The list is long of the areas in a diet where clients might get sideways. We could look at snacking, grazing, second servings, bites, nibbles, licks and tastes and still not cover every single sneaky place where calories lurk.
My hope is to make this post short and sweet so that you can start seeing better fat loss results.
And I’m going to break it down to a tablespoon.
I’d like you to consider a short list of the foods in your diet where measuring down to the tablespoon might apply:
-Coffee creamer (35 to 50 calories per TBSP)
-Mayonnaise (95 calories per TBSP)
-Cream cheese (50 calories per TBSP)
-Peanut/Nut Butter (90 calories per TBSP)
-Olive Oil (120 calories per TBSP)
-Coconut Oil (120 calories per TBSP)
-Butter (100 calories per TBSP)
-Sugar (45 calories per TBSP)
-Salad Dressing (60 to 100 calories per TBSP)
When I talk to clients about things like this, the response is generally the same: “Do you mean I really have to be concerned about this?”
And my response might be: If you’re not succeeding at your weight loss goals, this might be a place to start.
One of the main reasons why is because these are the areas that are “criminally” overlooked when it comes to our diet.
We pour ourselves a cup of coffee in the morning and we don’t measure the creamer (or sugar), we eyeball it until the coffee turns the shade that makes us happy. The more coffee you drink, the more of a problem this habit turns into.
We build ourselves a salad (because salads are healthy, right?) and we don’t account for the sprinkled cheese, the chopped nuts or the 300-400 calories of dressing that the salad is either swimming in or is conveniently in the cup that’s on the side.
We stir-fry some chicken and veggies in a wok and when the recipe calls for 1 TBSP of peanut oil, we don’t measure it, we just drizzle some of that bad boy onto the wok and say: Eh, looks like a tablespoon to me (try 2 or 3!!).
The details matter. They almost always matter.
We don’t know how much creamer Starbucks puts in our coffee because they eyeball it too, which pretty much negates the calories given on the menu just like we have absolutely no idea how much cheese is on that Chipotle bowl because the gal behind the counter thinks you’re pretty cute so when you say: “Just a little cheese” she puts enough cheese on the top to choke a rat and you’re too kind to say: Um, that’s more than I wanted. Can you put some back?
No, what you do is you grimace a little, act like it’s not that much cheese (yes it is) and you eat every last bit of it.
That’s your homework this week. Break out your tablespoon and start taking a good hard look at some of those places I mentioned above. The tip won’t apply to everyone but I would imagine you’re going to shock yourself by the 100s of calories you never considered before.
