Vegetable calories

Schmoopy11
Schmoopy11 Posts: 20
edited October 6 in Health and Weight Loss
I've never done any commercial weight loss programs like WW or Jenny Craig but I think I've heard that fruits and vegetables are "free"?

Do we need to track vegetable calories? I can see tracking salad dressing and legumes or dairy on a salad, but what about the lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers and onions, etc.....?
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Replies

  • KriscoOil
    KriscoOil Posts: 305 Member
    I log EVERYTHING - good or bad!
  • ElizabethRoad
    ElizabethRoad Posts: 5,138 Member
    If you eat it, you should track it. There is no such thing as a "free" calorie.
  • Jorra
    Jorra Posts: 3,338 Member
    Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig don't count calories. MFP counts calories. Count them!
  • tanniew78
    tanniew78 Posts: 602 Member
    "There is no such thing as a free lunch" They invented that saying for a reason.... :wink:
  • Stormyyy
    Stormyyy Posts: 247 Member
    Yeah i would count them as i can put 3 or 4 different veggies into a meal and it mounts up over the day and still would if it was one or two. Goodluck on ur weightloss journey. :)
  • vim_n_vigor
    vim_n_vigor Posts: 4,089 Member
    You should log everything you eat. If you do forget to log a few bites of lettuce or cucumber or tomato, it won't have as big of an affect on the calories you track as if you miss some chips, cake, cookies, etc., because the calories are so low, but you can eat too many calories of veggies and fruits too!
  • Mama_CAEI
    Mama_CAEI Posts: 235
    Fruits are not freebies...they have a lot of sugars in them which ups their calorie count.

    I do log my veggies, though it's really just a blip in the overall scheme of things. For example, if you have a salad that has about 2 cups of lettuce in it, that's only about 15 calories.
  • mleipe
    mleipe Posts: 54
    If you ate 100 lb. of broccoli every day you would gain weight, guaranteed.

    Vegetables have calories, too, and calories are what make you gain weight.
  • kekl
    kekl Posts: 382 Member
    I personally don't log my vegetables, aslong as they are the non starchy kind and not in sauce.
  • MinnieInMaine
    MinnieInMaine Posts: 6,400 Member
    Definitely log everything. WW allows for free fruit and most veggies but their plan is set up to allow for that. I don't know about Jenny Craig or any of the others but bottom line, this isn't one of those programs, this is MFP and here you account for everything you eat. And if you don't, the only person you're cheating is yourself.
  • asyouseefit
    asyouseefit Posts: 1,265 Member
    If you are following WW, then don't count fruit and vegetables. If you are counting calories only, take them into account.
  • Huffdogg
    Huffdogg Posts: 1,934 Member
    You ought to log it all. Personally, I use the base database figures for fresh veggies most of the time and weigh them in increments of 100g. It takes a bit of fiddling to get used to the naming conventions used for this stuff, but generally speaking, if you type in something like:

    apples, raw
    or
    Broccoli, raw

    You'll get a result with a bunch of serving options, and one of them will be in increments of 100g. Then you can enter decimal values and get pretty accurate results.

    It is generally true that you'd have to consume a TON of veggies to be gaining weight, but if you load up your full calorie diary every day with other foods AND eat a bunch of unlogged fruits and vegetables, too, you're no longer going to be in a deficit. Fruits, in particular, are surprisingly high-calorie and full of sugars that can rack up undesirable results if overdone.
  • jilljuly
    jilljuly Posts: 3 Member
    Technically you should log everything as the other posters said, but I found it hard to do when you eat something like, say, a mixed chopped salad. It's easy for me to get lazy about logging, which in turn makes it easy to be lazy about eating and staying under my limits. Not good. So, I take some shortcuts so that the logging task is not too painful. For example, if I had 2 c. of a mix of several steamed vegetables, I might only log 2 c. broccoli and assume that broccoli = (more or less) = carrots = califlower etc. Or I might ONLY log the salad dressing and not the salad, but increase the salad dressing a bit (say to 1.5 servings instead of 1 serving) to account for the salad itself. Not 100% accurate, but keeps me from having to spend half the day logging foods.
  • dancingj2
    dancingj2 Posts: 4,572 Member
    I did like that about WW - vegies and fruits were "free". It encouraged me to eat more of them.

    But MFP is all about counting calories so I add them in. Doing this allows me to track protien, fiber, etc too.
  • starshine420
    starshine420 Posts: 95
    If it gets digested, even gum, if it goes in your mouth, log it. those small calories add up. As everyone else said, here we track calories, while WW you track points. If you want to save on calories, fill up on low calories veggies, but either way, track them
  • Diary_Queen
    Diary_Queen Posts: 1,314 Member
    For me on WW, I felt the reason they let you not count the veggies & fruit were that they wanted to teach people in a sort of sly way to make a better choice. If you eat 100 calories of broccoli, you get a lot more in your stomach than if you eat 100 calories of a donut. It's still 100 calories, but you feel more full and you're giving your body better nutrition by making that choice.
  • rileysowner
    rileysowner Posts: 8,328 Member
    Yes you need to track veggies. They have calories as well, and no they don't take more energy to digest than they provide. The proof of that is people who eat vegetarian and are fat.
  • khotch1
    khotch1 Posts: 99 Member
    I track absolutely everything. I do eyeball my lettuce as far as cups go but everything else is measured or weighed!
  • khk2010
    khk2010 Posts: 451 Member
    I wasn't tracking my veggies at first. Then I got more serious and started tracking them. I was surprised at how many calories some veggies have, like an onion, peas, or tomato. I don't always track the celery or some of the other almost "free" veggies but I track the ones that have more than a few calories.
  • RhonndaJ
    RhonndaJ Posts: 1,615 Member
    If it has calories, track it.
  • HarringtonS
    HarringtonS Posts: 8 Member
    Weight Watchers has gone to "free" policy when it comes to fruits and vegetables. However there are certain F&V's that are looked at a bit differently. I think that it is best to continue counting or rather logging in your F&Vs as there are some vegetables that are "starchy" and some fruits that have a very high or higer sugar content.:wink:
  • BarbWhite09
    BarbWhite09 Posts: 1,128 Member
    Calories are calories. Always track em all.
  • blueimp
    blueimp Posts: 230 Member
    If you are watching more than calories, you will find that some veggies (yes, even veggies) have an amazing number of carbs in them. The carbs in broccoli astounds me.
  • SeaSiren1
    SeaSiren1 Posts: 242 Member
    I track it. I can eat hundreds of calories per day of fruits and veggies. If I don't track it, I would not know where to make an accurate adjustment if needed.
  • Huffdogg
    Huffdogg Posts: 1,934 Member
    If you are watching more than calories, you will find that some veggies (yes, even veggies) have an amazing number of carbs in them. The carbs in broccoli astounds me.

    This is true, but there's also an amazing amount of dietary fiber in broccoli. You can safely subtract dietary fiber carbs from virtually any tracking protocol.
  • agthorn
    agthorn Posts: 1,844 Member
    The new WW points system increased the points of all other foods, and then made fruits and vegetables "free" - so if you follow the plan you're still eating basically the same number of calories. MFP is designed for you to track everything.
  • 10kaday
    10kaday Posts: 177
    Don't worry about green veggies so much as long as you eat them raw. The other starchy veggies you should track. But seriously, if the veggies you are eating is the size you can put in a ziplock bag eat all you want!!!
  • Schmoopy11
    Schmoopy11 Posts: 20
    I'm going to say that was an overwhelming YES to counting the calories! Thanks everyone :)
  • lipglossjunky73
    lipglossjunky73 Posts: 497 Member
    I log everything, however,I stand by my philosophy: no overweight person ever said "You know what did me in? All that friggen broccoli I ate!"
  • Jessyrabbit
    Jessyrabbit Posts: 24 Member
    a calorie is a calorie. no matter where it comes from!
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