Foods you thought had fewer calories and discovered they didn't when you paid attention
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divergentbeing wrote: »It might sound dumb, but Oreos and Samoas. Two cookies is 140 calories... (I remember eating them by the sleeve).
Nuts and avocados we were a huge surprise.
Less surprising but still worse than I thought is fruit juice (a cup is not the same as 'a glass').
One original Oreo has about 53-54 calories, so two is around 106. Not quite as bad! There are ALWAYS Oreos in my house so I have become quite knowledgeable.
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The dried cranberries I'd add to salads cause I thought they added nutritious things like vitamin C and fibre.
Turns out since they're sweetened all they add is sugar with next to no nutritious value.
I might as well sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar on my salad0 -
I was shocked how much worse Sonic milkshakes are for you than a milkshake from just about any other fast food restaurant (even their minis!). I was also shocked by ice cream cake, the serving size on that is just depressing.
On the other hand, when measuring out bertolli spaghetti noodles I was shocked how much I got for only 200 calories o.o0 -
peter56765 wrote: »BodyByButter wrote: »Snapeas. Delicious, but same calories as chips.
OMG!! Seriously?? That is unbelievable. I never knew that.
Not true. Snap peas are 35-40 calories for 100g (about 1 cup)
If they are comparing to chips they most likely are referring to
and it is 28 gms = 120 calories.
100 gms close to 400 plus calories
That's my evening snack everyday. Love me some Snapea crisp
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TheVirgoddess wrote: »Muffins. The calorie count in them makes me sad.
Yes! My boys are lightweight and underweight and I've been working with a dietician to work on high calorie foods for them, so not much has surprised me. But muffins were a bit of a shock!
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Nuts, I always knew they were calorie heavy… but the actual number surprised me.0
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Sweet potato fries really surprised me! Also, pasta dishes at most restaurants are often more than my entire allowance for a day! Granted I always gravitate towards something cheesey and creamy, mmm!0
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Juice. It's not soda, so it must be "healthy"!0
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seltzermint wrote: »I've never really been that into milkshakes, thankfully. But that's the biggest shocker for me that most of them, even small ones, have at least 600 and sometimes well over 1,000 calories.
This. Seriously. And smoothies. I used to have a smoothie for lunch sometimes because it was fruit and healthy, I thought. Turns out 900 calories.
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I don't think any single food surprised me. I think what surprised me was what I was really consuming at the end of the day, which makes me sound really dumb considering I knew salad dressing wasn't low calorie--so why did I think eating a huge salad with a ton of chicken, bacon, creamy dressing, cheese, beans, etc-was going to help me lose weight? I think it was before I really understood CICO.0
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Grape nuts. I used to have a bowl with milk, and loved it microwaved. You can imagine my shock when I measured what I poured into my bowl (only 1.5 cups so it didn't seem like that much). At 210 calories for half a cup, plus my milk, that bowl was 720 calories. I'd rather have a fried rice and string bean chicken panda bowl Naturally the grapenuts was a healthier choice, but NO WONDER I was gaining weight! 0
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kellycasey5 wrote: »Grape nuts. I used to have a bowl with milk, and loved it microwaved. You can imagine my shock when I measured what I poured into my bowl (only 1.5 cups so it didn't seem like that much). At 210 calories for half a cup, plus my milk, that bowl was 720 calories. I'd rather have a fried rice and string bean chicken panda bowl Naturally the grapenuts was a healthier choice, but NO WONDER I was gaining weight!
Dude. I was literally just thinking about Grape Nuts last night. A roommate who moved out had left some here and I was munching on them. When I looked at the calories I was like "hot damn". Why so many?0 -
Honestly I just never even looked because, well, GRAPE NUTS. I guess that is the learning curve. Fig newtons got me too... over 100 calories for ONE in the snack packs. LOL!
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kellycasey5 wrote: »Honestly I just never even looked because, well, GRAPE NUTS. I guess that is the learning curve. Fig newtons got me too... over 100 calories for ONE in the snack packs. LOL!
Really? I thought Fig Newtons were 140 calories for 2...0 -
spacequiztime wrote: »Juice. It's not soda, so it must be "healthy"!
So much this. Many times, these "juices" have just as much sugar and chemicals as sodas do. I used to be one of those people who thought they were healthy until I started looking at ingredients.
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otheliemoor wrote: »seltzermint wrote: »I've never really been that into milkshakes, thankfully. But that's the biggest shocker for me that most of them, even small ones, have at least 600 and sometimes well over 1,000 calories.
This. Seriously. And smoothies. I used to have a smoothie for lunch sometimes because it was fruit and healthy, I thought. Turns out 900 calories.
Steak and Shake milkshakes, though otherworldly in deliciousness, make me sad because they are loaded with about a whole meal's worth of calories. I could make my own at home and save myself 300 or so calories.
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peter56765 wrote: »BodyByButter wrote: »Snapeas. Delicious, but same calories as chips.
OMG!! Seriously?? That is unbelievable. I never knew that.
Not true. Snap peas are 35-40 calories for 100g (about 1 cup)
If they are comparing to chips they most likely are referring to
and it is 28 gms = 120 calories.
100 gms close to 400 plus calories
That's my evening snack everyday. Love me some Snapea crisp
Never seen those before. I eat snap peas every day at lunch. I grow them in my garden. They look like this:
or like this after you pick and wash them:
They're low calories and quite filling.
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NUTS!! And maybe not even the calorie count, but more the serving size. I really had no concept of serving size vs calorie count for nuts. I had to be putting away hundreds of calories just grazing a little every time I walked by the container.0
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Tortillas surprised me (both in calories & fat).
And pasta. And rice. I love them both, so this is a Very Sad Thing.
And peanut butter, which really shouldn't have surprised me at all. I can see now that my usual PBJ used to be 700 calories, and sometimes when I was really hungry I'd have 2 of them.
No wonder I was so fat.
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I've watched my mom diet all my life so calories in food never really shocks me, I get it. But when I started calorie counting and started weighing and figuring up my additives, like creamer, ketchup, mustard, pickles and relish(not the calories but the sodium) I was surprised at how much they counted for the bulk of my day.0
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I was shocked to see that in a lot of cases you could find a sugary crap cereal that gave you a bigger serving with less calories than a more healthy cereal ie:grape nuts, granola, kashi. A bowl of Berry Berry Kix was my treat if I had calories left over... Now I have a taste for rice krispies, puffed corn or puffed wheat. I use very little milk so my cereal is barely wet but still as satisfying.
(Butter wasn't a shocker so much as realizing that I was putting away a half a stick a day before mfp - whoa!)0 -
Pretty much everything is higher calorie than I thought! And it adds up fast!
One of my happy discoveries, however, has been that a donut is lower in calories than a bagel. Yay!!!0 -
I love ranch dressing, and only the real thing will do. But when I go out to eat and order a salad with ranch dressing I get it on the side and just dip my forkfuls of salad into it and get a little taste on each bite. I usually eat less than a tablespoon that way and keep within a reasonable calorie and fat goal. Pasta was indeed surprising to me, as someone else said - it is more calorie dense than I realized and of course a serving is much less than I usually eat!0
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I wish I could eat snap peas.... stupid oral allergy!0
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BodyByButter wrote: »Snapeas. Delicious, but same calories as chips.
sugar snappeas have the same calories as chips?0 -
granola, peanut butter, salad dressing, and vegetable oil.0
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I echo everyone who has said milkshakes. Like, I knew they were bad and high calorie, but then actually looking at the real numbers was that much worse. Another thing nutrition-wise is that I didn't realize just how much sodium lunch meat has in it. I always thought of sandwiches as being a relatively healthy lunch, but when you're trying to watch out for blood pressure....yeesh. And on the flip side, I was surprised when I found out just how little calories are in coffee when you drink it black. At least that's one habit I don't have to completely cut back on.0
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I was very sad, and felt very foolish, to learn there are no "zero calorie foods" (i.e. foods that take more calories to digest than they contain). Also that a zero on a nutrition label does not necessarily mean 0, it just means it rounds down to zero for that infinitesmally small serving size. (1/3 second of cooking spray, anyone?)0
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