Calorie shocker!

I work in a school and one of the teachers very kindly gave the technicians a packet of Marks and Spencers chocolate cookies to have with their coffee. Very kind. The pack had ten biscuits, there are five techs. Yippee, no fighting over the last one! After there was nothing left but crumbs someone read out the back of the pack. Each biscuit was over 240 calories so the two came to more than a lot of meals!!! Now, in the past, I could have eaten most of a pack of chocolate biscuits whilst watching TV in the evening! Eeek!

actually eggs aren't that high in calories and, if you take out the yolk, they are very, very low in calories
the shocking things are those which are healthy but stil energy dense (read energy dense as high in calories)
nuts, quinoa, muesli, dried fruit and cheese- yes all are rather obviously high in calories, especially cheese, but when you realise that a serving of hard cheese is about the size of a domino or two dice- that's what really brings it home

My shocker was milk...1% and 2%..loaded with sugar. My sugar intake is 24 grams...having a bowl of cereal with a cup of milk in it is 12 grams gone. I love milk in my coffee, but no more. All these years I avoided cream but now I have to have it. I never exceed my fat intake but I always exceed my sugar. No wonder. Now I save my sugar for that mini chocolate bar or something else as a sweet treat.

Granola is crazy.

One of the things I was shocked to learn was that a donut was less calories than a scone or muffin. Scones are so bland and muffins seem almost healthy. I've always preferred donuts but would stupidly pick something "smarter" when I was trying to be good.

Started today on this one but started last week on another counter...anyway i love this one...But back to the question..yes tim hortons extra large coffee 4x4 which is four creams and four sugars and sometimes i add more sugar which brought it up to a whopping 600 to760 calories..i have been drinking three to four of these a day for two years ..No wonder i gained weight....

So guess what is no longer on my menu..? lol

Ah Timmies... the bane of my former existence.. XL 4 cream 2 sugar was mine. I normally had about 4 a day. Now I drink plain herbal tea (sometimes with a little honey) black coffee and water. I bought some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee for a treat - it's amazing how GOOD black coffee can be when you have a GOOD coffee.

I hate how bad muffins are... It's crazy.. I used to have a muffin nearly every morning (with my calorie bomb coffee) and up until very recently I still had enough extra calories in a day to be able to have one every once in a while but at almost 400 calories a piece I have taken to eating Jos Louis' instead..they are only 250

Granola is also stupidly high in calories. I used to have some on my daily yogurt but now I can't afford it anymore either. Losing weight when you have a lot to lose is SO easy but what really sucks is just how much you have to cut out to keep losing weight. 1800 calories a day is almost nothing for me I miss 2300 and my big bowl of cereal bedtime snack!

I figure at some point I will just stay where I am as opposed to trying to cut more to try and lose the last few pounds. I don't know how people eat less than 2000 calories a day and stay happy.. I always feel like I'm starving.

Well for me, there was not one specific food that shocked me but the serving sizes in general is what opened my eyes. I had no clue what x ounces of food looked like. It is no wonder I became overweight.

I love drink eggnog (not spiked) in the holiday seasons. One cup of eggnog is 420 calories. In years past (before MFP) I would pour myself 2-3 glass in a day! adding up to over 1,000 calories by itself. Holy Cow!

I didn't have any illusions that Spam was low in calories. But I was truly blown away to find how just how many calories are in that yummy afternoon snack. On a Saturday afternoon of lounging, I'd love to take a can of Spam and slice it thin, then cook it on the skillet until it was just dark brown. Watching tv while snacking on that is the best. I hadn't done that in a while, and went to do it this weekend. I looked at the can and absolutely lost it. Six servings per can 2 180 cal/serving.

That's 1080 CALORIES PER CAN!!!! Never again.

Sweet Jebus, what would have been the sodium in this "snack"? Several posters have mentioned sodium, and in fact it truly is a shocker to read labels for this particular nutrient. I'm sensitive to sodium, so have read labels for years to check it. Any processed food has huge amounts of course but still surprising when you actually check the label.

Pistachios shocked me with their calorie content. I suppose with nuts you should expect that but I love pistachios. I can never eat one serving of them so I generally have to stay away from them now.

Really early on I went out to eat with a friend at a famous neighborhood chain (not to pick on them, the lesson applies everywhere) and was completely and utterly shocked later when I logged my favorite Oriental Chicken Salad and learned that it was 1,390 calories! My jaw surely must have dropped. The take away for me was that salad isn't always the healthiest choice on the menu, and, that it was probably a good idea for me to preview some menu nutritional information before dining out until I figured this out better.