What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Wouldn’t it be nice if every food item came with a label on it? If only we knew how many calories were in each home cooked meal, baked good and menu item; many of us would make much better decisions. The hardest part about dieting is trying to guess how many calories are in these types of foods. We tend to underestimate calories when we leave it up to our own guess work. We want to believe certain foods are OK to eat. Then after we talk ourselves into believing we’ve made the right choice, we expect to lose weight as if our guess was 100% accurate.

I did something the other day that enlightened me on this very subject: I picked up a low-calorie snack on a recent road trip. I noticed the snack was a little over 200 calories. I wasn’t too thrilled about this, since I try to keep my snacks to 150 calories or less, but I thought I should bring it in case I got hungry. I found myself picking up the snack while I was driving along, re-reading the package over and over - contemplating whether it was worth it or not. I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it and would prefer to eat something better later.

I decided to stop for some Starbucks to stretch my legs and refuel my body with a fat-free sugar-free latte. I found myself staring at the pastry case looking for anything that could be the least bit healthy. The store had one item – a no-sugar added banana nut loaf. I thought that would be the best choice. Besides, it had real bananas and whole nuts in it which sure beat my processed 200 calorie snack. The loaf was larger than my wimpy snack so even if it had a few more calories I thought it would be worth it. The decision making process can be funny at times, but that was my thought process.

After I ate the snack I began to feel a little guilty, second-guessing my choice. A few days later I looked up the calories for that banana loaf and found that my little ‘no sugar added treat’ had over 475 calories and 30 grams of fat!! That is more calories than an entire lean cuisine meal. I couldn’t believe it. I knew it was probably a little higher than my 200 calorie snack, but I had no idea it was going to be twice the calories. In addition, I had my fat-free sugar-free latte which was 180 calories so in one quick trip to the coffee shop I had over 655 calories! This little boo-boo would probably take me about 6 miles to erase! Ugh!

What’s the moral of this story? Know what you are eating or don’t eat what you don’t know – because what you don’t know can hurt you, sabotaging all your hard work in the gym.