Food with high calorie counts (that don't look high in calories)
angiew321
Posts: 17 Member
I've just started counting calories, and it's really opened my eyes to how many calories I was consuming (and wondering why I couldn't lose any more weight!).
For me the item that really opened my eyes was an Indian flatbread called chapatti, or roti.
A small 7" one (Nishaan brand) contains 167 calories. And I would happily use 2 or 3 to scoop up a curry!
What food items have shocked you when you looked at the calorie count?
What items are just not worth eating anymore, or will you now eat in smaller amounts?
For me the item that really opened my eyes was an Indian flatbread called chapatti, or roti.
A small 7" one (Nishaan brand) contains 167 calories. And I would happily use 2 or 3 to scoop up a curry!
What food items have shocked you when you looked at the calorie count?
What items are just not worth eating anymore, or will you now eat in smaller amounts?
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Replies
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Mostly the conventionally healthy snacks like almonds and seeds. I can't believe I used to blow close to my entire day's calories eating "healthy".3
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I don't recall ever really being surprised by the calories in something. The serving sizes of things were more surprising.3
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I would say nuts. I never realized how many calories I would waste on them in the past and wondered why I wasn't losing despite eating so "healthy/clean". Now I don't bother with them, except in the form of nut butters and sometimes pecans if I need the calories.4
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Calories vs serving size, here are my top surprises:
Peanut Butter
Granola
Dried Fruit
Nuts
Salad Dressing4 -
Saltine crackers0
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Mostly the conventionally healthy snacks like almonds and seeds. I can't believe I used to blow close to my entire day's calories eating "healthy".
Yes, me too. If something was classed as "healthy" I presumed that part of the equation was low or reasonable calories, as well as containing important vitamins, minerals and fibre.
I've always tried to eat mainly healthy, unprocessed, home made food, and I'm shocked when I start to add up the calories in my home made curries!0 -
For me it was things like grapes and cherries. I mean, I know that they certainly weren't calorie-free but considering I can eat quite a few of each they really add up. Still worth it though. As a matter of fact it's cherry season now so I'll be buying a good sized bag of them today.1
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Stir-fry sauces. I've found lower-calorie versions. Or that I could use smaller portions than I had formerly. But the days when I'd just free-pour from the bottle are a thing of the past.
Dried fruit
And I just had a recipe that called for garnish with a small amount of crystalized ginger. When I put that ingredient into the tracker, I found out that each little slice was 30 calories. Good thing 2 tsp diced was only 2/3s of a slice...0 -
I used to eat like 3 muffins in a row, or 3-4 chocolate chip cookies, or a whole bar of milk chocolate back in the days. Well I don't do this anymore...
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Flour tortillas, similarly to the flatbread...some of the larger ones have ~200 calories each.
Dairy Queen Blizzards. I feel like most other ice cream treats (from the supermarket OR ice cream shops) have pretty reasonable calories per serving. But the idea of a mini size Blizzard being between 350-500 calories is mindblowing. I could eat an entire pint of Blue Bunny for 500 calories which looks way bigger than a mini DQ Blizzard.1 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »
I would say Peanut Butter was the big one for me. When I first starting counting calories, I was eating a PB sandwich every day. Then I realized that what I thought was 1 serving was more like 2 and that was 500 calories for JUST the PB.
I still eat almonds daily (work snack), but weigh out a 28g serving since they're high calorie for the serving size.0 -
seltzermint555 wrote: »Flour tortillas, similarly to the flatbread...some of the larger ones have ~200 calories each.
Dairy Queen Blizzards. I feel like most other ice cream treats (from the supermarket OR ice cream shops) have pretty reasonable calories per serving. But the idea of a mini size Blizzard being between 350-500 calories is mindblowing. I could eat an entire pint of Blue Bunny for 500 calories which looks way bigger than a mini DQ Blizzard.
You should see Sonic. As I recall they don't have a single dessert beverage under 500 and they have at least one that is over 2000 calories. I can see working a 350ish item into my week but 500+ is really expensive for not very much.1 -
seltzermint555 wrote: »Flour tortillas, similarly to the flatbread...some of the larger ones have ~200 calories each.
Dairy Queen Blizzards. I feel like most other ice cream treats (from the supermarket OR ice cream shops) have pretty reasonable calories per serving. But the idea of a mini size Blizzard being between 350-500 calories is mindblowing. I could eat an entire pint of Blue Bunny for 500 calories which looks way bigger than a mini DQ Blizzard.
You should see Sonic. As I recall they don't have a single dessert beverage under 500 and they have at least one that is over 2000 calories. I can see working a 350ish item into my week but 500+ is really expensive for not very much.
I detest Sonic. Even seeing someone with the squeaky Styrofoam "Route 44" cup makes me stabby AF2 -
seltzermint555 wrote: »Flour tortillas, similarly to the flatbread...some of the larger ones have ~200 calories each.
Dairy Queen Blizzards. I feel like most other ice cream treats (from the supermarket OR ice cream shops) have pretty reasonable calories per serving. But the idea of a mini size Blizzard being between 350-500 calories is mindblowing. I could eat an entire pint of Blue Bunny for 500 calories which looks way bigger than a mini DQ Blizzard.
You should see Sonic. As I recall they don't have a single dessert beverage under 500 and they have at least one that is over 2000 calories. I can see working a 350ish item into my week but 500+ is really expensive for not very much.
Freddy's Steakburger mini-concrete = 880 calories. FOR. THE. MINI.2 -
@seltzermint555 Hilarious.
@quiksylver296 What is a mini-concrete? It sounds like it would be murder on the teeth.
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@seltzermint555 Hilarious.
@quiksylver296 What is a mini-concrete? It sounds like it would be murder on the teeth.
LOL. It's what they call their Blizzard-like thing.2 -
Yeah, custard places (Ted Drewes, Freddy's, Shakes) abound in Missouri so "concrete" is a very familiar term to me but lol about it sounding like murder on the teeth...too true!!1
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cwolfman13 wrote: »I don't recall ever really being surprised by the calories in something. The serving sizes of things were more surprising.
Yes, it's easy to think that something is low or reasonable in calories, until you go to the trouble of actually weighing their suggested serving size. I've fallen for that one before!0 -
I would say nuts. I never realized how many calories I would waste on them in the past and wondered why I wasn't losing despite eating so "healthy/clean". Now I don't bother with them, except in the form of nut butters and sometimes pecans if I need the calories.
I love peanut butter but now I always measure it before I use it. The same with olive oil, I used to measure a tablespoon by eye, but when I realised that my version of a tablespoon was closer to two real tablespoons, I began to see how easy it is to add extra calories without any awareness.1 -
For me it was things like grapes and cherries. I mean, I know that they certainly weren't calorie-free but considering I can eat quite a few of each they really add up. Still worth it though. As a matter of fact it's cherry season now so I'll be buying a good sized bag of them today.
Cherries are my weakness, I can eat a punnet (or two) easily in cherry season. I'm not going to stop eating them, but my plan is to put a smaller amount in a ramekin to eat, rather than carry the whole punnet to the table and pick at them until they're gone!
Have you tried freezing your grapes? That slows your consumption down, they're quite good like that in summer.0 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »
Dried fruit is terrible, it's so easy to chomp down a couple of hundred calories in a minute.
My partner used to eat granola, a big bowlful. I used to tell him that it was high in calories and that he was eating too much of it (he was overweight at the time, but thought he ate healthily and well and couldn't understand it) but he didn't believe me.
So one day I put the amount of granola he usually had in a bowl, weighed it and worked out the calories. Without the milk, it came to 800 calories, and he would quite often have this as a "snack" in the evening!
It's so easy to overeat without realising.2 -
estherdragonbat wrote: »Stir-fry sauces. I've found lower-calorie versions. Or that I could use smaller portions than I had formerly. But the days when I'd just free-pour from the bottle are a thing of the past.
Dried fruit
And I just had a recipe that called for garnish with a small amount of crystalized ginger. When I put that ingredient into the tracker, I found out that each little slice was 30 calories. Good thing 2 tsp diced was only 2/3s of a slice...
I enjoy cooking, and I'm very much a "let's throw some of that in and throw some of this in" kind of cook. I rarely follow a recipe, they are just used as a guide. Now I'm measuring everything I use, it makes me realise that some of the (often healthy) stuff I was throwing in with abandon was quite high in calories.
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definitely cereal .. granola / muesli ... if you put a "serving in a bowl" its just not worth eating, it will never fill you up .... if you put a satisfying amount in a bowl its 500+ calories
Sausages ! .. do they make these things out of pure compressed fat or something
Wraps ... 150kcal per wrap ... kind of makes sense I suppose, but then when you have fajitas for your dinner and would normally eat 6 of them you end up eating 900calories of wrap just to contain your 150cal of chicken
... add the guac / cheese / soured cream to that and your dinner is now 1700kcal bare minimum 2 -
definitely cereal .. granola / muesli ... if you put a "serving in a bowl" its just not worth eating, it will never fill you up .... if you put a satisfying amount in a bowl its 500+ calories
Sausages ! .. do they make these things out of pure compressed fat or something
Wraps ... 150kcal per wrap ... kind of makes sense I suppose, but then when you have fajitas for your dinner and would normally eat 6 of them you end up eating 900calories of wrap just to contain your 150cal of chicken ... add the guac / cheese / soured cream to that and your dinner is now 1700kcal bare minimum
I think with wraps it's because they're so thin - we think they look like they have a lot less calories than normal bread. But it's just the air that's missing, not ingredients, we forget that!1 -
Salmon and hummus.0
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very_berry_pop wrote: »Salmon and hummus.
I don't eat fish but I presumed it was low in calories.....it's that "healthy" tag confusing the issue again I think.
Hummus......oh I could eat a whole tub!0 -
For me the shockers came more in the form of liquid calories or things I would "dress" my food with. I mean, we all know soda is bad, but things like salad dressing, sauces I used to use without thinking, butter, etc.
The volume i can consume in veggies vs carbs (in terms of calories/gram) still boggles me sometimes, but I'm used to that fact now. Still, sometimes my measured out serving of rice seems rather pathetic for the impact on my calories for the day.0 -
HoneyBadger155 wrote: »For me the shockers came more in the form of liquid calories or things I would "dress" my food with. I mean, we all know soda is bad, but things like salad dressing, sauces I used to use without thinking, butter, etc.
I see this one a lot, and I definitely agree that I am now more cognizant of stuff like dipping fries into honey mustard racking up the calories.
But for the most part, I think it was more of a pleasant surprise to me that I could still use things like mayo, butter, and salad dressing. When I was a kid/teen, my mom was always SUPER obsessed with quantities on those and warned how "fattening" they were and I really thought their calorie counts were much worse than they are. I've always been one to barely drizzle ranch dressing on my salad thinking it had like a zillion calories, so measuring out a TBSP seems like a decadent amount to me. Weird but true.
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