you an example to show variables to consider. You’d most likely still lose, but there’s a strong chance it would slow your pace a bit. Also, keep in mind that this example assumes that your other calories that you’ve logged were all precise. It’s likely that even conscientious loggers are a bit off at times. Adding on unlogged calories leaves less wiggle room for unintentional mis-logs.

Back to my first point about your motivations. Meticulously tracking calories isn’t for everyone. For some, a general “eat less, move more” works beautifully. At the other side of the continuum, some people do best with logging every single thing they consume, every single day. Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint. Doing it in a way that’s sustainable *for you* is important. If you’d get sick of tracking calories if you had to log everything, deliberately not logging some foods would possibly be the better choice for you. Then this part of your life wouldn’t feel like such a chore to you (if that’s a kinda annoying practice to you). There are other possible issues with tracking too. For some ppl, meticulously tracking calories can trigger a feeling of being overly restricted, which exhausts them psychologically and/or triggers a binge. So there are some ppl for whom it’s not necessary and/or good to track everything. But because weight loss is a numbers game, not just a psychological process, if you go the less-meticulous tracking route, it would be a wise idea imo to do what you’ve already shown signs of: be calorie conscious of fruit. I’d personally rec tracking the fruits that are relatively high in calories and/or that you typically eat a large enough serving of to pass 80 or so calories. Some fruit, like strawberries and watermelon, are very low in calories. I eat massive servings of watermelon, and it still doesn’t add up to many calories.

So overall, I’d say do what makes the process something you don’t mind sticking with, but be aware of the math involved.

Yes, it all adds up. Have an apple with breakfast, grapes with lunch, and some berries for dessert after dinner - that might be 250-300 calories.

I log just about everything, including the vitamins I take in the morning (20 cal a serving) and the "zero sugar" lemonade I drink (10 cal a serving). I may skip logging a slice of tomato or a handful of lettuce because I know that's likely to be super low calorie and also those are usually served at a time when I can't weigh them. But then, I don't track every single step I take, so mathematically it comes out in the wash.

Realistically everything has calories except water (and black coffee and pure tea). The lowest calorie foods are a stick of celery, a leaf of lettuce, and those little packages of salted/dried seaweed (5 cals a package). So you gotta write it all down and be honest, or else how will you know?