I was wondering how everyone logs their salads and fruits.
When you have a tossed salad, do you have a ball park figure for the whole bowl that you go by or do you weigh every veggie in your bowl? How much do you estimate a big salad as (just veggies, no tomatoes) I usually make a large salad for the whole family so it's hard to measure each thing individually in my bowl. My big dinner salad is a pasta bowl full, around 3 cups of raw veggies including: just a bit of romaine, cucumber, broccoli, spinach (sometimes), baby carrots and cherry tomatoes. I usually weigh the tomatoes separately because I just throw those on top. I have been ball-parking the entire big salad without tomatoes as 50 calories. Does this seem about right or am I underestimating?
I also wonder about weighing fruits to log into a online journal. I use fitday and I go by weight, not cups. I always assumed that they mean peeled and cored for fruit weights but then I second guessed myself. Do you always peel a banana/orange and core an apple before weighing? The extra weight of a peel can mean a lot of calories for fruits.
Thanks for the help. I am finally getting used to eye balling and counting calories but these little things have me a bit confused
I was just eyeballing it and discovered I've been over estimating the calories big time. I plan on weighing starting tomorrow. I think I thought my typical salas was 60 cals but it turns out it's closer to 30! So that means I can have more salad! Which is good because I've been hurgry lately and I didn't want to add any substanatial cals, just some light volumous ones. I was also over esitmating avocados, I just used the 1/4 of an avocado = 80 cals, well that really depends on the size of the avocado. Today I figured out how many cals per gram and of the particular size avocado I had I could eat 1/2 of it for 80 cals! So like I said I'm going to start weighing my veggies, probably my fruits too...especially if it means I get to eat more of them
I think the biggest factor in salads is the dressing and if you add croutons/cheese. For just lettuce and small amounts of carrots/broccoli/onion/etc., I'd say a regular cereal bowl full of salad is maybe 50 calories, then you add the dressing on top of that count.
I eat so many veggies and fruit, and I don't weigh anything. I have a calorie counting book that tells you how many cal. each fruit or veggie is according to size and I use the prewashed salads in a bag that tells you on the back what the calories are.It seems to work for me.
I think I have a slight touch of OCD, I weight and measure everything, every time. Even things I have daily and know well enough to eyeball, I still weigh.
I got to 98kg eyeballing and estimating. I'm obviously not very good at it...
I love my scale and like to weigh fruits because they can add up pretty quickly. I only weigh veggies if I am having a lot of one kind, like a cup of cooked carrots. I forgot to mention that I measure my dressing separate. For dressing I use a mixture of 1 tbsp of Boathouse Balsamic dressing (15 cals, no fat) and 1 tbsp pure balsmic vinegar (15 cals). For 30 cals, it adds a lot of flavor and no fat
The 50 cals is just for the large bowl of veggies. So that seems about right?
I measure cooked veggies, but only because I usually eat the ENTIRE bag. So, that's 150 calories for a whole bag of broccoli so I feel the need to add that in there. My fruits I don't weight, when I buy them I purchase medium apples just to avoid weighing them. But, as far as salads go, I guess at it. If it's green, I don't measure it in my salad. I do count anything else that goes in it, tomatoes, carrots, etc. But, I count them, not weigh them. I use my scale for things like meats.
I don't worry about weighing lettuce, cucumber, radish, and other very low calorie veggies that I have a small amount of. I do weigh carrots because I can eat a lot of them and they start to add up a bit more quickly than the other things I put into a salad. I also weigh cooked veggies because I'm having big enough quantities that I want to try to account for that.
With fruit, I use the Fitday size estimates, so I try to at least count whether I'm having a small, medium or large whatever. I don't eat too much fruit though, I tend to focus more on veggies.
But if I'm hungry, I'll eat extra fruit or veggies even if it puts me over my calorie target. I try to differentiate between true hunger vs. emotional hunger but I'm not going to worry about an extra 50-100 calories if I'm truly hungry. So I also figure that if I'm eating slightly more over the course of the day but it's all in fruits and vegetables, I'm really not going to fret too much. (I do weigh everything else, so I know I can't be going too far astray!)
Question about counting salads and fruits
