Ep. 22: How to Beat Common Calorie Blunders
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Do you find yourself exercising and eating well but it doesn’t seem to make any difference? In this episode, registered dietitian Leslie Beck, Medcan’s director of food and nutrition and a columnist at the Globe and Mail newspaper, steps in as a guest host to describe eight common calorie blunders that could be keeping you from losing weight—and provides tips on how to solve them. For example: Did you know that a smoothie like the one shown above can have as many calories as a Big Mac? Listen to the show for more fascinating food facts!
Related links:
Visit Leslie’s website at lesliebeck.com. Follow her on Twitter @lesliebeckrd.
See Leslie’s Globe and Mail columns.
Leslie Beck also did a video webinar on “Common Calorie Blunders” for Medcan with Eat Move Think exec. producer Chris Shulgan. You can find that archived on YouTube. Here’s the link.
Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcast platform. Eat Move Think host Shaun Francis is Medcan’s CEO and chair. Follow him on Twitter @shauncfrancis. Connect with him on LinkedIn. And follow him on Instagram @shauncfrancis. Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau.
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How to Beat Common Calorie Blunders final web transcript
Christopher Shulgan
Welcome to Eat Move Think. I'm the show's executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Over the summer, we'll be featuring some guest hosts and the first is Leslie Beck, the registered dietitian. She's not only Medcan's director of food and nutrition, she also writes a weekly column for the Globe and Mail newspaper, and she's the best-selling author of 12 books on health and nutrition. She's becoming a regular here on the podcast, including an appearance on one of our all-time favourite episodes: the one that saw Shaun talking to Felice Jacka, the Australian expert on the relationship between poor diet and mental health.
Christopher Shulgan
In this episode, Leslie Beck starts with a client who seems to be doing all the right things. She’s exercising, she's watching her eating—but she can't seem to drop any weight. So Leslie talks about eight common calorie blunders—and provides tips on how to solve them. She also leaves our listeners with some homework at the end. The result is a perfect podcast episode—fast, entertaining. Most importantly, it features a lot of advice that everyone can use. Let’s get right to it. Here's Leslie Beck.
Leslie Beck
Thanks, Chris. So the topic for this podcast, Calorie Blunders and How To Avoid Them really came about from a question I received from a Globe and Mail reader. And she wrote to me and said, "You know what? I've managed to gain five pounds during COVID-19, despite working out everyday and not eating any restaurant meals. What can I do to get my diet back on track?" And she really did feel that she was doing better with her exercise and diet than ever before. But somehow she still managed to gain a little bit of weight and was pretty frustrated.
Leslie Beck
And as a dietitian in private practice, I often hear the same sentiment when I meet clients for the very first time. I'm asked, "Why can't I lose weight? I eat healthfully, I don't eat desserts, but the scale just won't budge. I think I really am doing everything right." And people often wonder if their inability to lose weight is due to maybe a sluggish metabolism, an underactive thyroid, or maybe it's just bad genes. But the truth is, the answer is almost always no. In most cases, diet blunders are to blame: little oversights that can quietly add hundreds of calories to your day, enough to prevent weight loss from happening, or in some cases, add to your weight.
Leslie Beck
So today is all about exploring those under-the-radar calories that can easily be overlooked. Of course, I'll offer tips to avoid them. And just a few: mindless nibbling, overlooking calories in fresh meal kits, being too liberal with added fats, those are among the things we're going to talk about. So let's dive in.
Leslie Beck
Calorie blunder number one is mindless nibbling. It is easy to forget about the cookie that you grab as you pass through the kitchen, or the repeated tastings while making dinner. And with kids always around right now, it can quickly become a habit to finish what's left on their plate, or to snack more often than you normally would while you're giving them snacks during the day. And if you're working from home like many of us, the refrigerator is only steps away. It's pretty easy to tackle boredom, soothe stress, or even procrastinate your work by reaching for snacks throughout the day. The problem is though, all of those unconscious bites can add up significantly to the calorie equivalent of an entire meal if you're not careful.
Leslie Beck
In fact, one small study that was conducted in American adults revealed that people who are unable to lose weight on a 1,200-calorie diet—and that's pretty low—were actually eating an additional 1,000 calories each day just from nibbling. So let's do some math and consider the calories that come from mindless nibbling. So, for example, you grab a piece of cheese. One ounce is 115 calories. Maybe you have six Triscuits with it. There's another 100. A handful of almonds could be 200 calories, 15 potato chips that you think well, that's just a little bit, but there's another 100. You know, you grab a piece of chicken strip off your kid's plate, there's 100 calories. So if you think about how many times in a day that you grab for an unplanned snack or finish your kid's meal or take an extra helping of something at dinner, the calories could add up to 200 or 500 or maybe even more each day. And that can do damage over time considering that theoretically, it takes eating an extra 500 calories a day above what you're currently eating to gain a pound a week. I know that's a bit extreme. But I also know that over time, even an extra 100 or 200 calories a day can make a difference if you don't burn them off.
Leslie Beck
And keep in mind too, that after the age of 30, our resting metabolism slows down due to age-related muscle loss. And to account for this, for every year after age 30, women need to cut seven calories from their daily diet, men need to reduce their daily calorie intake by 10 calories. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it means that at the age of 55, a woman should be eating 175 fewer calories each day than she did when she was 30 in order just to maintain her weight. And that's not something we think about or automatically adjust for as we get older.
Leslie Beck
Okay, so if you feel that you are mindless eating, what are some strategies you can do to prevent it? First of all, to become fully aware of the calories that are slipping past your radar, track your food intake in either a journal or an app, and do it in real time because that's going to help you stay mindful. I have a story to share about a client. She was at home on a maternity leave and she was having a lot of trouble losing the weight she wanted to lose. And her issue was, she told me that she was constantly going in the kitchen, opening the fridge, opening the cupboards and snacking. So I had her—she was a lawyer, so she had these yellow legal pads at home, I had her put one on her counter. Yellow because it didn't blend in very well. It was easy to spot when she walked in the kitchen. I told her, every time you open the cupboard or open the fridge, you have to write it down. And she did, and she was amazed at how many times that occurred during the day. And it acts as a deterrent, so she was able to overcome that habit.
Leslie Beck
Another example: I have a relatively new client I started working with. We did our initial assessment virtually, and she said, "Okay, Leslie, between now and when you send me my meal plan, give me some homework." And I said, "Well, you know what? The only thing I want you to do over the next seven days until you get your plan, is I just want you to write down everything you eat in a journal." And she did that, and sure enough, without a plan, just by writing it down, she had lost two pounds in that week. So it's very powerful, and I highly recommend it. Also, make your snacks deliberate by planning out what you will eat, and serve them on a small plate or in a small bowl so that you can really be attentive to portion size.
Leslie Beck
And approaching meals and snacks with your full attention can help you distinguish between emotional and physical hunger, and it can help improve digestion as well and obviously prevent overeating. So to practice mindful eating, take the time to sit down without any distractions to enjoy your meals. So make it a point not to watch TV, not to check your inbox or your social media or to eat while you're driving. You will eat more likely if you do those things while you're eating. Eating while distracted leads to overeating by making you feel less focused on your hunger signals and the amount of food that you've eaten.
Leslie Beck
You know, we tend to forget that we've eaten what's on our plate when we're not paying attention. You look down and you didn't realize it's all gone. Eat more slowly, too. Put down your cutlery between mouthfuls and chew thoroughly. Really take the time to savour your food and tune in to your hunger cues. Eat until you feel satisfied, not full. I often give my clients a hunger scale to follow. And so their goal is, if they feel they eat too quickly and as a result of that they're overeating, I have them at the beginning of their meal, halfway through their meal and after their meal rate how hungry or not hungry they feel on a scale of one to eight. The goal is to get to number five. You are no longer hungry, you feel satisfied but not full. If you feel full, you've had too much to eat. And the problem is, I think that many people associate being, "Okay, I've had enough to eat now, I'm done," is when they start to feel full. So again, number five, you're no longer hungry, you feel satisfied, but you're not full.
Leslie Beck
Okay, the next calorie blunder that I often see is eating healthy-sized portions of healthy foods. So it is common to overlook calories in nutritious foods that are considered really good for you. For example, people often eat twice the serving size of fish or salmon as they do meat or chicken. But along with those omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D that's in oily fish, an eight-ounce serving of grilled salmon, for example, is 465 calories. That's double the amount of calories found in four ounces of grilled sirloin steak. And think about your portion size of other good-for-you foods too, you know, such as whole grains, avocado and nuts. One typical-sized avocado weighs about 200 grams, has 322 calories. Half a cup of almonds—that's maybe two handfuls you grab during the day—414 calories. And one cup of peanuts has nearly 1,000 calories.
Leslie Beck
And fruits and vegetables. You know, they're certainly one of the best sources of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, and that's why we're told to fill half of our plate at meals with fruits and vegetables. But even so, if your goal is to lose weight, you can't eat all the fruit you want. One medium-sized fruit, because it contains naturally-occurring sugar, has anywhere from let's say 70 to 110 calories.
Leslie Beck
So some strategies. Number one, I would definitely use a digital food scale to learn what a serving size looks like. Keep your portion size of fish, chicken or meat to anywhere between three to six ounces. That really depends on your daily protein requirements and your calorie needs. Unless you're really good at it, I think the eyeball method of sizing out portions can be off, sometimes by more than 100 calories. I'm sure you've heard that three ounces of chicken fish or meat is the size of your palm. But let's face it, we all don't have the same hand size. So a palm's worth of salmon could weigh three ounces, but it could also weigh in at six ounces, delivering an extra 155 calories that you don't account for. So use a food scale to be precise, to see what the right portion size is for you.
Leslie Beck
When it comes to avocado, I would treat it as an added fat in your meal. Very healthy, full of monounsaturated fat, but it really is an added fat. So one eighth of a regular-sized avocado is the equivalent of a teaspoon of olive oil or other cooking oil in terms of fat, or one and a half teaspoons of nut butter. If your snack is going to be almonds or walnuts or cashews for that matter, count them out. As a snack, stick to a one-ounce serving of nuts per day, and that is anywhere from 160 to 190 calories, and it's the equivalent of 23 almonds, 14 walnut halves, 18 cashews, 28 peanuts or—here's the good news—49 pistachios. If you're including a piece of fruit, let's say, with your afternoon snack, reduce your nut portion by half. And really, to prevent overeating, keep that nut jar out of sight. And remember that fruit, as nutritious as it is, is not a free food. If you're trying to really manage your daily calorie intake, include two or three fruit servings a day.
Leslie Beck
Third calorie blunder is overlooking the calories in fresh meal kits. So meal kits like Hello Fresh, Chef's Plate and Good Food certainly help busy people put a tasty meal on the table that they otherwise might not have had time to do. And during the pandemic, it's really helped people limit trips to the grocery store as well. And Good Food, for example, offers Clean 15, low-carb meals. Hello Fresh and Chef Plates both offer vegetarian meals. Sounds pretty healthy. Maybe, but low calorie, these meals aren't, and I've looked at many of them for my clients who are ordering them. Many people don't read the nutrition information that comes with their meals. And when I review these numbers with my clients, often they're pretty shocked by what they see. So for example, Good Food chicken and chickpea sheet pan meal: one serving is 810 calories, 67 grams of protein—that's a ton of protein in one meal. And get this: 2,390 milligrams of sodium. To put that number in perspective, the daily upper limit for sodium for an adult is 2,300 milligrams. You're getting a little more than that in one meal.
Leslie Beck
Here's another one: Chef's Plate salmon and summer asparagus risotto. One serving: 910 calories, 47 grams of protein, basically 1,200 milligrams of sodium, half a day's worth. Another one: Good Food for you Thai-style pork stir fry. 920 calories per serving, another 1,200 milligrams of sodium. So depending on who I'm working with, for any woman I see normally, that's too many calories per meal even to maintain weight. So you really do have to look at how you're going to adjust that meal, are you going to eat a little smaller piece of the chicken they give you, are you going to cut the rice in half? But really take a look at that nutrition information and then adjust. And when it comes to getting the sodium down, many of these meals come with spice packages, and often the first ingredient is salt. So use half, if at all.
Leslie Beck
Okay, so let's talk about some strategies to manage the calories and the sodium in fresh meal kits. First and foremost, read the nutrition facts. If you can, ahead of time on the website before you order. If not, make sure you read them when you get them. Choose meals with 450 to 600 calories if possible, and I'm going to wish you a lot of luck with that because there aren't very many. But I think what you'll have to do—certainly, if you're a female—you're going to have to eat less of what one serving is. So if you're ordering something that's two servings, consider it to be three. So just figure out what you need to cut back on, whether you eat a smaller piece of the chicken or fish, or you cut back on some of the rice in your meal. I would also suggest to know for sure, use your food scale. Weigh the protein to know is that four ounces what I should be eating? And use one half of the spice package. The first ingredient is usually salt. That will help cut back on your sodium intake. Depending on the meal, you might be able to get away with not using it at all.
Leslie Beck
Another common mistake I see with some clients is just being too liberal with added fats. Certainly, olive oil and many other cooking oils are really good for you, they're unsaturated heart-healthy fats. In the case of olive oil, it's monounsaturated fat, the kind that helps reduce inflammation and may improve how the body uses insulin. But fats are calorie-dense. And with 120 calories per one tablespoon, pouring versus drizzling, that cooking oil can put a big dent in your calorie budget. And it's the same thing for nut butters. A tablespoon of peanut butter or almond butter, for example, has 95 calories, but it's easy to use more if you don't measure. And if you don't know how much oil you toss in your salad greens or saute your vegetables in, I do recommend that you measure it. I would recommend including two fat servings per meal. A serving is a teaspoon of cooking oil, one and a half teaspoons of nut butter, a tablespoon of seeds—that might be ground flax, chia or hemp seeds—or it's also one-eighth of an avocado.
Leslie Beck
Calorie blunder number five I call eating like an athlete. And this is very common. You know, it's easy to do, justify eating a larger portion of food or an extra dessert because you're working out four days a week. Surely you're burning those calories off, right? Well, maybe not. Consider that one pound of body fat stores about 3,500 calories. That means you'd have to burn an additional 500 calories every day in order to lose one pound each week. And for a 150-pound person, that requires roughly 63 minutes of running or spinning, 90 minutes of brisk walking at four miles per hour, or two hours and 25 minutes of strength training every day of the week. And if you weigh less, you'll have to exercise longer to burn the same number of calories. So my point here is, relying on exercise alone to lose weight isn't that sustainable. Plus, eating one indulgent meal can wipe out a day's calorie burn from exercise.
Leslie Beck
It's much easier for people to consume 500 fewer calories from their diet each day, or maybe, you know, 350 calories fewer a day and burn 150 calories through exercise. So I would say if your goal is to lose a little bit of weight, absolutely keep up the exercise. There are many benefits to doing that. But focus on your diet too. And remember that 80 percent of weight loss happens in the kitchen, not the gym.
Leslie Beck
And when it comes to exercise, there's another common mistake I often see, and that's overeating protein because you're strength training. Absolutely it is true that exercise—especially strength training—increases daily protein requirements. So, for example, that 150-pound person who does resistance training three times a week, needs to eat an extra 25 grams of protein each day. That would be the amount of protein found in three ounces of chicken or one cup of Greek yogurt. And many people are already eating the extra protein they need to support resistance training in the first place. So if you're already getting the calories you need—and I suspect you may be if the scale isn't moving—extra protein you consume that isn't needed will end up being stored as body fat. Unless you're trying to build muscle while losing body fat at the same time, it's quite easy to get the extra protein you need from your diet. You don't necessarily need to add in extra protein shakes or protein bars. It is important to consume 20 grams of protein after a strength workout to enhance muscle repair, but you may not need to grab a protein shake or a protein bar immediately after your workout if you're going to be eating your meal within the hour. If you do grab that protein shake and then let's say you have lunch or dinner an hour later, you're going to consume unnecessary calories. So really think about timing. For many people, if you finish a workout and your meal's a few hours away, absolutely a protein shake may be very convenient, and an easy way to get your extra protein.
Leslie Beck
So calorie blunder number six I call sprucing up the salad. Salad for a meal might seem like a really smart choice. After all, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, they're nearly calorie free and nutritious. Top it off with some chicken, maybe some tuna, throw in some chickpeas, and you've got a lower-calorie healthy meal. But it's all the add-ons that can make your light lunch or light dinner for that matter add up to 1,000 calories or more. A few crumbles of blue cheese, a sprinkle of dried cranberries and sunflower seeds, maybe a few slices of avocado you're throwing in, a splash of vinaigrette dressing, all of those things together can add an additional 500 calories to your grilled chicken and greens.
Leslie Beck
If you're making salad at home, think about the ingredients that you're adding to it. Choose only one high-calorie topping outside of the dressing you're going to use. Load your salad with lots of lower-calorie fresh vegetables, include lean protein, and use a couple of tablespoons of a vinaigrette dressing. At restaurants, order simpler salads, you know, like salmon, grilled salmon and greens. Skip the croutons, the bacon and the candied nuts. For example, one quarter cup of candied pecans has 140 calories. And go easy on the cheese.
Leslie Beck
Calorie blunder number seven is too many smoothie boosters. And this is really another place that extra calories can slip in if you're not careful. So if you happen to be pretty heavy-handed with the ground flax, the chia seeds, the hemp seeds, and maybe some flax oil, your smoothie can have more calories, believe it or not, than a McDonald's Big Mac. Adding one tablespoon of each of these seeds to your smoothie piles on an additional 315 calories. Factor in the protein powder, the oat milk or the regular milk, the berries, the banana, and your smoothie can cost you upwards of 650 calories.
Leslie Beck
I remember meeting a client who came to see me for the first time, and her breakfast smoothie included all of the above, plus pomegranate juice. And she was drinking 700 calories from her smoothie along with her toast and almond butter. So if you want to add seeds to your smoothie—and they're a great source of plant-based omega three, so I think it's a great thing to add to your smoothies. add one tablespoon of either ground flax, chia seeds or hemp seeds, or one tablespoon of flax oil. And each of those will provide your full day's worth of alpha linolenic acid, which is the plant based omega three fat.
Leslie Beck
Calorie blunder eight is having a daily cocktail or two. Alcoholic beverages add extra calories to your diet, and they can also undermine your resolve to eat healthfully. Consider that a five ounce glass of wine has 125 calories, a gin and tonic has 140 and a 12-ounce craft beer delivers about 200 calories. So here are a few strategies to manage alcohol calories. Number one, consider making Monday through Thursday alcohol free. Reserve a cocktail or two for the weekend or special occasions. Slow down your pace as well. Drink water between cocktails, and consider choosing lower calorie options. There are some really light coolers that have 80 calories per serving, vodka and soda is a very low calorie drink, or wine spritzers. And limit to seven drinks per week for women, ideally no more than one per day, or nine drinks per week per men. One standard drink is considered five ounces of wine—not eight—12 ounces of five percent beer, and one and a half ounces of spirits.
Leslie Beck
So I'd like to end the podcast by giving you some homework. I've talked about eight different calorie blunders—common ones I see in my practice—that can make it easy for calories to slip unknowingly into your diet. And for some people, those extra calories can make it difficult for them to maintain their weight. For others, it might make it difficult for them to lose a little bit of weight they want to lose. So I'd like you all to think about your diet. And perhaps I've made you aware to some of the things that, "Oh, wow, yeah. I do that. I didn't realize it." My goal today was to really enhance your awareness.
Leslie Beck
So here's your homework. I want you to set one very specific goal around changing a particular dietary habit that you've become more aware to during this podcast. That might be for some people, "Yeah, I think I should really measure the amount of oil that I'm pouring in the pan when I saute my vegetables." Or, "You know what? I need to sit down to my meal, and really pay attention to the fact that I'm eating." Or you might pull out the food scale and weigh your protein. Or you might decide, "Yeah, I think I'm going to track my calories. I'm going to use an app." And I often get asked, you know, is there a good app out there to use? And I mean, there are a few of them. My clients prefer—My Fitness Pal is probably the most popular one, in large part because it has a very large database of foods, and it's easy to scan in foods as well. Just keep in mind, the data is only as good as the data that gets input. So sometimes the data is a little bit off. But nevertheless, that's a good one. Another one that many of my clients like too is Lose It. It doesn't really matter. I think the point is, it's the awareness and the mindfulness that that's creating.
Leslie Beck
So I'd like you to make one specific goal around tweaking a habit, and I want you to stick to it and implement that every day for the next seven days. After one week, I want you to make a second goal and keep going from there.
Leslie Beck
I'm Leslie Beck, a registered dietitian and director of food and nutrition at Medcan. Here's to mindfully eating a nutritious, well-balanced diet.
Christopher Shulgan
That’s a wrap for this episode of Eat Move Think. Leslie Beck is on Twitter @lesliebeckrd, and then you can find your way to her other feeds by going to lesliebeck.com. We'll post related links and highlights from this episode at our website at eatmovethinkpodcast.com.
Christopher Shulgan
Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram @shauncfrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.