Foods with shocking high cals

To answer the original question:

Bread. I could eat so many calories of bread in one sitting if I'm not careful. While I do have toast for breakfast every weekday, it's heavily portion controlled, and I try to make things like fresh artisan bread an occasional treat.

Cereal. I love muesli and granola, but I can rarely justify the calories for a portion big enough to be "worth it". (Strangely, I can do tiny portions of ice cream, chocolate, chips, etc. but I'd rather just skip the cereal than have a tiny portion.)

I was more surprised with serving sizes than I was with calories....I could pretty well determine what was calorie dense and what wasn't even if I was unaware of the actual number...so like I knew cheese was pretty calorie dense (and I ate a lot of it) 'cuz it's basically fat...but I didn't really realize that the calorie amount was for one tiny little ounce.

baked potato 105 plus a touch of butter 25

standenvernet wrote: »

scarlett_k wrote: »

Tortilla wraps. I never gave it much thought until I compared them and bread; I always thought that wraps were a lower calorie option but they aren't really!

Not a tortilla but more of a flat bread... I've been working with "Flat Outs" for awhile to roll stuff for lunches. Anywhere from 90-130 cals per "sheet" (kinda a flat-sided oval shape; about 7x10 inches) depending on what variety you select. Their "Core 12" wraps have 12G of protein with 8g net-carbs for 130 cals -- not terrible at all, and available in Canadia too @Tacklewasher ! (link --> https://www.flatoutbread.com )

Recently discovered these and I'm a happy camper now!

Pastries Not that I didn't know they were high calorie, it's just impossible to find one now that fits into my day without having to skip a meal in exchange for it. And half of them are even higher than they first appear, as "1 serving" is only half the tiny item and it's 400-600 calories.

Oh, and my old favourite at A&W (lived near a small town and it was A&W or Subway only) is an entire days calories almost. And I was eating that at least once a week. No wonder going to the gym wasn't helping me, no matter how crazy I went on the cardio machines. Now my mozza burger combos are few and far between. Once every couple of months if I had a really good day for calorie burns.

Mostly fruits. I expect high fat items like peanut butter mayo etc to be really high, but fruit really adds up for me in the summer. I kind of think of it as having very little but then I'm at 350c in fruit for the day and it'll put me over

WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »

Green olives.

I eat pickles and olives pretty much non-stop and always loaded green olives onto pretty much anything except breakfast and dessert. I have a hard time remembering not to throw 25 olives on the side of rice and chicken, pizza, salad, pretty much everything. Now I just slam pickles and jerky for my salt tooth.

Oh yes! Olives were a big one too. I guess it shouldn't have been...I mean olive oil, but for some reason I didn't put two and two together.

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

LadyLilion wrote: »

Anything sold in a restaurant, especially fast food. Yes, I know that I should expect it. But how the heck do you make a chicken sandwich or a salad have 1,000 calories?

Biggest one lately though, has been money mustard salad dressing. At home I always buy the light versions. I love it. It's the only one I ever order if I'm out and I never, EVER would have thought it was so fattening. It's higher than Ranch! I blew an entire dinner I thought I'd done very well on one night when I got home and entered the darn dressing.

Interesting. I find fast food much easier to do on a calorie budget than sit down restaurant food. The key is to get the "small" of everything (and get diet soda or water to drink). I can get a fast food burger for about 400 calories, but a sit down restaurant burger is going to be 800 calories minimum because of the huge fancy bun and all of the high-cal extras they put on to make it "fancy".

If I do that, I'm only having two meals that day - easy for me because I find those big burgers ridiculously filling - or I just finished a long run (in which case I'll be jonesing for onion rings and whatnot as well).

I was really pleased to discover that the best burger places in my area often have options like seared Ahi burgers. Love those, and they're much more doable calorie-wise. More in the 500-600 cal range.

Personally, I find many of the chain restaurants' reported dessert calories to be ridiculous. I know if I made the equivalent using my own recipes (that are not at all calorie conscious) and super premium ice cream if needed, mine would come out to 50-75% of theirs. And still be astronomical.

I can only assume that at some stage there's a nonsensical butter bath, or the portion size varies so widely that they have to report more than what a typical single serving would be.