I just don't bother counting calories for most vegetables. Like lettuce and tomato on a sandwich or even a small salad (unless it has beans or meat) but then I just count the beans and meat and not the lettuce, tomato or cucumbers. It just seems like a waste of time to me since these things are so low in calories. I do count calories for other veggies, just not salad. Anybody else guilty of this?
I do the same freebie-thing for super low cal veggies (tomato, lettuce, cucumber, celery, red pepper), but always log the others. And I've lost 70lb. I may need to tighten up the tracking as my weight gets close to goal, but I'll deal with that then!
I don't think that's "cheating" so much as it is a different way of accounting for what you eat. Plenty of people don't record raw non-starchy vegetables, while plenty of others record every bite, sip, nibble and taste. Whatever works for you and keeps you losing weight happily is a Good Thing.
Some people find that leaving lettuce, tomato, etc. off the calorie count encourages them to pile more of these foods onto their plates and into their sandwiches, as they're "freebies" and everyone likes a free thing. Others find that the habit of counting becomes more ingrained if every bite of food is recorded. I see advantages to both methods of doing things. I do write down those vegetables, but I don't weigh or measure them. I do it to keep track of optimal nutrition, not because I sweat the calories in the baby spinach leaves and tomato slices on my wrap. For me, that's the best of both worlds: I stay in the record-keeping habit, yet think of those foods as pretty much free.
I guarantee you I did not pack on pounds because I failed to account for the amount of lettuce and spinach I was eating, and I don't think that they're what slows me down now. Count however makes YOU comfortable and works for you; there is no wrong way to go about it if you continue to lose while feeling good in the process.
Like above posters, I don't record lettuce, tomato, celery, cucumber, or bell pepper. I also don't record frozen green beans. I have found that my laziness actually works to my benefit this way - if I don't feel like logging my food, I just eat one of the freebies. I eat a LOT more raw veggies than I used to!
When I was losing the weight I counted every single thing...now that I'm in maintaince I don't bother counting low calorie veggies or lower calorie fruit, (berries/melon). At the end of the day I just say 100 for all of it. It's probably more like 200 but hey, whoever got fat eating blueberries and cucumbers?
Is there a real difference, though, between someone who sets her caloric limit at 1500 without counting low-carb vegetables and someone who sets her limit at 1700 and counts everything? To my mind, they're just two ways of counting. Neither way is "right" or "wrong," simply what works. If something no longer works, then sure, shake it up--but if someone's losing, happy with her loss, and happy eating more "free" vegetables on her plan without counting, then it seems she's doing it right.
I'm with Lori Bell: very few of us ever reached our high weights because we ate too many cucumbers, blueberries, and spinach leaves. I like keeping track for nutritional reasons and wind up having those foods added into my calorie count anyway, but if I used a program that didn't automatically count calories for every listing, I probably wouldn't record those calories. It isn't that they don't count--all calories do--but like JayZeeJay, not recording those calories makes me a lot more likely to choose those foods. Other people prefer to count everything and weigh all portions, and that is cool too; I can see the benefit of getting into that habit as well.
Any system that makes people eat more of their lean veggies, whether it's counting everything or counting only the stuff with double-digit calories, is probably a good one.
I count everything. I do not have a daily set calorie goal, I prefer to have a calorie range. I think that not counting low cal vegis is fine since you are most likely only be eating 100 - 300 cals depending on how much you are eating, so you are basically staying with in a calorie range.
Kind of like Nola, I count some low-calorie vegetables not for calories but for nutritional reasons. I try to hit a certain minimum amount of fiber in a day and vegetables can help count toward that.
I'll count salad greens, but not lettuce on sandwiches, and I never count cucumber, which I eat about 1/3 of one per day. I'll count salad dressings and sauces, but not the little smudge of ketchup or mustard on my hot dog. I'm still losing very steadily!
I count everything. I may have to estimate some meals (prepared by others) or in restaurants that don't have nutritional info on their foods, but any food that I eat, I count, including spices.
Before that sounds like too much, I use a nutritional software and a electronic food scale. I weigh a food item, tare out the weight and add the next ingredient. Everything is in grams. I jot down the food and the gram weight. Simple. It is so much easier to weigh than use spoons and cups for measuring.
entering everything in also helps me watch my vitamin and mineral intake, allowing me to see what I may be lacking in. So that slice of tomato or handful of lettuce will make a difference.
I sorta count them, lol. What I mean by that is that my diet is pretty predictable. I count the veggies that go into my morning scramble, my lunch salad, and my dinner stir "fry". I eat a lot of veggies over the course of the day, so I need an idea of how much it adds up to. It's not hard bc it's usually the same amount of the same veggies so there's not usually any extra work involved in counting them.
But if I nibble some raw zucchini chunks that are waiting to be cooked or some extra spinach off my daughter's plate, I'm not going to bother to count it. I feel that I should make it as easy as possible to eat foods like that. Like others have said, that's not the food that makes me fat and it's better for me to eat them than not.
I'm a Cheater
