So i'm back on strict phase 1 for a few weeks and last time i did Phase 1, veggies like cuccumbers and celery weren't unlimited.

So if for lunch, i have a salad with only cuccumbers in it, do they count towards my 2 cups or can I instead have 4 cups of regular veggies with dinner?

I'm really confused as to how to count unlimited veggies.

Thanks

I was confused about that at first, too.

Lettuce never counts towards the 4 cup of veggies. RAW cukes, radishes, spinach, celery and mushrooms don't count, unless you want to count them in as a part of your 4 cup veggies. I often eat and count cucumbers, mushrooms, radishes and celery as all or part of my 2 cups at lunch so that I can have more select veggies at dinner (extra in a stir fry or homemade catsup with 2 cups rutabaga fries, etc.)

A mixed lettuce salad with 1 cup cucumbers can but doesn't have to be counted as 1 cup of required veggies.

Hope that helped and not caused more confusion!

Thank you.

So if my salad at lunch only has 1 or even 2 cups of cukes, i can not count it and have a 4cup veggie stir fry with dinner.

Is that correct?

Hi busymom, I may not be current, but when I did IP 2 yrs ago, the protocol required no more than 2 cups at a time of regular veggies. Keep up the great work!

correct - you can count them, or you can not count them, depending on how the rest of your day is.

I often add spinach, cucumbers, radishes, celery and mushrooms to things to add bulk without having to "count" them. It is so nice.

Although - I better start counting my mushrooms if they are only free when raw ... I had read a while back that you shouldn't eat mushrooms raw* Plus I don't like them that way anyway... oh well, cross one off my free list

Enjoy!

*ETA: kind of off topic, but I was wondering more about the raw mushroom thing... apparently some mushrooms are fine to eat raw, but mostly I eat the common crimini/button mushrooms, which are not recommended to be consumed raw. Here is an amusingly written article from a mushroom website

Oh ok thanks. So you HAVE to have 2 cups each meal, you can ADD some unlimited veggies but you can't use only unlimited veggies for one meal and 4 cups of limited for the next. Right??

That's my understanding. And you can break up your 4 cups into smaller more frequent amts, just never more than 2 C at once, (not counting unlimited-they're okay alongside limited veg or solo).

It is BEST to not have four cups in one sitting as then you are having all the carbs from the veggies At once.mCarbs do impact the release of insulin and we want to limit that as much as possible. Spreading out the veggies just like we spread out packets is the best protocol.