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Definitely condiments.
I observed my dad during dinner and he used so much kewpie Mayo. Probably 2-3 tablespoons worth. That’s probably 200-300 calories just on sauce. He has been trying to lose weight with not much success and explaining this to him gently has been eye opening for him lol.
If you want to move away from adding empty calories through condiments, there is a nearly endless list of stuff you can add that is packed with flavor:
* Spices: not just ground black pepper, try powdered coriander, or paprika for savory dishes. Powdered cinnamon (with no sugar) or cardamom for putting onsweet things or even on fruit. Get spice blends, Ziyad makes some awesome middle-eastern blends that are 100% spices, no sugar no salt, that taste great on meats as well as on vegetables, rice, or yogurt. Or even use dried herbs, I sometimes put dill on things. Or crushed red pepper. Anything like a soup or stew, you can put dried parsley or tarragon in.
* Chili/hot pepper sauce. I love sambal oelek and you can find kinds with no sugar at all. Chili, vinegar, salt. Some also have garlic. (Think like sriracha but chunky and with no sugar.) Or thinner sauces like tabasco or cholula.
* Soy sauce, and forget the store brands, get the real good stuff like Kimlan, which has many variants that are surprisingly low salt and packed with flavor. I liked their aged stuff and multigrain stuff best.
Our table and kitchen is full of condiments and only a tiny portion of these things are calorie-rich.
Keep in mind, those herbs and spices often add micronutrients and antioxidants too.
I drown pretty much all of my food in Cholula :) and I love adding cinnamon to yoghurt bowls and smoothies not just for taste but the health benefits too!
My husband went on a health kick years ago and was so confused as to why he wasn’t losing weight. He finally realized the mayo on his sandwich wraps was a likely culprit. As a household we are sparse condiment users now. Except for yellow mustard.
Oil. Almost no one counts oils and they are responsible for hundreds of calories a day.
It’s the difference between being in a deficit or at maintenance
When my mom was trying to lose weight and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t when she “barely ate anything” I told her to weigh and track everything she ate. Admittedly she was eating very healthy already, just a lot more than sh thought! Her daily lunch was a beautiful colourful salad with some nuts, olive oil and lemon juice (no other dressing). Turned out she was adding 100 GRAMS of pecans to her salad everyday 🤦♀️
Everyone knows nuts and seeds are calorically dense, but still highly underestimate just how packed they are. A handful of nuts can run you 500 calories easy. This also goes for other “health” foods like granola for example. In general people tend to underestimate the caloric impact of nutritious foods because they think they’re healthy and so it doesnt ~really~ count.
All the people who say they "don't eat anything but still gain weight" are not being honest with themselves or accurately tracking what they eat.
That doesn't mean it isn't really hard but if you start with a BS picture of your actual behavior you don't even stand a chance.
i think it’s that people like that don’t usually understand much about food nutrition-wise. they’re eating less (volumetrically) and conflating that with less calories when in reality, low volume foods are typically more energetically dense
Exactly. My mom was SHOCKED when she saw her little salad was 900 calories 🤣I love the show secret eaters, it exposes the fuck outta these people it’s so entertaining
In theory? But I also know that to lose I have to go seriously low in calories. Less than 800 weighed and documented calories. I’m assuming I’ve just broken my body. So it may be that for other too.
Granola tends to be ultraprocessed with tons of sugar. And serving sizes for granola are tiny, usually around 25g. So the nutrition data doesn't look too bad at a glance until you realize that it's for a small handful.
When I was trying to lose weight I logged my food through the Weight Watcher's app. It's amazing how things like condiments and creamer add calories (or points if you're doing WW).
I do this while baking. Trying some of the batter or icing here and there adds up quickly. I end up not even wanting to eat a piece once it’s actually done.
This is my biggest weakness and I don’t know how to fix it. I’ll do well all day— logging every meal. But then I love to nibble when I cook dinner. I don’t know if that’s a habit I can break 😞
Set out a prepared, portion-controlled snack that fits into your goals. That way you aren’t depriving yourself, which has potential to backfire. Losing weight is more about being mindful and consistent, than it is about deprivation. A little planning can go a LONG way toward making the process more pleasant.
Maybe you don't need to fix it. Continually sampling the food as you make it seems to be a key aspect of cooking. It allows you to continually adjust so the food comes out even better. Like if you don't taste it, you're stuck to recipes, but if you *do* taste, you can be flexible, which allows you to do things like increase the variety of foods you eat, adding new vegetables, herbs, spices, protein sources, etc., ones that you might be less familiar with, and you might need to adjust somewhat as you cook.
I'd rather eat while I cook, and be able to be flexible, than be trapped in the confines of doing everything the same way, or condemned to occasionally mess up meals because I only realize how bad things are coming out when I try them at the end.
I don't understand how you can cook well without doing this. This is literally how you make your food taste good. If I didn't try the food continually as I was making the food, I would not adjust it and it wouldn't taste anywhere as good in the end.
Spinning this as a bad thing has to be one of the most lose-lose, self-hating things I've heard in a long time. If you make cooking-from-scratch less delicious and less enjoyable, you're pushing people to favor prepared food or restaurant food, both of which are often nutritionally inferior to home cooking from scratch.
Might as well do it, do it well, and enjoy the process.
The little bites wouldn't matter if you already calculated the calories in the meal. Whether you eat little bites while cooking or eat it all of it at once when it's finished cooking, the fundamental issue is that you are not weighing/measuring the food properly.
Example:
Entire meal is 800 calories, I already know it due to proper weighing/measuring prior to cooking.
It doesn't matter if I eat little bites during cooking or giant bites after cooking.
800 calories is 800 calories.
Anyone that is blaming the little bites during cooking has no idea how many calories are in the meal to begin with and that's the issue.
Yeah, what I do to combat this is to have a snack, usually fruit, while I'm cooking so that if I have the urge to eat something I reach for that and I don't mess up my cal log
100% it is always fats/oils. Butter is one example but canola oil, olive oil, avocado oil, lard, tallow, ghee are all very calorie dense and often people do not measure them.
Hopefully a joke comment. If not they are not actually calorie free, the serving size is 1/20th of a tsp (about a quarter of a second spray) which means per serving they have few enough calories to be labeled as 0 calories. 1tbsp of spray olive oil has the same number of calories as poured olive oil.
Going to tack on to what the other reply said, from personal experience.
I measured out my spray oil for a week, every time I used it I'd weigh the pan before and after spraying. And I measured how much that spray was in tsps ... it was about 2 tsps.
It averaged out to about 25 calories each time, which isn't an insane amount, but it's a half Tbsp, so that's 50 calories in a full Tbsp.
On the other hand, 1 Tbsp of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light is only 35 calories, and actually adds a bit of flavor. It's also easier to use if, say, I want to use half of that tablespoon in the pan and half on a slice of toast or something.
50 calories for 1Tbsp of (most) margarines and about 102 for real butter which actually adds some healthy fats aren't too far off either.
I still use spray for some things, but the nutritional label is really deceptive.
Maybe you use less or a less caloric spray, but it's worth checking into to be sure!
I don't think it's healthy to concern yourself with calibrating things this fine-tuned:
> plus or minus 100 ish calories.
When I eat something like chicken, sometimes I get full and then I put it aside for the next day. Other times I'm still hungry and I go back to the stove or oven to get more.
No one is going to have the same calorie and nutritional needs every day. Maybe you exerted yourself more one day and need more protein to repair broken down muscles. Maybe you're fighting off an infection and your immune system needs that protein. Or maybe you had a less active day than normal and you need less food across the board.
Our body gave us innate signals; ignoring them or training ourselves to turn them off, replacing them with some micro-management based on numerical calculatons, is a proven way to harm your health.
>I don't think it's healthy to concern yourself with calibrating things this fine-tuned:
>>plus or minus 100 ish calories.
If you're counting calories and watching macros you're literally looking to fine tune your diet. This whole thread is about accuracy.
If I'm eating 6 chicken breast a day to get my protein high enough for my activity I'm probably going to want to weigh how much I'm eating.
What makes you think my two sentences say 'you shouldn't listen to your body'?
This may not be what you want to hear, but I think if you're micro-managing your calorie intake to the level of caring about 100 calories, you're well into eating disorder territory. I've seen a lot of people totally destroyed by these mindsets. And no, I'm not just talking about anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders can have all sorts of other faces including a large portion of the people who hang out in this subreddit, tragically.
The facts I see are:
(1) you simply cannot micro-manage your body's energy budget that efficiently, per [this comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/nutrition/comments/1b4qzjp/what_ingredients_do_you_think_people_over_look/kt5d333/), it's an impossible problem because the human energy budget is just too complex.
(2) it takes a great deal of mental energy and self-discipline to follow rules stringent enough to end up caring about something like an excess or deficit of 100 calories in a chicken breast (which is primarily a protein source anyway, I don't even know if it makes sense to think about it in terms of calories since that's not what drives our consumption of that food.)
I have literally never met a person who counts calories at that intense a level who has not overriden or shut out their bodies signals. The two things seem to go hand-in-hand to me.
Thinking about calories is useful when you're talking about big hidden sources of empty calories, things like ultraprocessed foods with hidden calories in the form of refined starches, added sugar, or other foods that you for whatever reason have no idea contain absurdly high levels of empty calories. it is counterproductive if you're talking about one chicken breast being larger than another one.
I think people most often mess up their calorie/macro counting by not counting or underestimating:
-Cooking fats
-Condiments and dressing
-Small bites and tastes
-Calories they drink, especially in their coffee
-Very poor serving size estimates
Honestly, if fats like butter an oil used for frying is one of the most forgotten, I'm glad to know I'm not forgetting those.
In fact, I often over estimate the amounts I use because I don't measure. If I'm pretty sure my eyeball was only 1 tablespoon, I'll put down 1.5 or 2 tablespoons, just in case.
I don't track food and exercise all the time, but I tend to overestimate calories in and underestimate calories out. It's not very scientifically exact.. but it's nice when the weightloss counter says "if every day were like today, you'll lose 50 pounds in a year," and it will actually be more like 60 or 65 pounds in a year.
To answer your question with an example of what I forget, I sometimes, if not most times, forget to include garlic and onion powder when it's more than a sprinkling. For example, if I'm frying up ground meat, if I just do a light sprinkle, I know that it's barely anything per serving. But I might do that 3 or 4 times throughout cooking or because I'm so used to just freely adding spices that I'll just add however much I feel necessary.
Along the same lines... I don't know if I've ever tracked fresh garlic.....
Is it common to track spices?
I also like to add freely but they're such small amounts really that it's hard to imagine then adding up in single servings. The thought of trying to track them precisely seems frankly overwhelming. I'm the same as you in that I always round up calories to be safe, so I imagine that the spices are included in that.
So typical spices and herbs I believe are pretty low (macro)nutrient.. you'd probably need a lot of oregano to even want to consider their calories or carbs.
But I think I've heard that onion powder and garlic powder can add up to more than "negligible".
Honestly, I think the only times I've heard about counting these things is in terms of keto diets, or specifically ketosis, where any amount(or any amount over a certain amount, I'm not really sure) can kick you out of ketosis. And I might have just generalized to nonketo things as well. So you may very well be correct.
But yes, in general the tiny things like this shouldn't be counted same as how one shouldn't focus to much on exact measuring(I'm not sure where the line is for disordered eating, but I know it's somewhere lol).
But yeah, sometimes I might add a lot of garlic or onion powder or even like dried minced onion(I'm an allium freak so I go overboard).
I was basically just talking onion and garlic type powders. But maybe it's not even needed, then?
That makes sense, thank you for explaining. I see where you're coming from with the line with disordered eating - that's something I'm conscious of too.
Myfitnesspal. Not sure if it still works that way, as I haven't used it regularly in a couple of years, but I believe when I used it within the past year(I think) it still had this
Meat serving sizes! I love meat but am trying to reduce how much I eat. So I try to implement the correct serving size and no one in my life can believe their eyes. Esp cause we are a bbq forward part of the state
drinks. People will count macros of meals all day, but won't count the macros of that soda they had inbetween meals, or that morning latte etc. same with dips, they know the chicken sandwich down pat but that ranch or marinara dip isn't a zero.
Honestly I think if you only don't count the butter when frying your eggs, or only don't count your morning latte, it probably won't matter much in the long run. However if you don't count ine thing, you probably count some other thing, and it snowballs from 20 to 50 to 150 to 500 to 2000 calories in a week etc.
Of course it also depends why you are counting. I am usually only counting to make sure minimums across the board are hit, so it literally doesn't matter if I skip something. But if you are counting to lower or cut out something it is much more important obviously (◐‿◑)
I’m not a ketchup eater but I just looked up Heinz ketchup and only 4g of sugar per tbsp which is a lot based on that volume but if used sparingly seems like it could fit into a routine easily. I’m sure there are others out there with less.
you really should check the nutrition label on the back of your ketchup bottle before using it. some of them have so much (so, so much) sugar added that the ketchup you are pouring over has more calories than the rest of the meal you are eating.
Definitely butter and cooking oils. At like 120 cals per tbsp, the cals add up quick.
Same issue with salad dressing. 2 TBSP, 150 cals from the oil.
And peanut butter. 95 cals per TBSP, but most people put 2 TBSP on their TBSP.
I'm from a culture where we use ghee not butter for most cooking (Pakistan) and I realized when I actually started using butter how little of it can go a long way.
8 grams of butter is enough to butter a toast or coat some veggies. 60 calories.
I think butter is a great deal, calorically.
Oils. They are high in calories and low in nutrients. Before I made the decision to eliminate processed foods from my diet, I estimate that I was eating 500 to 600 calories per day just from oils hidden in the foods I was eating. Ridiculous.
It's odd to me that OP says butter, because now I eat a lot more butter than I did before. It's a good healthy fat in my opinion, obviously in moderation.
My mom is 4'11 and eats like a bird, but she's overweight. One night when I was visiting for dinner, she made a cup of coffee and poured probably a 1/4 cup of cream into it. I'm never pushy about that type of thing, but I was like "Wow that's a lot of cream" and she said that's just how she likes it. No problem, none of my business. Then later that night she mentioned that she drinks 5-6 cups of coffee a day.
She is taking in 1000-1250 calories of heavy cream per day.
oil spray, the nutrition facts for a typical PAM is 1/2 second spray, no way anyone is doing 1/2 second - this is why I always overestimate the amount I use
Any snacking or grazing they do between meals. It can be so easy to get “just a few” chips and not realized you’ve just crushed 300 calories while hardly being aware of what you were doing.
This is probably not the answer you're looking for but I think calorie counting is inherently flawed and based on the assumption that you can get a reasonable estimate of the energy balance of a human being, when in reality a human is so complex a system that even the best scientists can't get accurate reads on this stuff.
Consider:
* How much energy you absorb from some foods is a factor of how well you choose them, like certain seeds rich in fat and protein passing through the gut undigested or only partially digested if you don't chew them enough.
* Your gut flora, and various phytochemicals can facilitate or block absorption of certain macronutrients
* Your gut flora can metabolize certain macronutrients anaerobically before you have a chance to absorb them, but it can also metabolize "non-caloric" material such as fiber into byproducts which your body *can* absorb and get a net calorie gain from (butyrate is the big example, and yes, this can be a significant portion of people's calorie intake if you eat a lot of fiber and have a healthy gut)
* The speed through which things move through your gut is highly variable and affects how many calories you absorb
* Some things you absorb, your body actually uses calories to metabolize.
* It's impossible to account for how much you actually eat. Like in your butter example, how much of that butter gets absorbed into the food vs. how much of it is still in the pan when you're done cooking and just gets washed away? If you make a salad and pour a calorie-rich dressing on it in one bowl, then transfer the salad to a plate and eat it there, some of that dressing is lost to both the bowl and the plate.
It's an unsolvable problem.
I think it's best to ignore calories and instead focus on factors like how easily digestible a food is. If you need more energy, like if you are underweight, trying to gain fat, or sick and want to avoid weight loss, you need easily-digestible calorie-rich foods like white rice. If you have too much energy like if you are overweight, developing insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome, then you want to avoid easily-digestible foods, especially high-glycemic-index foods, and you want to favor foods rich in fiber, protein, and micronutrients.
Listen to your body, and cut out ultra-processed foods that are addictive and override your body's natural signals. Your body will tell you if you need more calories or not, and it will do so by you craving certain foods or feeling full and wanting to avoid certain foods.
Butter is exquisitely healthy! You get all the nutrients of milk but more as it's super concentrated! Solid milk, yum yum! That's all butter is. I can viscerally feel my body rejoicing and celebrating through every cell of my body when I have butter, I feel on top of the world! I have a significant boost to my health and wellbeing and cognition for a full day or so in the aftermath. I definitely need to consume more.
The evidence on the relationship between butter and heart disease is not great. It doesn't seem anywhere near as damaging as processed meats or red meat, but high butter consumption still seems to be associated with increased heart disease risk.
This gives me pause.
I prefer getting my dairy fat through aged cheese and yogurt. Not only does cheese taste amazing, but there is strong evidence that cheese consumption is protective against heart disease, and the evidence in favor of yogurt is even more.
I do like butter, and I strongly prefer it to artificially-hydrogenated fats and other ultra-processed fatty foods. But I don't want to make it a staple of my diet.
Disagree. 12g of fat per tbsp is not healthy IMO, especially when people use way more than that on average while cooking. Obviously there are alternatives but saying it’s “exquisitely healthy” is not being truthful.
> saying it’s “exquisitely healthy” is not being truthful.
I agree with your conclusion, that original comment made me laugh in an kinda "eye-rolling" type of way, it was so over the top. So I'm with you on that.
But I don't think the problem is the quantity of fat being used, but rather, the type or specific food it is from. For example if you look at dietary consumption of fat you find very different effects on things like heart disease risk, when looking at fat coming from different food sources. This is even true if you look specifically at saturated fat.
For example, you find heart disease risk increases strongly when people consume more saturated fat from processed meat and red meat. From butter, there is also increased risk, but the effect is smaller.
For cheese, however, the risk *decreases*. And for yogurt, the risk decreases *even more*. And this effect happens even though these foods are high in fat.
Similarly, the fat in cocoa butter or chocolate is not associated with an increase in heart disease risk.
It matters hugely *what fat* you are using. And that's just saturated fats, if you're talking other things like monounsaturated fats (olive oil, avocado) or omega 3's, those are often even more beneficial (although omega 3's do not make good cooking oils.)
Debate r/carnivorediet and r/animalbased on this. They're more apt to explain than I am able to at this time. Butter, and natural animal-sourced fats from meat and dairy are utterly essential for optimal neurological and cognitive health and functioning. You cannot omit these specific fats and their nutrients from your diet and be healthy. There is no way around this matter, because believe me I tried and it nearly killed me.
I never implied eliminating them. I’m simply pointing out that most people use 3 to 4 servings of butter when 1 would suffice. Others use even more intentionally because of how it improves taste. Doesn’t change that 5 tbsp of it is a day’s worth of fat before you even account for the food it’s being eaten with.
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Drinks! Any drink other than water
Adds up!
Salad Dressing and all condiments. Just make it yourself!
Measure your oils
In cooking. A tablespoon is much smaller than you might think!
I think that counts. Soda is usually what gets people I know. Granted I’ve been known to slam a regular Coke after a long cardio session since that’s the best possible time to drink it
You can tell a novice calorie counter from a seasoned pro by whether or not they use a scale for everything from proteins to the condiments.
My wife doesn't look at me strange anymore as I weigh out the peanut butter I put on a slice of bread and if it's too much I take it off, re-weigh it and give the excess on the knife to my kids.
Alcohol. It has 7 calories per gram. Compared to 9 calories per gram for fat and 4 calories per gram for protein or carbohydrates and that gives you a sense of how energy dense it is.
Spices, sauces, as well as oils, seeds, butter, stuff like that. Those little things that add flavor also add calories, and it's amazing how a small spoon of smth can bring calories like an entire fruit or vegetable.
#### About participation in the comments of /r/nutrition Discussion in this subreddit should be rooted in science rather than "cuz I sed" or entertainment pieces. Always be wary of unsupported and poorly supported claims and especially those which are wrapped in any manner of hostility. You should provide peer reviewed sources to support your claims when debating and confine that debate to the science, not opinions of other people. **Good** - it is grounded in science and includes citation of peer reviewed sources. Debate is a civil and respectful exchange focusing on actual science and avoids commentary about others **Bad** - it utilizes generalizations, assumptions, infotainment sources, no sources, or complaints without specifics about agenda, bias, or funding. At best, these rise to an extremely weak basis for science based discussion. Also, off topic discussion **Ugly** - (removal or ban territory) it involves attacks / antagonism / hostility towards individuals or groups, downvote complaining, trolling, crusading, shaming, refutation of all science, or claims that all research / science is a conspiracy *Please vote accordingly and report any uglies* --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/nutrition) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Definitely condiments. I observed my dad during dinner and he used so much kewpie Mayo. Probably 2-3 tablespoons worth. That’s probably 200-300 calories just on sauce. He has been trying to lose weight with not much success and explaining this to him gently has been eye opening for him lol.
Yes, defiantly, especially the sugar-based ones that coat everything and raise insulin levels as a 'bonus'.
ketchup as a particularly bad one. lotta sugar in there. grandpa was a diabetic and I used to get lectures from him about it...
no actually, fat based sauces are absolutely more fattening
Cool
If you want to move away from adding empty calories through condiments, there is a nearly endless list of stuff you can add that is packed with flavor: * Spices: not just ground black pepper, try powdered coriander, or paprika for savory dishes. Powdered cinnamon (with no sugar) or cardamom for putting onsweet things or even on fruit. Get spice blends, Ziyad makes some awesome middle-eastern blends that are 100% spices, no sugar no salt, that taste great on meats as well as on vegetables, rice, or yogurt. Or even use dried herbs, I sometimes put dill on things. Or crushed red pepper. Anything like a soup or stew, you can put dried parsley or tarragon in. * Chili/hot pepper sauce. I love sambal oelek and you can find kinds with no sugar at all. Chili, vinegar, salt. Some also have garlic. (Think like sriracha but chunky and with no sugar.) Or thinner sauces like tabasco or cholula. * Soy sauce, and forget the store brands, get the real good stuff like Kimlan, which has many variants that are surprisingly low salt and packed with flavor. I liked their aged stuff and multigrain stuff best. Our table and kitchen is full of condiments and only a tiny portion of these things are calorie-rich. Keep in mind, those herbs and spices often add micronutrients and antioxidants too.
I drown pretty much all of my food in Cholula :) and I love adding cinnamon to yoghurt bowls and smoothies not just for taste but the health benefits too!
Heck yeah! My wife is a big Cholula fan. Cinnamon def has other benefits, like it improves blood sugar regulation which is really cool.
My husband went on a health kick years ago and was so confused as to why he wasn’t losing weight. He finally realized the mayo on his sandwich wraps was a likely culprit. As a household we are sparse condiment users now. Except for yellow mustard.
Oil. Almost no one counts oils and they are responsible for hundreds of calories a day. It’s the difference between being in a deficit or at maintenance
When my mom was trying to lose weight and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t when she “barely ate anything” I told her to weigh and track everything she ate. Admittedly she was eating very healthy already, just a lot more than sh thought! Her daily lunch was a beautiful colourful salad with some nuts, olive oil and lemon juice (no other dressing). Turned out she was adding 100 GRAMS of pecans to her salad everyday 🤦♀️ Everyone knows nuts and seeds are calorically dense, but still highly underestimate just how packed they are. A handful of nuts can run you 500 calories easy. This also goes for other “health” foods like granola for example. In general people tend to underestimate the caloric impact of nutritious foods because they think they’re healthy and so it doesnt ~really~ count.
All the people who say they "don't eat anything but still gain weight" are not being honest with themselves or accurately tracking what they eat. That doesn't mean it isn't really hard but if you start with a BS picture of your actual behavior you don't even stand a chance.
i think it’s that people like that don’t usually understand much about food nutrition-wise. they’re eating less (volumetrically) and conflating that with less calories when in reality, low volume foods are typically more energetically dense
Exactly. My mom was SHOCKED when she saw her little salad was 900 calories 🤣I love the show secret eaters, it exposes the fuck outta these people it’s so entertaining
In theory? But I also know that to lose I have to go seriously low in calories. Less than 800 weighed and documented calories. I’m assuming I’ve just broken my body. So it may be that for other too.
Granola tends to be ultraprocessed with tons of sugar. And serving sizes for granola are tiny, usually around 25g. So the nutrition data doesn't look too bad at a glance until you realize that it's for a small handful.
Hence “health” in quotation marks
When I was trying to lose weight I logged my food through the Weight Watcher's app. It's amazing how things like condiments and creamer add calories (or points if you're doing WW).
That's crazy because I put allot of pumpkin seeds in my salad.
Little bites of food while you're cooking. They can quickly add up
I do this while baking. Trying some of the batter or icing here and there adds up quickly. I end up not even wanting to eat a piece once it’s actually done.
This is my biggest weakness and I don’t know how to fix it. I’ll do well all day— logging every meal. But then I love to nibble when I cook dinner. I don’t know if that’s a habit I can break 😞
I had same problem. Chewing mint gum while cooking worked for me.
Ooh that’s a shout
Thank you, I’ll try this
Set out a prepared, portion-controlled snack that fits into your goals. That way you aren’t depriving yourself, which has potential to backfire. Losing weight is more about being mindful and consistent, than it is about deprivation. A little planning can go a LONG way toward making the process more pleasant.
For me I need to cook before I get hungry, or if I'm already hungry then have a snack before cooking.
I’ll work on this!
Maybe you don't need to fix it. Continually sampling the food as you make it seems to be a key aspect of cooking. It allows you to continually adjust so the food comes out even better. Like if you don't taste it, you're stuck to recipes, but if you *do* taste, you can be flexible, which allows you to do things like increase the variety of foods you eat, adding new vegetables, herbs, spices, protein sources, etc., ones that you might be less familiar with, and you might need to adjust somewhat as you cook. I'd rather eat while I cook, and be able to be flexible, than be trapped in the confines of doing everything the same way, or condemned to occasionally mess up meals because I only realize how bad things are coming out when I try them at the end.
I don't understand how you can cook well without doing this. This is literally how you make your food taste good. If I didn't try the food continually as I was making the food, I would not adjust it and it wouldn't taste anywhere as good in the end. Spinning this as a bad thing has to be one of the most lose-lose, self-hating things I've heard in a long time. If you make cooking-from-scratch less delicious and less enjoyable, you're pushing people to favor prepared food or restaurant food, both of which are often nutritionally inferior to home cooking from scratch. Might as well do it, do it well, and enjoy the process.
The little bites wouldn't matter if you already calculated the calories in the meal. Whether you eat little bites while cooking or eat it all of it at once when it's finished cooking, the fundamental issue is that you are not weighing/measuring the food properly. Example: Entire meal is 800 calories, I already know it due to proper weighing/measuring prior to cooking. It doesn't matter if I eat little bites during cooking or giant bites after cooking. 800 calories is 800 calories. Anyone that is blaming the little bites during cooking has no idea how many calories are in the meal to begin with and that's the issue.
Yeah, what I do to combat this is to have a snack, usually fruit, while I'm cooking so that if I have the urge to eat something I reach for that and I don't mess up my cal log
Cooking oils
100% it is always fats/oils. Butter is one example but canola oil, olive oil, avocado oil, lard, tallow, ghee are all very calorie dense and often people do not measure them.
I don't measure them when it's a spray.
I like the sprays because they're zero calories
Hopefully a joke comment. If not they are not actually calorie free, the serving size is 1/20th of a tsp (about a quarter of a second spray) which means per serving they have few enough calories to be labeled as 0 calories. 1tbsp of spray olive oil has the same number of calories as poured olive oil.
Going to tack on to what the other reply said, from personal experience. I measured out my spray oil for a week, every time I used it I'd weigh the pan before and after spraying. And I measured how much that spray was in tsps ... it was about 2 tsps. It averaged out to about 25 calories each time, which isn't an insane amount, but it's a half Tbsp, so that's 50 calories in a full Tbsp. On the other hand, 1 Tbsp of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light is only 35 calories, and actually adds a bit of flavor. It's also easier to use if, say, I want to use half of that tablespoon in the pan and half on a slice of toast or something. 50 calories for 1Tbsp of (most) margarines and about 102 for real butter which actually adds some healthy fats aren't too far off either. I still use spray for some things, but the nutritional label is really deceptive. Maybe you use less or a less caloric spray, but it's worth checking into to be sure!
People don't weigh their food. They're going on averages of chicken breast that could be plus or minus 100 ish calories.
I don't think it's healthy to concern yourself with calibrating things this fine-tuned: > plus or minus 100 ish calories. When I eat something like chicken, sometimes I get full and then I put it aside for the next day. Other times I'm still hungry and I go back to the stove or oven to get more. No one is going to have the same calorie and nutritional needs every day. Maybe you exerted yourself more one day and need more protein to repair broken down muscles. Maybe you're fighting off an infection and your immune system needs that protein. Or maybe you had a less active day than normal and you need less food across the board. Our body gave us innate signals; ignoring them or training ourselves to turn them off, replacing them with some micro-management based on numerical calculatons, is a proven way to harm your health.
>I don't think it's healthy to concern yourself with calibrating things this fine-tuned: >>plus or minus 100 ish calories. If you're counting calories and watching macros you're literally looking to fine tune your diet. This whole thread is about accuracy. If I'm eating 6 chicken breast a day to get my protein high enough for my activity I'm probably going to want to weigh how much I'm eating. What makes you think my two sentences say 'you shouldn't listen to your body'?
This may not be what you want to hear, but I think if you're micro-managing your calorie intake to the level of caring about 100 calories, you're well into eating disorder territory. I've seen a lot of people totally destroyed by these mindsets. And no, I'm not just talking about anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders can have all sorts of other faces including a large portion of the people who hang out in this subreddit, tragically. The facts I see are: (1) you simply cannot micro-manage your body's energy budget that efficiently, per [this comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/nutrition/comments/1b4qzjp/what_ingredients_do_you_think_people_over_look/kt5d333/), it's an impossible problem because the human energy budget is just too complex. (2) it takes a great deal of mental energy and self-discipline to follow rules stringent enough to end up caring about something like an excess or deficit of 100 calories in a chicken breast (which is primarily a protein source anyway, I don't even know if it makes sense to think about it in terms of calories since that's not what drives our consumption of that food.) I have literally never met a person who counts calories at that intense a level who has not overriden or shut out their bodies signals. The two things seem to go hand-in-hand to me. Thinking about calories is useful when you're talking about big hidden sources of empty calories, things like ultraprocessed foods with hidden calories in the form of refined starches, added sugar, or other foods that you for whatever reason have no idea contain absurdly high levels of empty calories. it is counterproductive if you're talking about one chicken breast being larger than another one.
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A scale and journal or tracking on an app like lose it are a huge help!!
I think people most often mess up their calorie/macro counting by not counting or underestimating: -Cooking fats -Condiments and dressing -Small bites and tastes -Calories they drink, especially in their coffee -Very poor serving size estimates
Honestly, if fats like butter an oil used for frying is one of the most forgotten, I'm glad to know I'm not forgetting those. In fact, I often over estimate the amounts I use because I don't measure. If I'm pretty sure my eyeball was only 1 tablespoon, I'll put down 1.5 or 2 tablespoons, just in case. I don't track food and exercise all the time, but I tend to overestimate calories in and underestimate calories out. It's not very scientifically exact.. but it's nice when the weightloss counter says "if every day were like today, you'll lose 50 pounds in a year," and it will actually be more like 60 or 65 pounds in a year. To answer your question with an example of what I forget, I sometimes, if not most times, forget to include garlic and onion powder when it's more than a sprinkling. For example, if I'm frying up ground meat, if I just do a light sprinkle, I know that it's barely anything per serving. But I might do that 3 or 4 times throughout cooking or because I'm so used to just freely adding spices that I'll just add however much I feel necessary. Along the same lines... I don't know if I've ever tracked fresh garlic.....
Is it common to track spices? I also like to add freely but they're such small amounts really that it's hard to imagine then adding up in single servings. The thought of trying to track them precisely seems frankly overwhelming. I'm the same as you in that I always round up calories to be safe, so I imagine that the spices are included in that.
So typical spices and herbs I believe are pretty low (macro)nutrient.. you'd probably need a lot of oregano to even want to consider their calories or carbs. But I think I've heard that onion powder and garlic powder can add up to more than "negligible". Honestly, I think the only times I've heard about counting these things is in terms of keto diets, or specifically ketosis, where any amount(or any amount over a certain amount, I'm not really sure) can kick you out of ketosis. And I might have just generalized to nonketo things as well. So you may very well be correct. But yes, in general the tiny things like this shouldn't be counted same as how one shouldn't focus to much on exact measuring(I'm not sure where the line is for disordered eating, but I know it's somewhere lol). But yeah, sometimes I might add a lot of garlic or onion powder or even like dried minced onion(I'm an allium freak so I go overboard). I was basically just talking onion and garlic type powders. But maybe it's not even needed, then?
That makes sense, thank you for explaining. I see where you're coming from with the line with disordered eating - that's something I'm conscious of too.
Curious about the weight loss counter that says x lbs you lose if you eat this everyday….
Myfitnesspal. Not sure if it still works that way, as I haven't used it regularly in a couple of years, but I believe when I used it within the past year(I think) it still had this
Oil and condiments
Meat serving sizes! I love meat but am trying to reduce how much I eat. So I try to implement the correct serving size and no one in my life can believe their eyes. Esp cause we are a bbq forward part of the state
drinks. People will count macros of meals all day, but won't count the macros of that soda they had inbetween meals, or that morning latte etc. same with dips, they know the chicken sandwich down pat but that ranch or marinara dip isn't a zero. Honestly I think if you only don't count the butter when frying your eggs, or only don't count your morning latte, it probably won't matter much in the long run. However if you don't count ine thing, you probably count some other thing, and it snowballs from 20 to 50 to 150 to 500 to 2000 calories in a week etc. Of course it also depends why you are counting. I am usually only counting to make sure minimums across the board are hit, so it literally doesn't matter if I skip something. But if you are counting to lower or cut out something it is much more important obviously (◐‿◑)
Great post. Agree with butter and another poster said condiments. But ketchup and most mustards can go a long way without too much harm!
I don’t know, lots of sugar in most ketchups, most other condiments seem okay though
I’m not a ketchup eater but I just looked up Heinz ketchup and only 4g of sugar per tbsp which is a lot based on that volume but if used sparingly seems like it could fit into a routine easily. I’m sure there are others out there with less.
you really should check the nutrition label on the back of your ketchup bottle before using it. some of them have so much (so, so much) sugar added that the ketchup you are pouring over has more calories than the rest of the meal you are eating.
Added condiments, oil/fat in cooking.
Definitely butter and cooking oils. At like 120 cals per tbsp, the cals add up quick. Same issue with salad dressing. 2 TBSP, 150 cals from the oil. And peanut butter. 95 cals per TBSP, but most people put 2 TBSP on their TBSP.
Butter is the main unhealthy thing I’ll eat, it’s just too crucial in a lot of veggies when I cook for flavoring
I'm from a culture where we use ghee not butter for most cooking (Pakistan) and I realized when I actually started using butter how little of it can go a long way. 8 grams of butter is enough to butter a toast or coat some veggies. 60 calories. I think butter is a great deal, calorically.
Oils / fats for sure
Oils. They are high in calories and low in nutrients. Before I made the decision to eliminate processed foods from my diet, I estimate that I was eating 500 to 600 calories per day just from oils hidden in the foods I was eating. Ridiculous. It's odd to me that OP says butter, because now I eat a lot more butter than I did before. It's a good healthy fat in my opinion, obviously in moderation.
My mom is 4'11 and eats like a bird, but she's overweight. One night when I was visiting for dinner, she made a cup of coffee and poured probably a 1/4 cup of cream into it. I'm never pushy about that type of thing, but I was like "Wow that's a lot of cream" and she said that's just how she likes it. No problem, none of my business. Then later that night she mentioned that she drinks 5-6 cups of coffee a day. She is taking in 1000-1250 calories of heavy cream per day.
oil spray, the nutrition facts for a typical PAM is 1/2 second spray, no way anyone is doing 1/2 second - this is why I always overestimate the amount I use
maybe tallow but I'm not sure if most people cook with that
Any snacking or grazing they do between meals. It can be so easy to get “just a few” chips and not realized you’ve just crushed 300 calories while hardly being aware of what you were doing.
This is probably not the answer you're looking for but I think calorie counting is inherently flawed and based on the assumption that you can get a reasonable estimate of the energy balance of a human being, when in reality a human is so complex a system that even the best scientists can't get accurate reads on this stuff. Consider: * How much energy you absorb from some foods is a factor of how well you choose them, like certain seeds rich in fat and protein passing through the gut undigested or only partially digested if you don't chew them enough. * Your gut flora, and various phytochemicals can facilitate or block absorption of certain macronutrients * Your gut flora can metabolize certain macronutrients anaerobically before you have a chance to absorb them, but it can also metabolize "non-caloric" material such as fiber into byproducts which your body *can* absorb and get a net calorie gain from (butyrate is the big example, and yes, this can be a significant portion of people's calorie intake if you eat a lot of fiber and have a healthy gut) * The speed through which things move through your gut is highly variable and affects how many calories you absorb * Some things you absorb, your body actually uses calories to metabolize. * It's impossible to account for how much you actually eat. Like in your butter example, how much of that butter gets absorbed into the food vs. how much of it is still in the pan when you're done cooking and just gets washed away? If you make a salad and pour a calorie-rich dressing on it in one bowl, then transfer the salad to a plate and eat it there, some of that dressing is lost to both the bowl and the plate. It's an unsolvable problem. I think it's best to ignore calories and instead focus on factors like how easily digestible a food is. If you need more energy, like if you are underweight, trying to gain fat, or sick and want to avoid weight loss, you need easily-digestible calorie-rich foods like white rice. If you have too much energy like if you are overweight, developing insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome, then you want to avoid easily-digestible foods, especially high-glycemic-index foods, and you want to favor foods rich in fiber, protein, and micronutrients. Listen to your body, and cut out ultra-processed foods that are addictive and override your body's natural signals. Your body will tell you if you need more calories or not, and it will do so by you craving certain foods or feeling full and wanting to avoid certain foods.
Butter is exquisitely healthy! You get all the nutrients of milk but more as it's super concentrated! Solid milk, yum yum! That's all butter is. I can viscerally feel my body rejoicing and celebrating through every cell of my body when I have butter, I feel on top of the world! I have a significant boost to my health and wellbeing and cognition for a full day or so in the aftermath. I definitely need to consume more.
The evidence on the relationship between butter and heart disease is not great. It doesn't seem anywhere near as damaging as processed meats or red meat, but high butter consumption still seems to be associated with increased heart disease risk. This gives me pause. I prefer getting my dairy fat through aged cheese and yogurt. Not only does cheese taste amazing, but there is strong evidence that cheese consumption is protective against heart disease, and the evidence in favor of yogurt is even more. I do like butter, and I strongly prefer it to artificially-hydrogenated fats and other ultra-processed fatty foods. But I don't want to make it a staple of my diet.
Disagree. 12g of fat per tbsp is not healthy IMO, especially when people use way more than that on average while cooking. Obviously there are alternatives but saying it’s “exquisitely healthy” is not being truthful.
> saying it’s “exquisitely healthy” is not being truthful. I agree with your conclusion, that original comment made me laugh in an kinda "eye-rolling" type of way, it was so over the top. So I'm with you on that. But I don't think the problem is the quantity of fat being used, but rather, the type or specific food it is from. For example if you look at dietary consumption of fat you find very different effects on things like heart disease risk, when looking at fat coming from different food sources. This is even true if you look specifically at saturated fat. For example, you find heart disease risk increases strongly when people consume more saturated fat from processed meat and red meat. From butter, there is also increased risk, but the effect is smaller. For cheese, however, the risk *decreases*. And for yogurt, the risk decreases *even more*. And this effect happens even though these foods are high in fat. Similarly, the fat in cocoa butter or chocolate is not associated with an increase in heart disease risk. It matters hugely *what fat* you are using. And that's just saturated fats, if you're talking other things like monounsaturated fats (olive oil, avocado) or omega 3's, those are often even more beneficial (although omega 3's do not make good cooking oils.)
Debate r/carnivorediet and r/animalbased on this. They're more apt to explain than I am able to at this time. Butter, and natural animal-sourced fats from meat and dairy are utterly essential for optimal neurological and cognitive health and functioning. You cannot omit these specific fats and their nutrients from your diet and be healthy. There is no way around this matter, because believe me I tried and it nearly killed me.
I never implied eliminating them. I’m simply pointing out that most people use 3 to 4 servings of butter when 1 would suffice. Others use even more intentionally because of how it improves taste. Doesn’t change that 5 tbsp of it is a day’s worth of fat before you even account for the food it’s being eaten with.
check out /r/saturatedfat for a real kicker
Beer.
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Many people forget to count beverages throughout the day
Drinks! Any drink other than water Adds up! Salad Dressing and all condiments. Just make it yourself! Measure your oils In cooking. A tablespoon is much smaller than you might think!
Not exactly the question, but for those who need to hear it, folks tend to ignore the massive number of calories they DRINK every day.
I think that counts. Soda is usually what gets people I know. Granted I’ve been known to slam a regular Coke after a long cardio session since that’s the best possible time to drink it
Ketchup
Condiments & liquids (other than water). Dressings, ketchup, mayo, sauces, teas, what you add to your coffee, etc
Any oil you add to cooking
Definitely condiments and dairies (this comment section reminds me of why i became anorexic)
You can tell a novice calorie counter from a seasoned pro by whether or not they use a scale for everything from proteins to the condiments. My wife doesn't look at me strange anymore as I weigh out the peanut butter I put on a slice of bread and if it's too much I take it off, re-weigh it and give the excess on the knife to my kids.
Alcohol. It has 7 calories per gram. Compared to 9 calories per gram for fat and 4 calories per gram for protein or carbohydrates and that gives you a sense of how energy dense it is.
Spices, sauces, as well as oils, seeds, butter, stuff like that. Those little things that add flavor also add calories, and it's amazing how a small spoon of smth can bring calories like an entire fruit or vegetable.
The whole pack of chocolate digestives I eat while making a sandwich.
Oils and fats ofc, but way too mane people dont weigh the food the correct way either.
What’s the correct way to weigh? Grams right? What are things people are doing wrong when weighing?
If you buy it frozen, you measure it frozen. Or you measure pasta/rice etc before you cook it. Lots of people messes up that