13 More Diet Facts

Hey, I’m learning a lot. Mostly about fat, but I guess that’s to be expected.

1. The serving sizes listed on food packaging have nothing to do with nutritionist recommendations. You have to eat an appropriate amount, then do some math to find out how many fat grams and/or calories you’re eating.

2. The formulas looks like this: Fat grams you ate = Amount you ate / Amount they claim is a serving X Fat grams per serving. One of the ladies in our group was very proud to come up with that.

3. I don’t even have to look up the fat grams for vegetables. It’s either 0 or gets counted as a starch.

4. People generally think they know how much food is on their plate by just looking, so they don’t need to measure. They are usually wrong.

5. Eating a lot of fat increases your odds of getting type 2 diabetes.

6. A gram is the weight of a paper clip. So I guess I’m trying to eat 42 paperclips or less.

7. Half a bag of Special K air baked cracker chips (sour cream and onion version) is 8 grams of fat. So I still get to pig out occasionally.

8. There are three ways to eat less fat. Eat fatty food less often.

9. or in smaller amounts

10. or substitute a food with less fat. For example, non-fat milk in place of whole milk.

11. Baked potatoes aren’t actually bad for you until you put the butter on. They suggested putting a little milk on a baked potato before adding toppings. It does spread out the topping, but mine came out a little soggy.

12. Coconut oil and palm oil both contained dangerous saturated fats and should be avoided.

13. The least healthy fat is Trans Fat which is generally found in fried foods, pastries, and stick margarine. But then, you knew that, right?

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