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ADDITION
Obviously, if you want to lose weight then you have to have fewer calories in that you would normally and if you focus on whole real food then this is quite easy and you usually don’t need to “count” (more on that in a later video!). Hence aim for 1200-1500 calories a day, in general, to lose weight.
Transcript
ADDITION:
Obviously, if you want to lose weight then you have to have fewer calories in that you would normally and if you focus on whole real food then this is quite easy and you usually don’t need to “count” (more on that in a later video!). Hence aim for 1200-1500 calories a day, in general, to lose weight.
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You will notice that a lot of food comes in packaging of some sort, and on that packaging will be a table that looks like in the video (or just google one).
Here you will see a few things.
Often at the top is calories or kilojoules, which represents how much energy is in the food as a explained before. As a general rule 4 kilojoules equals roughly 1 calorie, so you can convert them easily. The recommended daily intake of energy depends on the person and their basal metabolic rate but is often around 1800-2500 calories a day or 8000kjs a day. Obviously, if you want to lose weight then you have to have less than this which I explained before (aim for 1200-1500 calories a day in general to lose weight).
Then you will see fat, protein, carbohydrates. As I explained before there are good fats like polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats as a general rule and bad fats like trans fats, and questionable fats like saturated fats.
For carbs, there are good carbs and generally poor carbs. The simpler the carbohydrate the closer it is to pure sugar. A nutrition table will generally list total carbohydrates and total sugar, and the difference between the two will be more complex health carbohydrates. For example, if there are 10 grams of carbohydrates and 3 grams of sugar, then there are 7 grams of more complex carbohydrates. Now you may not be able to avoid sugar, but you want to keep it to a minimum, but the complex carbohydrates are fine.
Underneath this, you will see some mineral and vitamins if there are any. This might be naturally occurring in the food, or added to the food after processing. And you will know this if you read the ingredients which we will go through in the next video.
Some of the key minerals to be aware of are sodium. Sodium is a type of salt, which when combined with chloride is sodium chloride, otherwise called table salt. There is some debate over this, but generally, it is recommended to keep your salt intake in moderation to avoid having too much as it can cause various health problems.
The other key thing to note on nutrition tables is you will see two columns. One will give you the amount per serving, and the other per 100 grams. Now different foods have different serving sizes or amounts, so this is a tricky way food can appear lower calorie than they really are. I prefer to look at the other column which is per 100 grams because then you can accurately compare 2 different foods.
It is helpful to look at these nutrition tables for everything you eat that is packaged, because the more you look at them the quicker you will get, and the faster you can assess if a good is healthier or not. You will notice that really healthy foods, like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, spices do not have nutrition tables, and to me that is the biggest indicator you should be eating it, it is not packaged or processed, it is just whole real food, full of loads of protein, healthy fats and carbohydrates, and packed with vitamins and minerals. Often I say to my patients, if it comes with a nutrition table, it probably isn’t nutritious. But sometimes we can avoid packaged food, so hopefully, now you understand what they mean.