Let's talk about food!

Before I got involved in HitchFit I would eat whatever sounded good. I had very limited knowledge of what made food good or clean. If it tasted good, I ate it. Once I learned about the content of food and how it worked in my body I could never really eat the same again. Of course I would still eat certain foods, but the voice in my head would say "this is full of natural fats" or whatever.

This is how I now eat my foods. I actually read the labels and I weigh out portion sizes. Not that difficult. I don't even count calories! Plus, once you start weighing your food, you will be shocked at how big or little a portion size is! 6oz of chicken might be 2 large breasts!

The content of food I look at is Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fat. When I look at a food label I see which category has the highest number. Instead of trying to calculate all three categories for one food I just focus on the highest number.

Luckily for me, my trainer has my diet all calculated for me. At each meal I know how much protein or carbs I need. Then, I can just look at my approved foods list and mix and match what I want to eat. It's simple! He also gave me a sample menu for each meal, so I can just eat that if I don't want to do any measuring.

Let me give you an example of how important reading labels is.

Take Aldi's Fit & Active Low Fat Granola with Raisins. Now, I love granola. I would eat it every day. Let's take a look at the Nutrition Facts.

Serving size is only 2/3 of a cup, so it's not very big.
Fat - 3g
Carbs - 44g
Protein - 5g

So, I consider this a carb. There are good carbs and bad carbs, incomplete and complete, but we won't get into that now. Other than to say granola can be considered good carbs but we need to look further.

44g of carbs in 2/3 of a cup is pretty high.  My diet only allows for 20 grams of carbs per meal. Let's look further. Sugars are 16 grams!!!! That is very very high. Dr. Oz says that when you read labels the sugars should be 9 grams per serving or less. This is almost twice that.

The other tip Dr. Oz gives is read the first five ingredients. I wish I had saved the box of this cereal to get a pic of the ingredients, but the second ingredient was sugar and the fourth was corn syrup. Dr. Oz recommends to throw it in the garbage.

Sorry Fit & Active Low Fat Granola with Raisins, but you FAIL! This is not a healthy cereal and I wouldn't recommend eating it at all. That is the trouble with Low Fat, fat is reduced but sugar is increased. Read your labels!!

**My back is better today. Going to see the chiro in an hour and plan to hit the gym slowly tomorrow.**