Food labels are sometimes a most educating thing to read.
I have, for two weeks now, been using Sparkpeople to track my food intake.First of all, it´s free. I can access it from any computer that has an internet connection. And it gives you a precise rundown on the contents of what you ate.
The latter feature, to me, is the most helpful one because you cannot only look at how many carbs etc. you had but also at a number of micronutritients, like calcium. Which got me back to supplementing. It seems to be near impossible to get in the RDAs on a 1500-calorie-a-day plan otherwise. But with a few well-chosen supplements I think I´ll be fine.
What surprised me was that their food lists seem to cover most of the things I can buy here, too, even though I live in Europe and the company is US-based. (Full disclosure: I am not affiliated to them, I just use their website for tracking).
Sometimes, though, I have to look for a close equivalent for what I want to eat, especially when I am resorting to pre-prepared meals which I sometimes have to do for convenience´s sake (I´m working full-time, after all, and get home quite late on some days).
And that, in turn, requires me to go and read the labels of some old favourites.
Like that of the frozen vegetable pizza that is a standby for those I-don´t-want-to-cook evenings in our household.
One pizza (twenty-cm diameter) for each of us.
Who eats half of what looks like exactly one dinner plate of pizza, anyway?
Me, that is, after I discovered that the nutrition information gave half a pizza as one recommended serving. So, after that discovery, I took a bread knife to the still-frozen pizza and cut it into two recommended servings, one of which went back into the freezer for next time.
Which meant that I didn´t go over my calories or carbs yesterday, and I know now that I can eat twice off one package of those pizzas. Which is, in effect, like a fifty-percent markdown per meal.
DH, who is not at present dieting, had a whole one, but then, as a male and being taller than I am, he can use the calories just fine. For me, seeing that I can have the same thing he eats if I watch my portions makes everything easier, too.
The serving size trap is something that I noticed quite frequently these days. Like the 400g- pack of greek salad that I would, formely, have divided by two and served. The recommended serving was..100 grams. Half of what I used to serve. Again, we had two meals off that salad.
What annoys me most is the packages where recommended servings and package content don´t compute. Like, when you have a 200g- pack and the recommended serving is 75 grams. You can either toss the rest, or eat it, putting you at 1.3 times the recommended serving size. Depending on what is in the pack, that can seriously impact your caloric balance.
I admit that I am not yet ready to toss those leftovers every time. But I think I should remember that the food industry doesn´t mind at all what happens to their product after we bought it. We could buy and toss whole packages for all they care.
I have been guilty of that, too, before starting to recondense myself. But first, I would stuff everything that threatened to pass the eat-by date into the bipedal bin, aka my body. Only what I didn´t manage to eat went to the trash bin.
First overbuying, then abusing my body as a receptacle for the excess food we had dragged home. Cooking way-too-big portions and eating it all because one doesn´t throw away food, or does one?
And I was wondering where the fat came from...
Of course, the excess food we dragged home was partly due to my wanting to be prepared for every eventuality. What if one of us wanted to eat, say, a piece of cake and there wasn´t any in the house?
I have, by now, found out what happens then. Nothing. If the person is really hungry, he or she will eat something else. If it is just a yen for something that appeals to our appetites, it will pass. Not being able to act on your appetite (vs. hunger) is, actually, keeping a lot of unnecessary calories out of our bodies.
Apart from that, our grocery bills are considerably lower, too.
And not dragging home too much food means that we barely ever have to throw out food that has spoiled.
What if you have been brought up as a member of the "Clean your plate, there are children starving in Africa"-club? Guess what, if you leave the excess at the store in the first place, a lot of supermarkets donate merchandise that is close to the sell-by date to food banks, so there´s a chance that the food that would be too much for you could, if unsold to somebody else, even be used to do good to somebody in your own community. In your trashbin, it helps no one. And if you really care about the children in Africa, consider donating the money you didn´t pay for those excess goodies to a charity or a development aid project that will really help the people there. <getting off my soapbox>
We inhabitants of the so-called developed countries are living in a world that has more food choices to offer than anybody can reasonably eat. We have- most of us, at least- cars to help us bring home gigantic stashes of food, and pantries full of more food than we can hope to eat before it expires.
All of these things are making us fat.
For me, that realization was the first step in getting my weight under control. And it´s a continuing battle, one that requires planning, journalling my food and reading labels all the time.
But the result is worth it.
Julia
No comments:
Post a Comment