Food with high calorie counts (that don't look high in calories)

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  • angiew321
    angiew321 Posts: 17 Member
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    sardelsa wrote: »
    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.
  • angiew321
    angiew321 Posts: 17 Member
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    BZAH10 wrote: »
    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.
  • angiew321
    angiew321 Posts: 17 Member
    edited May 2018
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    quiksylver296 wrote: »
    adarbyem wrote: »
    Calories vs serving size, here are my top surprises:
    Peanut Butter
    Granola
    Dried Fruit
    Nuts
    Salad Dressing

    Yep. All of those.

    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.
  • angiew321
    angiew321 Posts: 17 Member
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    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.

  • h1udd
    h1udd Posts: 623 Member
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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
  • angiew321
    angiew321 Posts: 17 Member
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    h1udd wrote: »
    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!
  • very_berry_pop
    very_berry_pop Posts: 29 Member
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    Salmon and hummus.
  • angiew321
    angiew321 Posts: 17 Member
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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!
  • HoneyBadger302
    HoneyBadger302 Posts: 1,974 Member
    edited May 2018
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    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.
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,742 Member
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    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.

  • whitpauly
    whitpauly Posts: 1,483 Member
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    The way I used coffee creamer so liberally before I started counting is mine blowing! Also McDonalds Frappe,I eyeballed them at maybe 250-300 calories for a small,nope 500! I think they're blended with ice cream or something but I could get a small cone for 150 cals,crazy

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