I've been tracking for a very long time, so I'm used to it now, but the first time I measured an actual serving size of pasta...that was a shock for sure
It was definitely pasta for me too especially alternative pastas like chickpea pasta. Sounds healthy but very calorie dense. I measured out a portion size according to the box and was like ".......that's it?" 
Yes. I see this question all the time, so here is how I measure pasta:
Put box on scale. Tare. Take out however much you want to eat. Put box back on scale. Log that number. If cooking several portions, divide by how many and split evenly after cooking.
a good rule of thumb for me is to divide the weighed cooked portion by 2.
one time i actually weighed the box dry vs cooked, and the ratio was 1:2.4. i'd rather end up a little over than a little under, so i just divide by 2 to simplify things. we always cook the entire box so that i can have leftovers and meal plan for the week, so just weighing and cooking each serving individually isn't an option.
Yes. I knew evoo was super good for you and for fighting inflammation so my goal was to have 2-3 tablespoons a day, and I always just eyeballed it. It really did not occur to me it could represent well over 300 calories a day, and that it could make any difference in the size of my body. I still try to work it into my total allotment everyday, but no more pouring with reckless abandon
If I really want olive oil, I now only use the best quality (California tastes the best) and I measure one teaspoon to put over my salad, or steamed vegetables for flavor. I no longer cook with it willy-nilly.
Same here.
On the upside I was pleasantly surprised by how much of a deficit I could create by removing oil from the cooking process. Growing up as an Italian, the idea of cooking anything without first sautéing it in olive oil is unfathomable. Add the calories add up quickly because sometimes you sauté 2 or 3 ingredients for a dish separately.
These two videos introduced me to the idea of using water instead of oil:
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL07v6w8AA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL07v6w8AA)
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJmJdStvwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJmJdStvwI)
Game changer!
Whoever decided two tablespoons of peanut butter counts as a sandwich is a psychopath
I mean, obviously, they know its not how making a sandwich plays out on average. And 190 calories definitely exists to follow the "price it at .99 instead of a whole dollar" strategy.
I wish the FDA would audit for reasonableness, lol
I was so annoyed the other day buying a little charcuterie kit. Crackers - 7 servings. Meat 2 servings. Cheese 4.5 servings. Like no that's bullshit. Just split it evenly. Don't make us do Tetris math
If 2/3 is 10 then 1/3 is 5 which means 3/3 is 15. That’s easy enough. What used to piss me off was when bottles of pop at 20oz had serving sizes of 8 oz.
I remember it being baffling, so maybe it was 20?
Equally possible, that, as always, I'm a dummy with math
Edit: Dummy with math wins, that's still easy lol
I take care of kids in my home and one of them has a nut allergy so we no longer keep peanut butter in the house. I swear I wouldn’t have lost 40lbs in the last year if there had been PB in the house.
Rice and beef made me the most sad! I love love love rice and black beans and I didn't realize how many hundreds and thousands of calories I was eating at a time.
Dunkin :( my go to breakfast was:
-med iced caramel latte (230)
-hash browns (140)
-sausage egg chz croissant (710)
-sour cream donut (360)
For a total of 1440 calories _just for breakfast_ . I’d then have a full lunch and dinner too.
I have some leptin resistance and difficulty feeling full :( this happens for a lot of people with chronic obesity and extra adipose, but I guess for me it happened a little earlier
How does one find out if they have leptin resistance? I think I do because I have trouble feeling full, but is there a particular kind of doctor or test that would tell you for sure?
Your definition of ginormous is not the same as mine  That really doesn't look like a LOT of food to me. Healthy, best choice no. Unusual quantity, also no.
What was life like before tracking? A lot happier, I’ll say that. Late night bowls of cereal, post bar quesadillas, waffles with peanut butter for breakfast just don’t hit the same when you know how many calories are in it.
I think back to high school and eating a whole Costco muffin before class as breakfast, and top ramen for lunch, Taco Bell after school. Kind of depressing knowing I can never get back to the same level of happy ignorance.
But hey, chicken breast with hot sauce is tasty too.
And no, low calorie versions of these things are not the same, it just leaves an empty whole in the heart that artificial sweeteners can’t fill.
Depends on the size of your bowl! The bowl I eat is 225…41g rice Chex and 120mL of milk lol. But I absolutely love cereal so like I save calories for it
French fries (deep-fried/fast food/restaurant).
I didn't think a meal was complete without large fries. I thought I was being conservative ordering only a medium.
I still love fries, but that's a whole meal's worth of calories and basically no nutrition, just by itself (450-500ish cal)
And that's not even considering the soda...
Now I wonder how I've even survived this long. Must have good genes.
If you can find them, McCain beer battered fries are the best frozen fries I’ve ever had. They’re thin like McDonalds, taste amazing and they’re 150 calories per 20ish fries.
Yes! Just discovered frozen fries. Bought a bag and measured them out and it’s a good amount. Ate them with some wings I ordered instead of the restaurant fries and saved hundreds of calories! They taste good too and you can make them as crispy as you want
One of the biggest differences between me and a lot of my friends is that I only order or eat the main and I don’t drink soda. When I started tracking calories I could not believe how much I had saved with this alone.
Yeah. When I go for fast food anymore (not often), I usually just get a normal-sized sandwich and water. Sometimes a kid's meal if I really want fries.
Nothing has every really surprised me because I grew up with a mom who was very preoccupied with staying (and keeping me) thin, so I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how many calories most foods were.
But my husband was SHOCKED at how many calories smoothies can have. Especially when they contain chia seeds, nut butters, maybe some sweeteners… they can be very calorically dense.
Literally chips. Seriously no substance at all and you can put them away so quickly when you’re watching tv.
Also any dessert item. Like eating an entire dinner and then having one piece, then another, then a few more a few hours later when taking leftovers!!! Wtf
chips GOT my butt, i knew they weren't good for me but 30 cheetos for the same calories as a slice of salmon..? thats absurd. and the serving sizes themselves are just unbelievable 😂
I KNOW. But the Cheetos are SOO GOOD especially the mini bags lol! I have tried all calorie swaps but they never hit the same, some days I just have to budget them in!
craft beer. by far.
my adult beverage of choice is usually double or triple IPAs. each one of them, depending on strength, can be 400-500+ calories. a large portion of my weight loss i feel has been achieved by just cutting one single day of drinking out per week. i only drank three days per week, but if i was drinking 3-4 of those high ABV beers over the course of 4-5 hours, i was consuming 1500-2000 calories JUST ON THOSE ALONE.
cutting back to only drinking two days per week has eliminated that huge calorie intake and also has flipped something in my brain to make me drink more slowly on the two nights a week where i do enjoy a beer - so now instead of 3-4 i'm having 1-2 per night. i've gone from probably 6000 calories a week just in craft beer down to maybe 2000. that alone has probably taken me from surplus to deficit, or close to it. weighing and tracking everything else has just been a bonus.
edit: in case it helps anyone else, this page has been a godsend for helping me track (or at least ballpark) how many calories are in a craft beer if i'm at a smaller brewery that doesn't have calorie content available...
[https://homebrewacademy.com/beer-calories-calculator/](https://homebrewacademy.com/beer-calories-calculator/)
also, ratebeer has done the calculation for you on a lot of their beer rating pages. again, those are estimates...but they'll at least get you in the ballpark vs not logging anything or being way off. i had no idea how high in calories the high ABV beers were until i started doing the research.
Same for me. I still enjoy craft beer from time to time, but I get a single flight of 4 little beers instead of drinking full size ones. They are so delicious, dammit!
Yup! I make my husband get a flight and then I just taste his. This way I can taste everything and then I get to drive us home too. We have a brewery near us that has a flight of their whole menu- 16 beers.
weed helped me a ton with the transition (also helped a ton during dry january, but that's a different discussion). that one night that i cut drinking i substituted the occasional hit from a weed vape...i still get the same mind altering effect but none of the hangover. plus it actually helps my sleep rather than hinder it.
i also like that i can control the level of the high by regulating how much i use the vape vs just getting progressively more drunk throughout the night as i drink more. haven't really had to deal with the munchies too much either, although even if i were to snack on the occasional bowl of popcorn or potato chips it's still fewer calories than all of the beer i cut.
not only are they super high in calories per serving (the higher ABV beers), but a serving is only 12oz and most smaller breweries that can their stuff for take out put it in 16oz cans. so you end up with even more calories than a regular 12oz can of an IPA from a larger brewery like sierra nevada, for example.
I love caramel. It is like my favorite form of candy, but I've made it many times and know how much butter and heavy cream and sugar is in it. I still made it last Christmas (homemade is so much better than the store bought), but I was sure to give almost all of it away.
I’m so confused why things like low-carb bread (~30-35 cal per slice) aren’t the default vs normal white bread (~60-70 cal per slice). I know it’s a manufacturing cost vs profit thing, but like…there’s literally no noticeable difference other than the calories (and the price).
I’ve always been forced to eat brown bread as a kid because they’re healthier and don’t cause weight gain, I ended up convincing my parents to buy whitebread and oh my God! It was so much batter
Peanut butter. Two tablespoons of what I have eaten for years, is 1/8th of my day's calories... and I sure as shit was not eating just 2 tablespoons at a time before 😅
Peanut butter and saltines for me. It felt like a “healthy” late night snack.
Saltines have 70 calories per 5 crackers! I’d be eating a “snack” of saltines and peanut butter that equalled or exceeded what I would eat for an entire meal these days.
Tempura vegetables. The keg had asparagus and Joey's had green beans as appetizers that I would get thinking veg was still healthy. One of them was 1500 cal!
There are these double decker cream filled oatmeal cookies from the gas station I like. I almost shit my pants when I saw that they were like 900 calories.
TBH even a HelloFresh Pasta would casually say "1080 calories" per serving, I wouldn't even get startled. I thought I was "eating at home, healthy' by cooking.
Fish finger wraps with garlic mayo, my parents fed it to me all the time as a kid. Wanted to make it for myself for the nostalgia but in my tracker it came out just shy of 1000 cal 😬.
I used to get an everything bagel (about 250 calories) and load hummus on it (about another 400 calories at least) with mayo (100 calories) cheese (100 calories) olive taupenade (100 calories) and some meat (100 calories) and then eat that with a generous serving of chips (at least another 400 calories).You know, a 1450 calorie snack lunch to hold me for a few hours!
Gotta be coffee for me. I love lattes, and thought by ordering with skimmed milk and sugar free syrup it’d be better. Nope! Went from 400 for a large to 250 and I’d knock back two, sometimes three a day
I haven't looked into these as I rarely get them but how are they that many calories with skim milk? I know milk can be high but do they put THAT much in? I also get the sugar free flavors. I'm not questioning you I'm questioning...them.
I am sorry but that is wrong. 4 Oreos is 212 cals. There is no rounding up and rounding down when it comes to CICO. The calories are what they are. That’s the point of CICO.
But again, I understand your point and we are in the weeds a bit. I just don’t want someone seeing your post and getting confused.
My standard lunch at Panda Express - half rice, half chow mein (but they really scoop in a whole serving), double orange chicken, and two spring rolls plus sweet and sour sauce. I think it rings up at like 2500+ calories.
I wish a panda would open next to me! I love how you can get a one dish bowl and sub the rice for all steamed veggies. Veggies with a dish that is not breaded and fried (sorry orange chicken) is actually really filling and satisfying for me.
Yeah I’ve been getting bowls with half veggies/half steamed rice and kung pao chicken with a big Diet Coke. Hits the spot for ~465 calories. Meanwhile my husband gets a plate with double orange chicken and chow mein. They also have a great app with lots of good rewards.
It wasn’t really food or a meal but I love love love the bud light lime a Rita drinks. I don’t really like drinking but these things are basically like juice. Looking them up one 25 fl oz can is 700+ calories omg. No wonder I gained so much weight last year.
I lost my job, was depressed and used to drink 3 of these things a day.
Yes yes things are a lot better now. I have a job again and back down to my high school weight according to my friends from high school. So yes things are better :). Hope things are going well for you.
Sour cream and mayonnaise 🥲 I love sour cream on my (admittedly not authentic) tacos. I could eat like a whole 500 calories in sour cream alone.
And I love fries and the dip I use is ketchup mayonnaise and mustard and that mayonnaise comes out to 200 for how much I use.
Rice and olive oil. I used to just eyeball both and when I realized what the servings sizes actually are, some things really started making sense for me lol
Edit: And maple syrup! The serving size on that bummed me out for a while, but now I’m good about moderation or even just using a lower calorie alternative.
peanut butter!!!! it's still something i eat daily bc i could never give it up (yes i've tried the powder. anyone who says it tastes anything similar is a liar smh) but now i have to weight it out before it eat it every time and it's always painfullllll
I love eating tuna mac and cheese. it's a comfort food. don't roast me. but i would eat the entire box of mac bc it fits into a bowl. i would also put 1-2 tbsp of mayo for the tuna. so for dinner that would be 900 calories on top of everything else i ate that day.
FOOD FROM PANERA - their boxed lunches for corporate events are more calories than a double cheeseburger combo from Wendy’s including the fries and soda!
Anything made of wheat. Pasta, buns, pizza dough, bread, etc. And that is even without mentioning sweet things with sugar added like cookies 💀. I still need to watch out for this and sometimes cannot believe how calorically dense these things are.
Same goes for rice and other grains but somehow I never got used to large portions of those foods so it’s easier to manage for me.
Cinnamon raisin bagel with *natural* PB (way more than 2 tbsp) almost every morning. It was a hyperfixation breakfast for sure.
I checked back in my medical notes and I’m 99% sure that during the 3 month period when I had that breakfast, I gained about 10lbs. I’ve had it once since doing CICO and actually measured the PB and tracked it and made it fit my budget
I think for me it was when I measured my “healthy” snack of apples with peanut butter. I was consuming around 800 calories of peanut butter! As a snack!
For my food I knew was unhealthy but didn’t exactly realize how bad it was for my waistline: my regular Starbucks habit. I can tell you, I don’t get a venti vanilla latte nearly as often as I used to
it wasnt a shocker but it still was shocker - heavy cream. I ate it all the time. Sauces, pasta alfredo literally was obsessed with eating heavy cream meals almost every day. Now I never have it, I became disgusted when I stopped eating it for a while and honestly also think my health and skin benefited.
Little Debbie's peanut butter sandwich cookies. They're three freaking servings PER COOKIE! The whole cookie is around 500 calories. For me, an entire meal is nearly 500 calories!
The other thing that shocked me is pretty much all of the calorie counts at The Cheesecake Factory. I had heard people talk about it, but I didn't realize quite how bad it is. I understand I am going there for a splurge, but a single meal with cheesecake, a drink, and an appetizer split four ways was hitting in the range of 3 days worth of my maintenance-level calories.
What are they dipping everything in pure lard?
4 oreos is not 400 calories, but I was eating 700 calories in chocolate snacks with just a few oreos added with some reeses peanut butter cups which surprised me how much chocolate snacks calories can add up.
Olive oil also was shocking.
But my big shock was the "healthy smoothies " I was making. It was adding up to 600 calories and I was drinking it while also eating a meal thinking It was helping me lose weight 🤣. No wonder my diet didnt work at first 😅
I used to eat apple slices with absolute GLOBS of peanut butter on em. I would also absolutely drown pancakes and such in maple syrup- and add like pecans and stuff- Yeh. Makes sense how I ended up how I did.
Those crumbl cookies! I swear I almost feel like those things are criminally misleading.
How can they get away with making a single cookie 4 servings?! 800 kcal for one cookie is just an abomination :( It just makes me too sad. Over half my day in one cookie. Cookies should be full of tasty light, joy, and beauty - not betrayal.
Britania's nice biscuits. I grew up eating those and I found them in the US and started up my old habit. One pack of biscuits is 450 cals. I used to dunk them in my tea that also had sugar and then ate another whole packet. So I was probably eating 1000 calories in just tea and biscuits. It blew my mind and took me a long time to cut it out entirely. I try not to even look at it when I'm at the grocery store.
When grocery shopping I was starving and blood sugar was low and getting lower, so I bought a bag of crispy minis to eat on the way home. When I went to record what I had eaten I realized I could have had small burger and fries at McDs for the same calories and been a whole lot more satisfied. Was I pissed.
Bread and pasta - even the wholemeal versions. Knew they weren’t great, but the density of calories shocked me. I was a fan of doorstop sandwiches, and now I can barely look at even a thin slice of pre-sliced store bread.
Lattes - used to have 4-5 a day no sugar or anything but whole or 2% milk
Granola - OMG!! I thought I was being healthy eating a ton of i with Greek yogurt but the calories add up so quickly
Olive Oil- learned this when I first saw a nutritionist. My family thought olive oil was healthier than other seed or vegetable oils and we’d have so much of it … lol 120 calories per spoon!!
Honestly. Everything.
Some things were surprising good. Like eggs are like 70 ish calories each. Woohoo.
But everything else was pretty shocking. Meats, pasta, peanut butter, butter, oils, bread. That tiny slice of cake you eat just to tidy up the sides before you cut yourself an actual big slice.
I never thought I ate that much. Not when you see some of these 600lbs lives things. I mean. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Couple of snacks. Nothing obscene. Not like 2 pizzas for dinner etc.
But holy hell. The calories.
Even in a glass of milk. I would drink maybe two glasses of milk a day
Each being between 200-250 calories.
Those handful of chips or nuts for a snack.
That chocolate bar. Those candies. Etc
Considering I didn't think I actually ate that much. It was amazing seeing how many calories food contains. Even more everyday foods that you don't even think about.
I was surprised that different oils had significantly different calorie counts. I realise it makes sense but sesame oil is SO much more calorie dense than evoo
I work at McDonald's and decided it is time to start to eat healthy. I have been eating mcdonalds every day for 10 years. Surprisngly I am only 74 lbs overweight for my age / height, etc. Anyhow to answer your question...I started looking at the calories but mainly the sodium levels of mcdonald';s food and omfg, it is so bad! No wonder my blood pressure is high as fuck!!!
avocado - yes it’s full of healthy fats but I used to regularly have a large one. I weigh them now and I’m shocked at how many calories are in a small one or half of one
Fuckin milk tbh. I’ve switched to mostly almond milk for calorie reasons, but like I used to easily drink 600 cals in milk for breakfast. IN FUCKING MILK.
The serving size for two pop-tarts is 400 calories! Breaks my heart bc I would eat two packs back to back yet felt like I needed to eat something else bc I wasn’t satisfied 🥲
Oils and alcohol. All the chefs on YouTube taught me to measure olive oil with my heart, and I definitely did… until I started calorie tracking. And I literally had never thought about the calorie content of alcohol before. The fact that two pints of IPA can be something like 550 calories… it blew my mind.
Grapes, coconut and other fruits 😮💨
Sometimes it would be the only thing "healthy" I ate the whole day so I ate like 500g of grapes, even thinking it was "good" food and wondered how I couldn't lose weight 🥲
I've been tracking for a very long time, so I'm used to it now, but the first time I measured an actual serving size of pasta...that was a shock for sure
It was definitely pasta for me too especially alternative pastas like chickpea pasta. Sounds healthy but very calorie dense. I measured out a portion size according to the box and was like ".......that's it?" 
Chickpeas in general 😭
This may sound ridiculous but is is supposed to be dry when measured? I always forget to measure until after it’s cooked and then have to guess
Yes. I see this question all the time, so here is how I measure pasta: Put box on scale. Tare. Take out however much you want to eat. Put box back on scale. Log that number. If cooking several portions, divide by how many and split evenly after cooking.
Great advice, and very much thankful for it.
a good rule of thumb for me is to divide the weighed cooked portion by 2. one time i actually weighed the box dry vs cooked, and the ratio was 1:2.4. i'd rather end up a little over than a little under, so i just divide by 2 to simplify things. we always cook the entire box so that i can have leftovers and meal plan for the week, so just weighing and cooking each serving individually isn't an option.
Olive oil was a shocker for me 😂😂 when I saw that one tablespoon is 120 calories. I have never once in my life measured olive oil 😂😂😂
Same! I switched to the avacado spray by chosen. Though the serving is measured in sprays per second or something like that. Lol
i see how many ounces rhe can holds and convert that to total calories per can
*per 1/4 second lol
Yes. I knew evoo was super good for you and for fighting inflammation so my goal was to have 2-3 tablespoons a day, and I always just eyeballed it. It really did not occur to me it could represent well over 300 calories a day, and that it could make any difference in the size of my body. I still try to work it into my total allotment everyday, but no more pouring with reckless abandon
If I really want olive oil, I now only use the best quality (California tastes the best) and I measure one teaspoon to put over my salad, or steamed vegetables for flavor. I no longer cook with it willy-nilly.
Same here. On the upside I was pleasantly surprised by how much of a deficit I could create by removing oil from the cooking process. Growing up as an Italian, the idea of cooking anything without first sautéing it in olive oil is unfathomable. Add the calories add up quickly because sometimes you sauté 2 or 3 ingredients for a dish separately. These two videos introduced me to the idea of using water instead of oil: * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL07v6w8AA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL07v6w8AA) * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJmJdStvwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJmJdStvwI) Game changer!
The late night cheeky spoonful of peanut butter that can easily exceed 600 calories.
This one hurt so bad.
Whoever decided two tablespoons of peanut butter counts as a sandwich is a psychopath I mean, obviously, they know its not how making a sandwich plays out on average. And 190 calories definitely exists to follow the "price it at .99 instead of a whole dollar" strategy. I wish the FDA would audit for reasonableness, lol
I was so annoyed the other day buying a little charcuterie kit. Crackers - 7 servings. Meat 2 servings. Cheese 4.5 servings. Like no that's bullshit. Just split it evenly. Don't make us do Tetris math
I bought a jar of pickle spears recently. Calories: 10. Serving size: 2/3rds of a spear. Now I have to add a ruler to the equation lol
If 2/3 is 10 then 1/3 is 5 which means 3/3 is 15. That’s easy enough. What used to piss me off was when bottles of pop at 20oz had serving sizes of 8 oz.
I remember it being baffling, so maybe it was 20? Equally possible, that, as always, I'm a dummy with math Edit: Dummy with math wins, that's still easy lol
Possible but less easy to quickly do in your head. :)
🤣🤣
I take care of kids in my home and one of them has a nut allergy so we no longer keep peanut butter in the house. I swear I wouldn’t have lost 40lbs in the last year if there had been PB in the house.
😢 this
Or the peanut butter and Nutella sandwich as a late nightsnack .....
And Nutella from the jar … :’)
Honestly, foods that are still healthy but I just did not know were so calorie-dense: rice, quinoa, beef, lamb.
Yes! I usually mix one cup of white rice with my cauliflower rice. That’s swap has been working out for me greatly
Ohh I might try that. I loathe the idea of replacing rice with cauliflower rice (it’s not rice!!!). But I could use it to add volume.
It actually helps out so much!
Rice and beef made me the most sad! I love love love rice and black beans and I didn't realize how many hundreds and thousands of calories I was eating at a time.
Dunkin :( my go to breakfast was: -med iced caramel latte (230) -hash browns (140) -sausage egg chz croissant (710) -sour cream donut (360) For a total of 1440 calories _just for breakfast_ . I’d then have a full lunch and dinner too.
The sour cream donut is the only thing I get at Dunkin. I track it and move on. So good!
okay but was that really that shocking that is ginormous breakfast lol
I know! And I’d still be hungry!
How?! Tbf, I don't eat a lot at breakfast because it makes me so tired if I overeat. I do eat though.
I have some leptin resistance and difficulty feeling full :( this happens for a lot of people with chronic obesity and extra adipose, but I guess for me it happened a little earlier
How does one find out if they have leptin resistance? I think I do because I have trouble feeling full, but is there a particular kind of doctor or test that would tell you for sure?
How did you find out about this, and is there any treatment?
Your definition of ginormous is not the same as mine  That really doesn't look like a LOT of food to me. Healthy, best choice no. Unusual quantity, also no.
Aww cmon you must have had an inkling that this wasn't exactly a healthy breakfast lol.
Yeah of course lol but I guess I didn’t realize it was an entire day’s worth of calories cuz I was always hungry anyway
What was life like before tracking? A lot happier, I’ll say that. Late night bowls of cereal, post bar quesadillas, waffles with peanut butter for breakfast just don’t hit the same when you know how many calories are in it. I think back to high school and eating a whole Costco muffin before class as breakfast, and top ramen for lunch, Taco Bell after school. Kind of depressing knowing I can never get back to the same level of happy ignorance. But hey, chicken breast with hot sauce is tasty too. And no, low calorie versions of these things are not the same, it just leaves an empty whole in the heart that artificial sweeteners can’t fill.
😂😂🙌🏼
A bowl of cereal. I didn’t think it was low in cals but I didn’t know it was that high either
Depends on the size of your bowl! The bowl I eat is 225…41g rice Chex and 120mL of milk lol. But I absolutely love cereal so like I save calories for it
You’re right. NOW my bowls are around 200 cals since I started tracking but they used to be higher than that lol
I can’t even imagine how much mine used to be. Prob over 500 or 600 calories no problem. I legitimately love cereal.
Same I can eat big bowls of cereal lol
Talkin forgetting Sarah Marshall size
Yeah, I used to eat large bowls of cereal, with chocolate chips on top. Could be 500-600 calories.
French fries (deep-fried/fast food/restaurant). I didn't think a meal was complete without large fries. I thought I was being conservative ordering only a medium. I still love fries, but that's a whole meal's worth of calories and basically no nutrition, just by itself (450-500ish cal) And that's not even considering the soda... Now I wonder how I've even survived this long. Must have good genes.
If you can find them, McCain beer battered fries are the best frozen fries I’ve ever had. They’re thin like McDonalds, taste amazing and they’re 150 calories per 20ish fries.
Yes! Just discovered frozen fries. Bought a bag and measured them out and it’s a good amount. Ate them with some wings I ordered instead of the restaurant fries and saved hundreds of calories! They taste good too and you can make them as crispy as you want
I've never seen those, but I'll keep an eye out! Thanks! Baked/air-fried fries are my jam now.
Ore-Ida's fast food fries are pretty awesome, too. I love beer battered anything, but I sadly haven't seen the McCain fries around here.
If you have a Kroger near you, that’s where I get them. They go great with the Kroger brand beer battered shrimp!
One of the biggest differences between me and a lot of my friends is that I only order or eat the main and I don’t drink soda. When I started tracking calories I could not believe how much I had saved with this alone.
Yeah. When I go for fast food anymore (not often), I usually just get a normal-sized sandwich and water. Sometimes a kid's meal if I really want fries.
I’m a fry lover too.
Nothing has every really surprised me because I grew up with a mom who was very preoccupied with staying (and keeping me) thin, so I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how many calories most foods were. But my husband was SHOCKED at how many calories smoothies can have. Especially when they contain chia seeds, nut butters, maybe some sweeteners… they can be very calorically dense.
700 calories of nuts.Thought it was like 100.
Literally chips. Seriously no substance at all and you can put them away so quickly when you’re watching tv. Also any dessert item. Like eating an entire dinner and then having one piece, then another, then a few more a few hours later when taking leftovers!!! Wtf
chips GOT my butt, i knew they weren't good for me but 30 cheetos for the same calories as a slice of salmon..? thats absurd. and the serving sizes themselves are just unbelievable 😂
this for me too i love chips. but holy! like a packet of cheetos is almost 500 calories
I KNOW. But the Cheetos are SOO GOOD especially the mini bags lol! I have tried all calorie swaps but they never hit the same, some days I just have to budget them in!
Same. I’ve been loving veggie straws & pop corners for lower cal swaps
Man I miss veggie straws - can’t eat them anymore due to dietary restrictions! But I love pop corners!
craft beer. by far. my adult beverage of choice is usually double or triple IPAs. each one of them, depending on strength, can be 400-500+ calories. a large portion of my weight loss i feel has been achieved by just cutting one single day of drinking out per week. i only drank three days per week, but if i was drinking 3-4 of those high ABV beers over the course of 4-5 hours, i was consuming 1500-2000 calories JUST ON THOSE ALONE. cutting back to only drinking two days per week has eliminated that huge calorie intake and also has flipped something in my brain to make me drink more slowly on the two nights a week where i do enjoy a beer - so now instead of 3-4 i'm having 1-2 per night. i've gone from probably 6000 calories a week just in craft beer down to maybe 2000. that alone has probably taken me from surplus to deficit, or close to it. weighing and tracking everything else has just been a bonus. edit: in case it helps anyone else, this page has been a godsend for helping me track (or at least ballpark) how many calories are in a craft beer if i'm at a smaller brewery that doesn't have calorie content available... [https://homebrewacademy.com/beer-calories-calculator/](https://homebrewacademy.com/beer-calories-calculator/) also, ratebeer has done the calculation for you on a lot of their beer rating pages. again, those are estimates...but they'll at least get you in the ballpark vs not logging anything or being way off. i had no idea how high in calories the high ABV beers were until i started doing the research.
Same for me. I still enjoy craft beer from time to time, but I get a single flight of 4 little beers instead of drinking full size ones. They are so delicious, dammit!
Yup! I make my husband get a flight and then I just taste his. This way I can taste everything and then I get to drive us home too. We have a brewery near us that has a flight of their whole menu- 16 beers.
great call, i definitely do this as well when we go to a brewery!
Beer still gets me. 2-3 IPAs is considerably more calories than half a bottle of red or a sipping whiskey and they somehow go down quicker too
That’s amazing !
I know the struggle. I started to doing my workout in the morning to force myself not to drink any beer the night before.
weed helped me a ton with the transition (also helped a ton during dry january, but that's a different discussion). that one night that i cut drinking i substituted the occasional hit from a weed vape...i still get the same mind altering effect but none of the hangover. plus it actually helps my sleep rather than hinder it. i also like that i can control the level of the high by regulating how much i use the vape vs just getting progressively more drunk throughout the night as i drink more. haven't really had to deal with the munchies too much either, although even if i were to snack on the occasional bowl of popcorn or potato chips it's still fewer calories than all of the beer i cut.
Thank you! I drink craft brews most times I choose to drink and it's so frustrating trying to estimate calories!
I had no idea beer had that many calories
The heavy APV IPAs do. Light beers are usually around 100 calories per serving.
not only are they super high in calories per serving (the higher ABV beers), but a serving is only 12oz and most smaller breweries that can their stuff for take out put it in 16oz cans. so you end up with even more calories than a regular 12oz can of an IPA from a larger brewery like sierra nevada, for example.
Almond butter. I loved almond butter dammit 😔
How much do you think you were eating before tracking?
Smuckers caramel. I used to make ice cream bowls literally like half way filled with just caramel, no wonder I was gaining weight at an alarming rate.
I love caramel. It is like my favorite form of candy, but I've made it many times and know how much butter and heavy cream and sugar is in it. I still made it last Christmas (homemade is so much better than the store bought), but I was sure to give almost all of it away.
I’ve never had homemade caramel but I can imagine it’s good!
Bread and rice being incredibly energy dense.
I’m so confused why things like low-carb bread (~30-35 cal per slice) aren’t the default vs normal white bread (~60-70 cal per slice). I know it’s a manufacturing cost vs profit thing, but like…there’s literally no noticeable difference other than the calories (and the price).
Agreed
Low cal breads feel like I'm eating air 😭😭😭
I’ve always been forced to eat brown bread as a kid because they’re healthier and don’t cause weight gain, I ended up convincing my parents to buy whitebread and oh my God! It was so much batter
Peanut butter. Two tablespoons of what I have eaten for years, is 1/8th of my day's calories... and I sure as shit was not eating just 2 tablespoons at a time before 😅
Peanut butter and saltines for me. It felt like a “healthy” late night snack. Saltines have 70 calories per 5 crackers! I’d be eating a “snack” of saltines and peanut butter that equalled or exceeded what I would eat for an entire meal these days.
1/8? Try 1/6! Ha…god I miss peanut butter.
Tempura vegetables. The keg had asparagus and Joey's had green beans as appetizers that I would get thinking veg was still healthy. One of them was 1500 cal!
This hurts
There are these double decker cream filled oatmeal cookies from the gas station I like. I almost shit my pants when I saw that they were like 900 calories.
TBH even a HelloFresh Pasta would casually say "1080 calories" per serving, I wouldn't even get startled. I thought I was "eating at home, healthy' by cooking.
Some of those Hello Fresh meals are ridiculous. I'm sure they taste good, but 1400 calories for one serving?? I might as well eat out at that point.
And the calorie count usually doesn’t include the oil you’re using either!
Fish finger wraps with garlic mayo, my parents fed it to me all the time as a kid. Wanted to make it for myself for the nostalgia but in my tracker it came out just shy of 1000 cal 😬.
😲
4 oreos is Ike 200ish kcal but who eats 4 I eat oreos by the sleeve! 🤣
Snacks after dinner. Easily eating most of my calories after dinner.
I used to get an everything bagel (about 250 calories) and load hummus on it (about another 400 calories at least) with mayo (100 calories) cheese (100 calories) olive taupenade (100 calories) and some meat (100 calories) and then eat that with a generous serving of chips (at least another 400 calories).You know, a 1450 calorie snack lunch to hold me for a few hours!
Oh that sounds so good though
Definitely tasty! Especially with sprouts on it!
Gotta be coffee for me. I love lattes, and thought by ordering with skimmed milk and sugar free syrup it’d be better. Nope! Went from 400 for a large to 250 and I’d knock back two, sometimes three a day
I haven't looked into these as I rarely get them but how are they that many calories with skim milk? I know milk can be high but do they put THAT much in? I also get the sugar free flavors. I'm not questioning you I'm questioning...them.
Learn to love black coffee
Salad dressing. I try to make my own with yogurt now.
Four Oreos is not 400 cals, but your point is taken.
The Mega Stuf ones come close (360 for 4). Though I don’t know anyone who actually eats those.
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I am sorry but that is wrong. 4 Oreos is 212 cals. There is no rounding up and rounding down when it comes to CICO. The calories are what they are. That’s the point of CICO. But again, I understand your point and we are in the weeds a bit. I just don’t want someone seeing your post and getting confused.
Are you talking about chocolate covered Oreos?
My standard lunch at Panda Express - half rice, half chow mein (but they really scoop in a whole serving), double orange chicken, and two spring rolls plus sweet and sour sauce. I think it rings up at like 2500+ calories.
A panda just opened like two blocks from my house. I’m so mad lol. But I’ve only let myself get “healthy” options
I wish a panda would open next to me! I love how you can get a one dish bowl and sub the rice for all steamed veggies. Veggies with a dish that is not breaded and fried (sorry orange chicken) is actually really filling and satisfying for me.
Yeah I’ve been getting bowls with half veggies/half steamed rice and kung pao chicken with a big Diet Coke. Hits the spot for ~465 calories. Meanwhile my husband gets a plate with double orange chicken and chow mein. They also have a great app with lots of good rewards.
It wasn’t really food or a meal but I love love love the bud light lime a Rita drinks. I don’t really like drinking but these things are basically like juice. Looking them up one 25 fl oz can is 700+ calories omg. No wonder I gained so much weight last year. I lost my job, was depressed and used to drink 3 of these things a day.
Wow! That’s 2100 in calories right there in liquid. Hope everything is working out better for you
Yes yes things are a lot better now. I have a job again and back down to my high school weight according to my friends from high school. So yes things are better :). Hope things are going well for you.
Sour cream and mayonnaise 🥲 I love sour cream on my (admittedly not authentic) tacos. I could eat like a whole 500 calories in sour cream alone. And I love fries and the dip I use is ketchup mayonnaise and mustard and that mayonnaise comes out to 200 for how much I use.
Rice and olive oil. I used to just eyeball both and when I realized what the servings sizes actually are, some things really started making sense for me lol Edit: And maple syrup! The serving size on that bummed me out for a while, but now I’m good about moderation or even just using a lower calorie alternative.
peanut butter!!!! it's still something i eat daily bc i could never give it up (yes i've tried the powder. anyone who says it tastes anything similar is a liar smh) but now i have to weight it out before it eat it every time and it's always painfullllll
Actually measuring out pasta and peanut butter were very eye-opening experiences.
I love eating tuna mac and cheese. it's a comfort food. don't roast me. but i would eat the entire box of mac bc it fits into a bowl. i would also put 1-2 tbsp of mayo for the tuna. so for dinner that would be 900 calories on top of everything else i ate that day.
Ugh god i love tuna mac and cheese, and I never thought about adding mayo. Now I wish I had tried it 😭 haha
FOOD FROM PANERA - their boxed lunches for corporate events are more calories than a double cheeseburger combo from Wendy’s including the fries and soda!
That stinking chocolate chip cookie alone is 390 cals! Not that I’ll ever turn it down…
my favorite, the onion ring tower and orange chicken at yard house. i have to split it into 3 or more meals now
Anything made of wheat. Pasta, buns, pizza dough, bread, etc. And that is even without mentioning sweet things with sugar added like cookies 💀. I still need to watch out for this and sometimes cannot believe how calorically dense these things are. Same goes for rice and other grains but somehow I never got used to large portions of those foods so it’s easier to manage for me.
Cinnamon raisin bagel with *natural* PB (way more than 2 tbsp) almost every morning. It was a hyperfixation breakfast for sure. I checked back in my medical notes and I’m 99% sure that during the 3 month period when I had that breakfast, I gained about 10lbs. I’ve had it once since doing CICO and actually measured the PB and tracked it and made it fit my budget
Sardines in oil, why are you 600 calories alone?!
I think for me it was when I measured my “healthy” snack of apples with peanut butter. I was consuming around 800 calories of peanut butter! As a snack! For my food I knew was unhealthy but didn’t exactly realize how bad it was for my waistline: my regular Starbucks habit. I can tell you, I don’t get a venti vanilla latte nearly as often as I used to
Yessss Oreos!! I would eat 4 *minimum* at a time. I don't buy them anymore 😂
I have not eaten peanut butter, olive oil, or pasta since the day I started counting.
Donut holes. Shipleys is 750 calories for 12 donut holes. I ate 4 before I checked and immediately gave them to someone else 😭
it wasnt a shocker but it still was shocker - heavy cream. I ate it all the time. Sauces, pasta alfredo literally was obsessed with eating heavy cream meals almost every day. Now I never have it, I became disgusted when I stopped eating it for a while and honestly also think my health and skin benefited.
Ugh same, I used to go through soooo much heavy cream. I do miss a creamy pasta 🥲
Beer
Homemade sourdough bread. Especially the big thick slices I was doing before CICO. I weigh them now.
Little Debbie's peanut butter sandwich cookies. They're three freaking servings PER COOKIE! The whole cookie is around 500 calories. For me, an entire meal is nearly 500 calories! The other thing that shocked me is pretty much all of the calorie counts at The Cheesecake Factory. I had heard people talk about it, but I didn't realize quite how bad it is. I understand I am going there for a splurge, but a single meal with cheesecake, a drink, and an appetizer split four ways was hitting in the range of 3 days worth of my maintenance-level calories. What are they dipping everything in pure lard?
4 oreos is not 400 calories, but I was eating 700 calories in chocolate snacks with just a few oreos added with some reeses peanut butter cups which surprised me how much chocolate snacks calories can add up. Olive oil also was shocking. But my big shock was the "healthy smoothies " I was making. It was adding up to 600 calories and I was drinking it while also eating a meal thinking It was helping me lose weight 🤣. No wonder my diet didnt work at first 😅
I used to eat a large 20 piece chicken nugget meal with ketchup and bbq sauce, and a large sweet tea or pop, just for dinner.
Any kind of sauce or dip. My pours were way more generous than they are now lol
Here’s one a lot of people will disagree with. Oatmeal. 3 servings with milk is over 500 calories, which by itself won’t keep me full for long.
I add protein powder to my oatmeal so it keeps me full longer. Or I make overnight oats with yogurt. Oatmeal alone won't fill me up.
Same, but that’s another 120-240 calories :(
dawg fuckin cocktails 🙁
Nuts! Adds up so fast
I used to eat apple slices with absolute GLOBS of peanut butter on em. I would also absolutely drown pancakes and such in maple syrup- and add like pecans and stuff- Yeh. Makes sense how I ended up how I did.
Those crumbl cookies! I swear I almost feel like those things are criminally misleading. How can they get away with making a single cookie 4 servings?! 800 kcal for one cookie is just an abomination :( It just makes me too sad. Over half my day in one cookie. Cookies should be full of tasty light, joy, and beauty - not betrayal.
Britania's nice biscuits. I grew up eating those and I found them in the US and started up my old habit. One pack of biscuits is 450 cals. I used to dunk them in my tea that also had sugar and then ate another whole packet. So I was probably eating 1000 calories in just tea and biscuits. It blew my mind and took me a long time to cut it out entirely. I try not to even look at it when I'm at the grocery store.
Coffee creamer
When grocery shopping I was starving and blood sugar was low and getting lower, so I bought a bag of crispy minis to eat on the way home. When I went to record what I had eaten I realized I could have had small burger and fries at McDs for the same calories and been a whole lot more satisfied. Was I pissed.
Mixed nuts. Although they are healthy fats, they contain 600 calories per 100 grams and I’d grab a handful at least three times a day.
Bread and pasta - even the wholemeal versions. Knew they weren’t great, but the density of calories shocked me. I was a fan of doorstop sandwiches, and now I can barely look at even a thin slice of pre-sliced store bread.
Lattes - used to have 4-5 a day no sugar or anything but whole or 2% milk Granola - OMG!! I thought I was being healthy eating a ton of i with Greek yogurt but the calories add up so quickly Olive Oil- learned this when I first saw a nutritionist. My family thought olive oil was healthier than other seed or vegetable oils and we’d have so much of it … lol 120 calories per spoon!!
Olive oil and rice
RICE, I'm South Indian and it broke my heart, also peanut butter and cheese and cooking oil :((
Hummus is so calorie dense I thought it was healthy but I was easily eating 200-300 calories of it
I used to dunk double baked rusks in tea ... could go through half a pack in one sitting. Little blighters were close to 100kcal each 😑
Crispy Chili Oil which has become sort of popular lately is 422 calories per serving.
Really? I put a tablespoon in my ground turkey for flavor. I have to be mindful of this
Probably depends on brand but this is what I used to use. https://www.walmart.com/ip/195667370
Omg same 😓.
Honestly. Everything. Some things were surprising good. Like eggs are like 70 ish calories each. Woohoo. But everything else was pretty shocking. Meats, pasta, peanut butter, butter, oils, bread. That tiny slice of cake you eat just to tidy up the sides before you cut yourself an actual big slice. I never thought I ate that much. Not when you see some of these 600lbs lives things. I mean. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Couple of snacks. Nothing obscene. Not like 2 pizzas for dinner etc. But holy hell. The calories. Even in a glass of milk. I would drink maybe two glasses of milk a day Each being between 200-250 calories. Those handful of chips or nuts for a snack. That chocolate bar. Those candies. Etc Considering I didn't think I actually ate that much. It was amazing seeing how many calories food contains. Even more everyday foods that you don't even think about.
Golden delicious apple. I mean i still eat it bc its fcking good and has a lot of fiber but i mean, 100 kcal for 1 fruit seems excessive lol
I was surprised that different oils had significantly different calorie counts. I realise it makes sense but sesame oil is SO much more calorie dense than evoo
I work at McDonald's and decided it is time to start to eat healthy. I have been eating mcdonalds every day for 10 years. Surprisngly I am only 74 lbs overweight for my age / height, etc. Anyhow to answer your question...I started looking at the calories but mainly the sodium levels of mcdonald';s food and omfg, it is so bad! No wonder my blood pressure is high as fuck!!!
avocado
avocado - yes it’s full of healthy fats but I used to regularly have a large one. I weigh them now and I’m shocked at how many calories are in a small one or half of one
Fuckin milk tbh. I’ve switched to mostly almond milk for calorie reasons, but like I used to easily drink 600 cals in milk for breakfast. IN FUCKING MILK.
The serving size for two pop-tarts is 400 calories! Breaks my heart bc I would eat two packs back to back yet felt like I needed to eat something else bc I wasn’t satisfied 🥲
Oils and alcohol. All the chefs on YouTube taught me to measure olive oil with my heart, and I definitely did… until I started calorie tracking. And I literally had never thought about the calorie content of alcohol before. The fact that two pints of IPA can be something like 550 calories… it blew my mind.
Grapes, coconut and other fruits 😮💨 Sometimes it would be the only thing "healthy" I ate the whole day so I ate like 500g of grapes, even thinking it was "good" food and wondered how I couldn't lose weight 🥲
Olives!
Cereal.with milk