Carbs Schmarbs Part 1

I don't know about you but I suck when it comes to nutrition, sure I look at the label and think okay this looks good, I think? I do the normal steps, how many calories, how much far, how many servings are actually in the box (I used to think that an entire box of cookies was only 390 calories,  but then then after actually smarting up I realized only 3 cookies were a serving so instead of 390 it was like 3.9 million calories.....yeah)  it's true that abs are made in the kitchen, eat the fries and you ONLY have to do 524 burpees to burn them off! (Not that I eat fries but we all have our vices) I see so many people on Instagram who make it look so easy to always eat healthy and meal prep and plan but I have to remember that is THEIR job, that's all they do, their job is to look good, eat right and exercise. I wish the gym was my office, the kitchen was my home and that meal prepping would be easy and sure I'm sure once you get the hang of it it is but I'm the type of girl who HATES leftovers unless it's one of 3 things, 1. Chinese food, 2. Pizza or 3. An Omlette from Shari's. I don't know what it is, I see tons of people who constantly eat leftovers and I always make extra so I can have leftovers or "partial meal prep" as I call it hahaha, but it never fails, I'm not in the mood, it doesn't sound good, or whatever random excuse I come up with. So imagine now basically eating leftovers for a week straight, that's how I view meal prepping. But.....that's a whole other issue, so back to the nutrition label problem I was talking about, and for those of you who haven't and aren't required to take a nutrition course consider this your crash course, this will be the 1st of 5 blogs dedicated to breaking down the complex art of nutrition and putting it in terms we can all understand including myself because let me tell you I took it twice and I still don't fully understand the difference between complex carbs, trans fat, fat fat and so on and so on. Now correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like this is where people get confused and just give up. I know firsthand how that feels, my workouts are on point I'm proud to say but I struggle hardcore with nutrition and you've heard me talk about it before so you know it's a real struggle if I continually talk about it. Anyways here we go!

First we are gonna talk about nutritionally dense food, think of it this way, the more dense the food the more you need to fill full, the less dense the less you need. I know what your thinking, if it's high density why wouldn't I feel fuller? Well it's basically like eating empty calories. 

Low density foods contain a lot of water which makes them weigh a lot nut contain only s few calories, like fruits and vegetables. These can help keep calorie intake under control because you feel fuller with less calories.

High density foods are those that are HIGH in calories but weight very little I.E. Nuts, cookies fried foods and snack foods. These are good if you are trying to maintain or gain weight.

And in case you were wondering, chocolate is under the high energy density scale....sorry 😑 

Now for those of you who don't have a nutrition book handy with lists of low-high density foods there are a number of databases to find out the amounts of nutrients and calories you are consuming from your favorite foods www.calorieking.com is a great example and also shows you how you can work off the calories in the foods. And FYI here is how you figure out on your own how dense of a food it is:

Very Low Energy Density: less than 0.6kcal/g (1 kcal is equal to 1000 calories but it's confusing)

Low Energy Density: 0.6-1.5kcal/g

Medium Energy Density: 1.5-4kcal/g

High Energy Density: greater than 4kcal/g

So for example lettuce is on the VLED list because it only has around 0.1g of fat, graham crackers on the other hand are on the HED list and they contain 4.1g of fat with 138 calories and each gram of fat is equal to 9 calories so JUST including the fat calories each graham cracker you put in your mouth is 17.25 calories ( just sayin) just like if something has 15g of carbs in a serving of 3 each one has 5g of carbs. (Makes you think about what you are putting in your mouth doesn't it. If you aren't sure how to figure it out for other things you simply divide calories by grams so a bagel has 245 calories and weighs 98g, 245/98 equals a density of 2.5 which puts it in the medium density category.  So if you can figure out how much something is in grams (labels) usually tell you too you can figure out if it's something that will make you full or make you hungry again in a short amount of time.... This certainly changes things doesn't it? Well that's all for tonight! Stay tuned! Next post we will discuss portion sizes!