Calories in a Garden Salad

[Fleurymom]

I am trying to figure out approximately how many calories are in the salad I make.  I have a 3 cup bowl that I use.  I use romaine lettuce, then a varity of veggies (cucumber, celery, colored peppers, cauliflower and broccoli).  I add 1 cup of diced chicken to it.  How do I figure it out?

[CarolS]

When I've made a salad with lots of ingredients, and I'm strictly counting calories, I'll weigh each item in grams before I add it to the bowl.  I keep a little notebook in the kitchen and as I'm making the salad, I'll record X grams romaine lettuce, X grams tomatoes, X grams chicken, X T basalmic vinegar, etc. 

Then I record it in my food log.  A bit cumbersome, but it works for me. 

Cheers!

[Dragonwrath]

The way i found when i make my salads is to first figure out what a normal serving size of each item is and the calories and then use my food scale to measure that out. I make the custom salad in he food log section and use that to log.  As long as you measure it out you will be accurate. 

[GershonSurge]

@Fleurymom,

I generally weigh my food as it's more accurate. I use this as a substitute for my salad. The calories are relatively significant, so you could weigh a cup once and use a guess from then on. For the chicken, you will need to weight it separately. 

[Baltoscott]

Hi @Fleurymom — sounds like a good salad.  I use MyFitnessPal (linked to my Fitbit account) but the principle is the same using fitbits built in food logging.  You wiegh the ingredients as you add them to the bowl and then log them.  Then you save and name the whole thing as a custom food or a custom meal (or in MFP maybe as a recipe) so it is easy to log next time.  You might just call this one ‘lunch salad 3c’ to remind yourself the basic recipe is 3 cups so later you can use 1/3 or some other portion of it if you have something similar as a side salad.