I don't count calories in veggies but I definitely do in fruits. Fruit may be healthy but it also contains a significant amount of calories depending on how much you eat. If you eat a ton of veggies then those calories add up too, but for a cup of carrots there are only about 50 calories, vs about 100 give or take for just one apple.

Don't let this deter you from choosing fruits and veggies over candy! They're still far better and FILLING!

I buy small apples, which are 80-ish calories. Maybe buying smaller fruit will help you eat more fruit instead of candy? I would definitely count fruit and starchy veg. The average banana has 120 calories. That's a lot to not count.

One of the reasons that I did choose an exchange plan to count my calories, is because on "straight" calorie counting I didn't eat a very balanced diet, and 100 calories of veggies did seem equivalent to 100 calories of anything else, even sugar or chips.

For the most part, traditional "junk" and fast food, has never really appealed to me (except during TOM), but I still had a problem with balance. I tended to go on food jags (the jag might be green beans in tomato sauce, or grilled cheese sandwhiches, or cherries or watermelon).

People often would say they couldn't understand why I was heavy, because I ate so healthy (I'm sure they assumed I was eating tons of junk at home).

I wasn't eating junk, but I was eating a lot of food. I've always been a volume eater. For as long as I can remember, I've always been hungry ALL OF THE TIME (except sometimes on extremely low-carb eating. Although even on a virtually no-carb diet, I still feel constantly hungry during the week or so of PMS/TOM).

I was able to stall my weight loss even on Atkins induction and Phase I of South Beach.


For me, a detailed food log, along with symptom notes (hunger, headaches, moods....) really helped me see why I couldn't just count calories and expect to do as well on 1800 calories of high-carb stuff as on 1800 calories of moderately low-carb.

I found that I really felt much better on a moderately low-carb diet (on too low-carb, or on too high-carb, I don't feel well), and when most of my food choices are "whole food" choices (I like the Paleo principles).

I chose an exchange plan, just because it's really hard for me to hit my ideal carb-range without it. I probably could use an online calorie counting app that calculated macros, but since I've been using exchange plans since I was 8 years old (37 years), that's just the easiest for me (and it works well even when I don't have tech handy).

If I eat my calories in high-carb foods (even if they're all "good-carb" whole fruits and grains), I feel horrible. I suspect that some of this was true even when I was younger and thought that I could eat anything I wanted as long as I stayed in my calorie range. I think that very high-carb foods, especially the refined ones ALWAYS made me hungrier, and I just didn't know any better.

The only low-carb diets I tried were the virtually no-carb diets, and they made me sick (and it didn't get any better after two weeks, in fact it got worse).

Calorie counting is a great tool, but I think some folks need to do more. Some people are more sensitive to where their calories come from, and I think it can be difficult to tell if you're one of those people without keeping a food and symptom log. Because "in the moment" it's hard to attribute difficulties to your diet.

When I felt sick or irritable, I never thought "I'm not eating right," I thought "I'm having a bad day," or "I must be coming down with something."

Even now, when my blood sugar drops, or I haven't eaten in several hours, my first thought isn't that my blood sugar has dropped, or that I might be hungry, it's that my husband is being a jerk (my first symptom of hunger on low-carb eating is irritability).

You're not only describing yourself....you're describing me darn near 100%.

Now that I've discovered this, and have been talking to folks - it's amazing how many people "like us" that I've found.

Once I figured it out, I thought it must be really rare (or maybe I was just used to thinking of myself as a freak).

But it really does put some things into perspective.

I remember a doctor telling me that I could lose a lot of weight just by giving up dessert. I laughed because I eat dessert maybe six times a year. When I was growing up dessert was only for very special occasions like holidays and birthdays (except for fruit or jello, occasionally).

Even when we went out to eat as a family, appetizers and desserts were virtually never part of the meal (or one order was split between 8 people). As a teenager, I was quite shocked when I learned that my boyfriend's family always ordered appetizers and desserts when they went out to eat (and they ate out quite frequently compared to my family). I remember thinking that my boyfriend's family must be incredibly wealthy to be able to go out to eat so often and to order so much food when they did (everyone ordered their own appetizer AND dessert).

I don't think at 16 I would have invisioned a world in which "average" people ate out more than once a month. It's really no wonder that obesity is becoming a national epidemic.

We didn't even have dessert in my family after meals. You just got the meal at all times of the year. My mom was a great baker though and there was always sweets and baked goods around the house when we wanted them.



When I was a little girl in the 60s it was very rare for us to go out to eat as a family. It was a once every couple of months thing. In the 70s if we got a pizza it was once a month and the whole family ate the one large pizza. There were 5 in our family so we got 2 slices each supplemented by salad that my mom made. Milk to drink or water.

I was 18 before I went to a real sit down restaurant and that was because my new boyfriend took me to dinner one evening....and months later I found out he was a little upset because I had ordered the 'large" lasagna...which was not all that large at that time. Today it would be considered a 'small'.

double post...oops.

I do very general calorie counts for fruits and I don't really count certain veggies like salad or broccoli at all.

So, for a small apple, just a general 50 cal. A regular banana, 100 cal.

If you make it a goal to eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible, I think you'll find that you naturally stay within your 14-1800 calorie budget.