Why don't Calorie Counter's have...
 

A sub forum for recipes - like the other plans (LAWL, WW, SBD) have?


...Or maybe I'm over looking it?

Oh ... that would be an awesome idea. So we could post recipes with calorie counts and nutritional data??

I'd love that.

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Me too! I keep stealing recipies from other diet plans, but not all of them have calorie counts. Points and exchanges mean nothing to me.

oh that would be awesome!!!!!!

The "Recipes" section (part of the "Food Talk and Fabulous Finds" forum) showcases all kinds of healthy recipes, most of which are low calorie. Splitting them into a separate thread here seems sort of unnecessary. The reason that WW Core, South Beach, Atkins, etc have separate recipe threads is that they have guidelines about WHAT foods you can eat, not how much, so the recipes tend to be more specialized.

It's my favorite thing about calorie counting - fewer rules, so we don't have to split our recipes into a whole separate section. We can work ANY of the recipes here, either in the general recipe section or the specialty sections like South Beach, into our plan.

Ah... see, I thought I might've been missing something.

That works! Thanks Amanda!

It would still be cool ;).

Amen, Amanda. That is what I love about calorie counting, it is so flexible.

What I'd like is a list of very low calorie meals and snacks for those days when you don't have many left to spare. Maybe some relatively healthy/filling dinners for 200 calories or that kind of thing. (Hi, BTW, I am new here. Usually post over an the 100+ forum).

I agree that there are a lot of recipes over in the forum, but it would be nice to have recipes that had calories and nutritional info posted as well. Maybe if we calorie counter started adding nutritional info to our recipes and labelling them as such, that would help?

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If you're not sure about the nutritional information of a recipe you can always put in the ingredients in a program like nutritiondata.com and get all the information you always wanted to know.

At the risk of sounding rude ... no duh. :)

I add recipes to the sparkpeople recipe program all the time to get their calories. And I"m pretty good at estimating calories from a recipe by eyeballing it, but then I cook a lot and I have that experience to fall back on.

A lot of people here don't have the time or inclination to input every recipe that interests them into a program or the experience to be able to eyeball a recipe and tell if it's worth the time and effort.

I'm just saying that for those of us who calorie count and post recipes, let's make an effort to help each other out by including at least basic calorie info when we post a recipe. Just to make it easier on each other. :)

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:yes: Agreed.

Lyn2007: You might want to check this out:
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151115

Ok, I started us off! :) I posted a recipe in the recipes section that's marked "low cal" ... and veggie, to boot! :)

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I have been asked a few times over the years this same question...and Amanda's answer is perfect. I feel, personally, that as calorie counters, we can go into the WW, LAWL, or any other recipe section here on 3FC, and simply choose what sounds good. It seemed to me, that having a calorie counter recipe section would be a bit redundant...

I dont think it's redundant. We are our own weightloss plan, even if we are more flexible with our food. And since we are a weight loss plan, I wondered why we dont have the same set up as other plans. And, WW uses points for their recipes, LAWL uses exchanges and SBD works on phases. They dont always post calorie or nutrition information, and points or exchanges dont mean anything to calorie counters.

The Food Talk and Fabulous Finds is fine. It's kinda for everyone so nutrition info isn't always posted. I know there are new people who wonder into CC and dont know what to eat or where to start. I thought if CC had their own section we would be more aware of posting all the nutrition info and it would help newbies as well as each other. It would be especially helpful for some of us who are really into keeping track of our macros. But I suppose we can figure out the calorie & nutrition info on our own if it's not posted. Just thought it might take a few extra steps out as well as help some newbies.

I agree with Rebecca here. :)

The thing is that yes, any recipe can be adapted to a calorie counters needs. But if you want to get technical, any recipe can be adapted to a South Beacher's needs. Any recipe can be adapted to an Atkins dieter's needs. Etc.

And I just looked through the various sub-forums recipes and to be honest, very few of them are low calorie. They are obviously appropriate for that plan, but any recipe that calls for a 1/4 cup of mayo is NOT a good calorie counters recipe. :)

And aside from that, like Rebecca said, why should the calorie counters have to "adapt" all the recipes they find? :) I do think it would be easier, especially for folks new to calorie counting, to have a go to source for basic recipes that fall w/in a reasonable calorie range.

I know I'd be willing to step up and post a couple dozen recipes and links to get things going.

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Right - to have different selections in different calorie ranges would be so simple. Looking for a 400 calorie meal, a 200 calorie snack, ect. It's so time consuming for me to look through zillions of recipes and try to figure out which one is suitable for my 'budget' that day. It'd be great to have them separated into caloric ranges.

Although I do a very high protein version of calorie counting I agree that those plans aren't all calorie focused and thus not suitable for CC'ers.

I like the idea of having threads for the different calorie levels.

I also think it would be nice to have an area to post kind of standardized headings... where a post title would be something like:

Veggie Soup - Meal - 400 cals
Tuna Cracker - Snack - 150 cals

That kind of thing. It would make it really easy to just skim through subject lines and find something for dinner or lunch or whatever. :)

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Yeah. Just doesn't make sense why we have to adapt. Plus there are SO MANY confused CC newbies, it would a good place to turn.

And I'd be happy to help too! I'm sure many of us have cookbooks all over the place with nutritional data included. With a few dedicated members we could get it all set up rather quickly.


:^: Pretty please consider? :)

Ohhhh.. those are such good ideas! I love that!

Ok, so here's my suggestion. :)

Let's start posting recipes to the CC section ... labeled like the above. I suspect that if there are enough recipes and enough interest, then the powers that be won't object to starting a recipe section. I think we just have to prove that we can sustain it instead of requesting a section that lies empty and unused. :)

So I'll start with a couple of recipes today and see where it goes.

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Yes, WW works on the Points system or a list of Core foods, and LAWL works on exchanges, and Body For Life works on mini-meals, and SBD works on a specific food list, and so on and so forth...but it all boils down to the fact that they are pretty much ALL reduced calorie diets. It is calories in vs. calories out...it is just the fact that each plan has its own unique system for reducing the calories.

Points is just a shorthand way of counting them...LAWL limits calories by allowing you certain amounts of each food per day...SBD reduces calories by not allowing you to eat lots of refined carbs and sugars, therefore reducing your cravings for them, and naturally eating less calories is the result.

It all boils down to the fact that 99% of weight loss plans have you eating less calories to lose weight. So, with that in mind, this is why I think it is redundant.

Yes, if you go into the WW section and find a recipe, it might have the Points value listed...but, if we listed a recipe here, we would STILL have to figure up the calories (and other macronutrients) for ourselves, because of the slight differences between product brands.

If two of us here eat toast with peanut butter and banana slices for breakfast-we could very well end up with different calorie and fat counts for those items, depending on what brand and type of bread was used, and what brand and type of peanut butter. The calorie counts are not going to be the same across the board.

We all know that one brand of light bread is 40 calories a slice, and another brand is 60. One variety of Prego sauce is 80 calories a serving, and another is 100 calories a serving. Unless the recipes were written out exactly to the letter, we would still have to do SOME figuring on our own.

I used to moderate over in the LAWL section a couple of years ago, and dealing with the recipes and Stickys and keeping the chatter out of the recipe threads isn't quite as easy as you might think. ;) It ends up being done in two ways-either the recipe threads are general threads, and I have to go in every day and delete the "chatter" posts to keep things organized (I made this last night...and it was GOOD!) or, I have to make the recipe threads as locked sticky threads, which means you would pm the recipes to me...and I would have to unlock and lock the threads, etc. every time I put in a recipe. It ends up being pretty time consuming.

Ah, but see, I don't understand why those kinds of things have to be removed.

As long as the recipe is the first post, then any follow ups with chatter - this was good, or I subbed milk for cream, or whatever, just makes the thread interesting. :)

Anyway, I'm still gonna post recipes with calorie counts, if that's ok with everyone.

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-- I like the chatter--

it's the reviews of recipe// I need more flavor, used this or that, which helps me get to my good tasting calorie monitored end result.

jinx photo!

I like the open ones. I dont understand - What's wrong with people asking questions and chatter? If I see a recipe has a few posts I'll look at it because it might mean that people are reviewing the recipe. Sure people might go off topic - 'I like your avatar!' or 'Cool signiture' but I dont see how there could be much more chatter than that. Most of it would be 'Tasty! Here's what I did:' or 'Gross.' or whatever.

Boy aren't we a bunch of rabble rousers this morning! :D

Must be the cold weather making everyone frisky!

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I know, I dont want to step on any toes. :foot:

When you start getting into a recipe section, it has to be orderly so people can find what they are looking for. What if someone lives out in the country, and has slow dial up internet service? They know they are looking for a particular recipe, but they spend 10 minutes waiting for individual pages to load that are swamped with off topic chatter instead.

It is for this same reason that we have the limitations on signature size. When people had page long signatures with pictures of their kids/cats/husbands/ and 3 different tickers, it was too hard on the people who had slower internet service, and had to weed through all of that to read the posts.

I am a very neat and organized person by nature, and if there were a recipe section here in CC, I wouldn't want it littered with off topic or one sentence posts. It creates a mess.

Ok, please know that I'm not trying to be argumentative ... mostly I'm just kind of enjoying the back and forth. :)

But ... doesn't that argument hold true for ANY thread here on 3FC. If someone has a slow dialup connection, they're going to see that a thread has lots of responses and choose whether to click on it or not.

Aside from that, I just checked out the recipe threads in the LA Weight Loss area, the SB area, and the WW area (which has the most recipe posts). There were maybe 2 or 3 recipes in each section that had more than 2 or 3 responses. The most I saw was around 15 responses. OH and there was a very general thread in the WW forum for "Mexican Soups" - not a specific recipe - that had 50 responses.

I just don't see the "speed of access" thing being a big deal. Any thread on 3FC has the same potential issue - lots of responses that might slow down someone's connection. :)

But what if the other posters here *did* want that and didn't consider that "litter" or "a mess"? If someone posts "this was good" that encourages me to make the recipe. Why is a one line response necessarily clutter or litter?

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It isn't a single, one line response that makes the mess. It is when it becomes multiple ones, covering various recipes. I haven't been over there in a while since I don't mod in that area any longer...but the LAWL recipe section (when I was mod in there) was composed of closed Stickys, so there wasn't any chatter. It ended up being very clean looking...but at the time it also took about 45 minutes out of my day...every day.

I understand the desire for wanting things to be clean looking and organized, but I think most of us enjoy talking about the recipes and discussing ideas. It is a forum.

Calorie counting is so confusing for some. And sure, we may not all have the same calorie counts for recipes because of ingredients, but isn't the same true for any other plan? They dont typically specify brand names. The calorie counts are just a good starting place or estimate for recipes.

I really see this as being an area that will help everyone - both newbies and long time members.

raw-I understand that it is a forum...but a recipe section is a recipe section, not a general chat area. If people want the recipes organized and put into an easy access area...the chatter defeats that. We might as well just post a recipe IN the daily chat thread instead...

If we were to create a separate recipe section, the point of the separate section would be so that it would be organized, and NOT part of the chatting area of Calorie Counters. That is why the recipe sections, when made, are subforums of that plan.

Guys...I really have to go for a while. I have a dance lesson to teach.

Here's my position on this and I hope I don't upset anyone with it :)

I cringe every time someone asks to add another recipe sub-forum because I personally feel that it makes it very difficult for members and visitors to find recipes because there are so many corners to search. As someone else mentioned, not all recipes contain nutrition info which makes it hard for people following specific diets. For example, there are a ton of really delicious recipes in South Beach and WW forums but they don't include calories, so you may not bother. Likewise, WW members may not bother searching here even though most of your recipes would work well for them - if they had the points. Low Carb recipes are the only ones that aren't going to be useful to the majority and are best where they are.

So many sub-forums also makes it cluttered and confusing for newbies. We've even had complaints by newbies about the various recipe forums.

So here's my suggestion

We have a very nice recipe section at http://www.3fatchicks.com/diet-recipes/ with almost 1,000 recipes and is in need of new recipes. If you will send me your recipes via PM or the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page, I will upload the recipes and will even run them through mastercook to get the nutrition information and WW points. All of our recipes include this information. It makes it easy for people across the board. The recipes also allow ratings and reviews, and the diet recipes section is searched regularly by thousands of visitors daily that don't visit the forum. ( Btw, recipes that get multiple bad reviews are pulled. )

If you submit a recipe, we will include your name or forum username as the contributor. All we ask is that you only submit recipes you have actually tried and know are successful and taste good.

We can then put a sticky at the top of this forum to direct all calorie counters there.

I hope this will be acceptable to you all. It seems like the best option for everyone.

Suzanne ... that sounds like decent compromise. Honestly I had no idea about that section of the site. I always come straight to the boards from my bookmarks, so until you just mentioned it, I'd never seen it. So I think if we could direct people to it, that would help a lot.

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I love that link! So well organized. I didn't know about that area either. You can post reviews and vote on recipes! This works for me. Posting a sticky with the link sounds good. Thanks, Suzanne.