If you’re like me, you’ve probably came across a nutrition label at some point in your life. If you haven’t, you’re probably living under a rock. By the way, there is nothing wrong with that. To each their own. Am I right?
For the vast majority of us, nutrition labels can be overwhelming, too wordy, too numbery, just too much. You’re trying to lose weight; you’re trying to figure out what exercises work for your schedule and now you have to deal with this nutrition label nonsense.
Quite frankly, I ain’t mad at you. Not one bit.
It can be overwhelming and time consuming, but nevertheless, its important. Knowing how to read your nutrition label can be the difference between you losing weight vs not. I can’t emphasize that enough. Should I increase the font size to 36 to drive my point across?
The purpose behind nutrition labels is to give us an idea of how much calories we will be consuming from that particular food or beverage. If you remember from my previous article, Beginners Guide For Weight Loss, where it highlights what calories are and its importance to losing weight. If you haven’t read the article; first off, I am highly disappointed and secondly you need to immediately open a new tab and dive into it. Like right now.
If you decided you are better off just staying on this article, disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe my true feelings. Nevertheless, you left me no choice:
A. Calories are a unit of energy
B. Almost everything we consume (beverages, foods, etc.) contains some form of calorie
C. If more calories are coming in our body, we gain weight/if less then we lose weight
You can imagine why just eating mindlessly without knowing how much calories are deriving from your food choice (ie. nutrition labels) can cause the scale to creep up several lbs. in several weeks or months. Before you lecture me on how you’re going to run ____ number of miles and be in the gym for ____ amount of time to burn off the calories you just consumed.
Save us both the time and DON’T
Your pointless mile runs and two-hour gym time wouldn’t even come close. With life obligations, responsibilities, kids, work and others, you’ll find it a lot more difficult than you realize. We have a tendency to over-estimate how much calories we burn and under-estimate how much we consume.
4 Easy Steps to Read a Nutrition Label
Step 1: Serving Size
The moment you stare down at that label, I want you to immediately identify what the serving size of that product is. Here is an example for us.
Step 2: Amount Per Serving Calories
This is telling us the number of calories in 3 cookies.
If you look at the serving size: 3 cookies
3 cookies = 170 calories
Step 3: Serving Per Container
This lets us know the total number of servings in this entire bag of Oreos. This is where people usually go wrong. This is where you often hear the:
“I don’t eat a lot”
“I only eat ___ amount”
“I only ate twice today”
If you can scroll up for a sec, you will see that there are 3 cookies per serving. 3 of those cookies equals 170 calories. Now look at the servings per container from the picture below.
There are 16 total servings in this entire bag of Oreos. What does that mean?
3 cookies per serving = 170 cal
170 cal x 16 total servings = 2,720 calories
This means, more than not, we aren’t just going for the 3 cookies. We start nibbling on 4,5,6, 7 more cookies because their freakin delicious.
As a result, we over eat our recommended caloric deficit range. You can begin to see why the scale doesn’t budge.
Step 4: Proteins/Carbohydrate/Total Fat
These are the three macronutrients to focus on your nutrition label when trying to lose weight. Remember to keep this as simple and basic as possible. I am well aware of added sugar, sodium intake, calcium, vitamins, etc. Keep it simple.
Your goal is to lose weight and to make that happen you will need to eat less calories overtime and know how much protein, carb and fat you’re eating. These three macronutrients make up the majority of total caloric intake.
Remember, my goal of this article is to not overwhelm you. Keep that in mind.
Conclusion
Nutrition labels can be a bit much, but it doesn’t have to be. Having the skill-sets in knowing how to read nutrition labels can be beneficial for several reasons:
- You’re more food conscious
- You now have an idea on how much calories are coming in
- You can start making better food choices
- You can start to understand why your weight is stalling/going up
I am not asking you to do this forever, but I need you to start. It’s one of the main driving force of individuals not being able to lose weight.
Not being able to read your nutrition label
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Not knowing how much calories you’re eating
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Not being able to lose weight