Want to save around 100 calories? That’s what’s in two medium slices of bacon.
Nix two slices of bacon on your bacon cheeseburger or two slices on your club sandwich or breakfast sandwich.
If you eat bacon five times a week that’s a pound lost in seven weeks and five pounds lost in 35 weeks just by subtracting those slices from what you normally eat. Of course, that’s assuming you don’t add an extra slice of cheese or a heaping spoonful of mayo!
In my neck of the woods, barbecue season is right around the corner.
I happen to love hamburgers, but, needless to say, I don’t love the calories and saturated fat in most of them.
Most (not all) hamburgers are made with either ground round or ground chuck and are usually six or more ounces.
A broiled burger made with ground round (85% lean meat) has 70 calories in each ounce with 4 grams of fat (2 grams saturated fat).
A broiled burger made with ground chuck (80% lean meat) has 76 calories in each ounce with 5 grams of fat (2 grams saturated).
How about substituting chopped vegetables for some of the meat? Onions, garlic, peppers, and mushrooms are some possibilities. An ounce of onions is 11 calories with no fat; an ounce of white mushrooms has 6 calories and no fat.
Switching out an ounce or two of meat for veggies can save you 60 to 150 or so calories and 4 to 10 grams of fat and add a whole bunch of flavor.
Try it – you might like it!
Have you ever followed an argument with a friend – or maybe with your Mom – with a trip to the bakery or the closest candy store?
You could already be stuffed to the gills. But, all you can think about is getting that cookie, or candy bar, or bag of pretzels and chowing down – even though you’re not hungry and may or may not actually enjoy what you’re eating.
Real hunger or physiological hunger is your body’s way of telling you that it’s time to eat food for nourishment. It’s when you have that empty, rumbling feeling in your stomach, a headache, maybe some lightheadedness. It usually occurs two to four hours after your last meal.
Head hunger or psychological hunger doesn’t have physical symptoms and can happen at any time. It can be triggered by emotional situations, habits — like watching TV, working on the computer or driving in the car — or by food cravings or as a form of procrastination. Whatever triggers your head hunger can make you think you’re hungry when you’re really not.
Emotions are common triggers for eating. Head hunger is emotional eating usually in response to gremlins like stress, sadness, loneliness, anger, fear, or boredom.
Head hunger also serves as a distraction – the eating it provokes can be a way to distract yourself from difficult situations, projects, and encounters.
The thing is, these feelings and situations are a part of life and eating won’t make them go away. Eating in response to head hunger often keeps you from figuring out what’s causing the feeling in the first place.
“I want chocolate” might really mean “I need comfort” or “I worked my tail off and I really need to be recognized for it.” Those trips back and forth to the fridge or the vending machine might be the ultimate form of procrastination – is there a project that needs to get done that you’re struggling with?
Wouldn’t it be great if it was as simple as figuring out what’s causing your head hunger and dealing with it. The fact is, that’s the answer. Eating can’t really satisfy your emotional needs, and left unmet, those needs will trigger your head hunger over and over. So, you overeat, you mentally beat yourself up, you feel awful, and the whole process is triggered once again.
To break the pattern, first stop beating yourself up when you eat in response to head hunger — as opposed to eating because you’re starving and your stomach is growling like crazy. Devise a plan to figure out what caused you to eat in the first place. Try keeping a written record of what happened and how you felt before your head hunger took charge. Looking back at a series of entries might give you a clue. Once you get a handle on your triggers, come up with a plan to deal with them and make a “go-to” list of ways to reward, calm, comfort, and/or distract yourself without eating.
Jelly beans — little nuggets of sweetness that come in multitudes of colors and flavors. Their gummy insides might have originated centuries ago from the treat, Turkish Delight. Their outsides are basically the same as the colored hard candy coating, developed in the late 17th century, for the Jordan almond. The modern jelly bean appeared during the American Civil War when Boston’s William Schraft encouraged sending candy to Union soldiers. Because of their egg shape they became popular as Easter candy around 1930.
Although standard jelly beans come in fruit flavors, there are now so many flavors — some goofy, some sophisticated — like spiced, mint, gourmet, tropical, popcorn, bubble gum, pepper, and cola. They also now come in a sugar free version (seems weird, but true – wonder how many chemicals are in those).
Jelly beans are primarily made of sugar and also usually contain gelatin, corn syrup, modified food starch, and less than 0.5% of citric acid, sodium citrate, artificial flavors, confectioners glaze, pectin, carnauba wax, white mineral oil, magnesium hydroxide, and artificial colors (takes some of the fun out of them, doesn’t it).
They may give you Technicolor insides, but they are fat free. On average:
Do you have a clue what the difference is between reduced fat, low fat, light, and fat free. You practically have to walk around with a cheat sheet — or an app — to figure out if something actually lives up to the promise on the product’s label.
The same thing is true on menus, in deli cases, and the little labels perched next to the choices in salad bars. Are the calories in the low calorie tuna salad less than the calories in the reduced calorie? Can you even believe those calligraphied labels behind the glass cases?
Packaged food labels list ingredients in descending order by weight, not amount. The first ingredient listed has the greatest amount by weight, the last ingredient is the one with the least amount by weight. That’s why preservatives are usually at the end of the ingredients list. A ton of chemicals are not necessary to increase shelf life — a little bit will do it. However, fat, sugar, and grains have more heft and usually are closer to the beginning of the ingredients list.
Labels have to include the total amount of fat, saturated fat and unsaturated fat. This carves the way for the low, reduced, and fat free categories.
Confused by the ins and outs of labeling? You’re not alone. Try to be as savvy as possible and do a little investigating. A product sporting a reduced fat label just means that it contains at least 25% less fat than the original version. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it ends up being a low fat product. Take a reduced fat muffin. If the fat content in the original full fat muffin is 30g and the fat has been reduced to 15g — a 50% reduction which allows it to say it is reduced fat — the reduced fat muffin still has a fat content five times higher than the 3g of fat per serving that officially qualifies as low fat. Check the calorie count and fat breakdown on the nutrition label for more complete info.