Peanut butter?

I measure out a tablespoon.... besides it's protein so it's actually good for you. A bit of calories and fat isn't going to hurt you.

First of all, I want to say that I LOVE peanut butter. A lot of people justify snacking on PB with the thought "It's protein, so it's good for me." Not exactly true, though.

First of all, take a look at the nutritional information and listed ingredients on your jar of peanut butter. My much-loved jar of Jif lists the follwing ingredients:

Roasted peanuts
Sugar
Less than 2% of molasses, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, mono and diglycerides, salt.

The nutritional information for 2 Tablespoons:

190 calories
16 g fat (equivalent to 144 caloies)
8 g carbs (32 calories)
7g protein (28 calories)

So you can see that peanut butter is really more fat than anything else, and 144 calories is about 75% of the total calories in Jif peanut butter! We should really be thinking of peanut butter as a fat, not a protein.

As another example, my jar of Smuckers natural peanut butter contains just 2 ingredients: peanuts and salt. No added sugar. The nutritional breakdown is almost the same: 190 calories,16 g ft, 6 g crbs, 7 g protein. It has slightly less carbs because it has no sugar.

Remember it's more fat than protein!!

Peanut butter on toast is my diet salvation! It's very filling and satisfying. Sure, it's not a low-calorie food. As long as you carefully plan for the fat calories (no one should be eating a 0% fat diet, gee whiz!), it fits nicely in with any healthful eating plan. Like ANY calorie dense food, it is not suitable for mindless snacking, of course.

In my case, I actually use it /specifically/ to add healthy fat to my diet because I find it's terribly easy to end up cutting fat way too much.

I always measure peanut butter using a food scale. I put the plate and the bread on the scale, tare it to zero, and then add peanut butter until it weighs out at 15 or 16 grams per tablespoon. I always feel like if I used a volume measure like a tablespoon, not only would it be inaccurate but I'd end up leaving some portion of the precious peanut goodness on the spoon instead of in my mouth.

It's actually more convenient to put the jar on the scale, tare it, measure out the amount of peanut butter you want (the scale reads negative at that point), and put it on whatever you're putting it on. That way you're still also weighing the inevitable smidgin that gets licked off the knife that didn't get weighed on whatever you put it on.

It hardly protein really if you read the label.

That being said I could eat it all day & I use a scale...

It's actually more convenient to put the jar on the scale, tare it, measure out the amount of peanut butter you want (the scale reads negative at that point), and put it on whatever you're putting it on. That way you're still also weighing the inevitable smidgin that gets licked off the knife that didn't get weighed on whatever you put it on.

Oooh, I like that tip! Nice! I usually do the weigh what I add it to, but that's a great idea when I'm measuring out from a container. ^_^

I adore peanut butter. I only eat the all natural, crunch kinds. Normally, I eat it with toast or spread on top of apples, pears or bananas. I don't measure out the amounts, but I always apply sparingly. I'm not much into counting calories, but I do like to have a general idea for the snacks I consume.

The fat in peanut butter is good fat. But I like a little more peanut butter than I should. So I have 1 tbls of peanut butter and make up 2 tbls. of PB2. PB2 on its own can be a little bland but if I mix it with regular peanut butter I can satisfy that craving I get.

I totally wing it. It's delicious. I've eaten a lot of it since I have been on MFP and I lost weight and maintained it for quite some time (haven't met my goal weight yet because my maintenance period was started due to illness, surgery and a long recovery).