Decoding Nutrition Labels

Most people just take a quick peek at their nutrition label to check the one value their diet book tells them to check. Whether it be Fat, Calories or Carbohydrates, there are a few other things on these labels that you can really benefit from paying attention to!

The most important of these is the serving size. It seems that Americans today just load up there plate, stuff there face and be on there way. Sure the package said only 70 calories, but that was for 7 chips. If you just ate half the bag, you just got way more calories. A great weight loss tip, is to pay attention to these serving sizes and try to stick to just one serving. (Especially on snack foods and other empty calories)

If you have trouble telling how much 3 oz of beef, or 105 grams of cookies are, a helpful hint is to look at the number of servings in the package. If there are 5 servings in a package, obviously 1 serving is 1/5 of the package.

Another very important thing on your food label is the amount of calories. Especially if you are trying to lose weight. Weight loss is very simple! You burn more calories than you eat, you lose weight. To quote the great Will Ferrel, It's science....

To explain further, calories are a form of energy. Our bodies take food and break it down, and use the energy to complete day to day tasks. Surprisingly our body burns most of our calories on daily maintenance like breathing and digestion. I am a 200 lb male, and my body burns a little over 2000 calories just living, and another 1000 by the little amount of moving and walking I do moving from bed to work to the kitchen etc. That's 3000 calories!!!! This is a huge number compared to the 260 calories I burn running (6 mph) for 20 minutes.

Any extra calories that we eat and our body doesn't burn gets stored as fat, so our body doesn't fail on days where we don't eat enough calories to do these necessary things. Pretty genius, except that our bodies don't understand that we are no longer in danger of starving, so we don't need a large fat build up. But our body builds it up regardless, and in extremes to a dangerous degree.

Back to the post topic, Nutrition labels. Look at the ingredients. Is there High Fructose Corn Syrup (probably), Added Sugar (Probably), Food Coloring, Things you Can't pronounce? As I am on the Paleo Diet, I have chosen not to eat things with these ingredients in them. I personally believe that they are responsible for not just obesity, but possibly also Cancer and other serious health problems.

Bottom line. It's cliche but true. You are what you eat. Know what you are putting into your body. Cheating every once in a while isn't a big deal, but don't go on a diet, change your eating habits for good. It's worth it in the long run!!!