Measureing Salad & Veggies

[jeff3298]

How do you measure your salad and your veggies? Do you stuff a measureing cup of salad greens or what? Dice up your salad into tiny pieces and you get a lot more LOL.
A cup of raw spinach is different than cooked spinach. What do you do?
A cup of broccolli flowerettes vs chopped broccolli for example

Thanks

[mitzimarie]

Hi, Jeff

Measuring veggies used to stress me out! I don't care for vague... I like to try to be precise. And how can you be precise with irregular shaped veggies? Then I came across this wonderful Nutritional Spreadsheet in the FAQ Forum on this board. It lists the food, and how much a cup is in weight. So I invested in a really inexpensive food scale from Walmart (like $6) and started measuring my veggies, cheese, and nuts that way. Here is the link to the Spreasheet: http://www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.c...CARB_COUNT.pdf

[mitzimarie]

Oh, yeah! Forgot to mention that I measure all of my veggies raw, too.

And a great deal of my veggies come in bags... for example, I eat a lot of baby spinach leaves that come in a bag... and broccoli/cauliflower mix, too, that comes in a bag. That makes it easy, because it has a label and you just have to divide into servings.

[jeff3298]

Mitzi,
Thanks for the info. I need to get a scale, measure veggies raw by weight. I too want to be exact! The per washed and sorted veggies looks like a simple way to go. I am not a veggie guy but will be real soon.

[Because I love my girls]

Thanks so much for that awesome link Mitzi! I have been wondering the same thing as Jeff. It's been driving me nuts wondering if my measurements were acurate. Now I will know for sure. Thanks again!

[mitzimarie]

Originally Posted by jeff3298

The per washed and sorted veggies looks like a simple way to go. I am not a veggie guy but will be real soon.

Jeff - before Atkins, I wouldn't touch a veggie with a 10 foot pole. And on that 1st attempt at Atkins (see stats in my signature), I did not put forth the effort to break out of my box and make myself try new veggies. I got to where I was eating a lot of nuts and dairy, but not eating many veggies. I think that is the one of the main reasons why I fizzled out on that attempt. Atkins really is a change of lifestyle... it's not trying to eat as closely as you can to how you used to eat (I found out the hard way). So on this attempt, I tried tons of new veggies. I can't believe how much better the plan works when you eat veggies!

Here is the link to the Veggie Challenge that we just participated in few weeks ago: (5th Semi Annual Veggie Challenge!)http://www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.com/forums/adbb-semi-annual-challenges/74830-5th-semi-annual-veggie-challenge.html Read through it for ideas on how to get in your veggies. It is my experience that it is best to just go ahead and embrace them, rather than fight them. And YES! I use the bags of veggies quite often. So easy and convenient.

To "Because I love my girls" - You are very welcome! I'm glad that you like the Spreadsheet. I was so relieved when I found it. I printed it out, and use it all of the time.

[jeff3298]

Thanks for the info but more questions: If I have 2 cups from the salad group and one cup from the other veggie group I am not anywhere close to 12grams of carbs. Or do I go for the 12 grams of carbs keeping the ratios 2/1?
The veggies I eat are all the low net carbs veggies too. Help!

[mitzimarie]

Jeff, the rules in the 2002 edition of DANDR don't have a minimum requirement of 12g of net veggie carbs for Induction. It just says that you must have 3 cups of veggies, either all 3 from the Salad list or 2 from the Salad list and 1 from the Other list.

The 12g minimum of net veggie carbs was for the Veggie Challenge. 2002 DANDR does state that in any given phase of Atkins, most of your net carbs should be net veggie carbs. So, I look at it this way: if you can have 20g net carbs total, and most of them should be net veggie carbs, in order to qualify as "most", veggies need to account for at least 1 more than half of the total. So 10 + 1 = 11. And since this was supposed to be a challenge, we added another gram onto the requirement, making it a 12g minimum.

In reality it is not uncommon, however, for people to get less than a total of 20g net carbs each day... they average a lower daily total. So when you move onto Rung 1 (more veggies), you should add 5g worth of net veggie carbs to whatever average you have had during Induction. For example, if you only average 15g total net carbs daily, you would move to 20g total net carbs in your first week of OWL (the extra 5g should come from veggies).

Personally, I think it's a good idea to try to get 20g net carbs daily during Induction. It really isn't necessary to try to stay lower than that on purpose. With practice, you will learn which veggies have the most nutritional punch, and it will be easy to get in at least 12g.

For example, if you eat:
1 cup of jicama (salad veggie) @ 5g net carbs
1 cup of red bellpepper strips (salad veggie) @ 6g net carbs
1/2 can pumpkin (which is .88 cups/Other veggie) @ 7g net carbs
TOTAL OF 18g NET VEGGIE CARBS

See? There's 18g of net veggie carbs from Induction veggies. I eat raw bell pepper strips as a snack, with a piece of string cheese. (I prefer the red, orange, or yellow bell peppers instead of the green) When I can get jicama, it is a staple for me. Spaghetti Squash, tomatoes, and onions are easy ways to up the net veggie carbs. Look through that Spreadsheet I pointed you to earlier. At a glance, you will be able to see the different veggies and what their net carb counts are. It also indicates which rung each food can be introduced in. Good stuff!

[jeff3298]

I need to learn to like the peppers and jicima and tomatoes etc. My veggie list is way to small LOL!

thanks
J

[mitzimarie]

Originally Posted by jeff3298

I need to learn to like the peppers and jicima and tomatoes etc. My veggie list is way to small LOL!

Jeff, you make a great point when you say "learn to like". Meaning, there are some veggies that I really didn't care for the first time I tried them. Jicama was definitely one of them. It is a root vegetable, and it tasted kinda "rooty" to me... almost sort of like dirt. But I tried it a few more times, and really grew to like it. I have also discovered that there is a wide range of tastes for jicama. Sometimes they're bland, and sometimes they're so sweet, that it is truly a treat... they taste like a cross between a mild apple and a pear. They're grown in Mexico, and I live in Louisiana... I think that's why sometimes I can get the really fresh ones and they're the ones that taste so good.

Bottom line - don't give up on a veggie if it doesn't taste great at first. At least give it a few more times.