Careful what you read

As anyone who’s ever wanted to lose weight, or maintain their weight, knows, it’s a lot about counting calories.  It's alot about balance of working Counting calories is not something I ever thought I’d do or ever care about. And yet here I sit counting every single calorie that passes my lips.

Some days it’s not bad.  Other days I loathe having to put what I’ve eaten down and see the calorie count increase.  I track my calories on MyFitnessPal.com – and there’s an app for that too – which makes adding what I consume easy. It does the math for me and I don’t have to even think much more about it.

I’ve become somewhat of a nut job reading labels these days.  I not only read labels of the foods that are good for me, wanting to understand and comprehend WHY they’re so good for me, but I read the labels of foods I used to eat every day.  Those labels scare me. I’m stunned at the amount of calories that existed in my daily diet.

I have recently been duped by the marketing of a low-calorie item I’m now addicted to. 

Crystal Light Pure.  My new best friend.  I was getting really tired of water, and needed something to livin' it up a bit with during the day. A friend told me about this and said it wasn't like the other Crystal Light drinks - which I can't stand because they taste too artificial to me. So I tried it and loved it.

I picked up my first box and read right there on the front, 15 calories per serving. Woot. 15 calories per serving, I could easily work that into my daily calorie intake and not really mess up the entire day.

They make it easy too. Inside the box are little packets already measured out for you.

Its so easy to get some extra flavor in your water. I've been drinking about one a day for about three weeks now.

Yesterday I was looking at the box and shook my head in shock and horror.  Well, okay, it wasn't that dramatic, but I do believe my mouth hung open in disbelief.

You see that?
Right there in green and white.  Each packet contains TWO servings. A "serving" is 1/2 a packet.

WHAT?

So I've been drinking 30 calories instead of 15?

I do realize, by the way, that an extra 15 calories in the grand scheme of things is not a big deal. That's not what this post is about.  This post is about how misleading the marketing on low-fat, non-fat, low-calorie, "good for you" foods can be. 

I flipped the box over one more time, BTW, and discovered their own instructions says to add a full packet to 16 ounces of water. Sneaky buggers.

Why not just say on the front 30 calories per serving, and make one serving one packet?

I couldn't believe I'd been duped. I believed what the front box said, 15 calories per serving, which isn't a lie. I just didn't take the extra step to see what a serving was.

A couple of weeks ago I had the same thing happen related to canned green beans (what? don't judge. I love canned green beans.) I buy the small cans because being a single person it makes more sense. My thought was the small can was one serving. Turns out a serving size is 1/2c. Which is next to nothing, and the can has 2 servings in it.  I was eating an extra 40 calories and didn't know it.

Again, we're not talking a large number of calories here. But it does add up. 

My point is, reading labels thoroughly HAS to become part of your every day ritual if you want to lose weight.  The weight loss industry is a multi-kabillion dollar industry and they will do anything they can to market to your need for lower caloric intake - without telling you the full truth up front.  It is my responsibility to read the labels completely, I'll admit that.

Along those same lines, I got for new cookbooks from Cuisine AT Home last night called Light Cooking.  I love Cuisine AT Home and having recipes that are designed to be lighter is just what I need. Their cookbooks are full of beautiful, scrumptious looking pictures, step by step recipes and these include the calories for each recipe.

It gives you the calories per serving. But what they don't tell you is how much a serving is. ACK!  I got me thinking, why would they produce a cookbook marketed towards lighter eating and not include the serving size?  Are they helping us or hindering us?  The photos they include, I would assume, are more than a serving, especially of the pasta photos.  Once I start cooking on my own, I guess I'll have to figure out how much each should be. Shouldn't be too hard. I'll just take what I normally would and cut that in half, then cut that in half again.

What I need is an app to tell me how much is a serving of a particular food? For example, how much is a recommended serving of fish? Does it matter the type of fish?

I'm gonna go search now and see if I can find it.  I wonder how people 25 years ago ever lost any weight without all these gadgets and gizmos that do all the work for us. Is it no wonder we're a generation with such alarming amount of obesity?