How to Easily & Accurately Figure Out the Calories in Your Foods

How to Easily & Accurately Figure Out the Calories in Your Foods

Transcript:
Firstly, why should you know the calorie numbers in what you're eating?

The answer is simple. Losing weight will always be about one thing: eating fewer than your daily requirements. In other words the total of everything you eat in a day should be less than your daily calorie requirements. (By the way if you don't know your daily calorie requirements, please go to zacking.com and we'll figure these out for you.)
But then the question is: How can we estimate the number of calories in our foods in such a way that it doesn't become too difficult or complicated.

'Cause let's face it, researching the calorie number in everything we eat can get very old, very quickly. And there's the problem of simply not finding the calorie number in a food we've just eaten.

To help us simplify this process for you we're going to use the free food section at Zacking.com.

What we've done at Zacking! Foods, is come up with the average values for foods. Instead of listing thousands upon thousands of calorie values (which anyone can do, they're pretty easily available), we list only about a 100 -- 110. And it really took substantial research and lots of practical knowledge to narrow it down to a 100.

This is what we want to achieve with our Zacking! Foods list: Instead of figuring out the nutritional information down to the smallest detail, we want you to be able to look at any food and come up with a very good estimate of how much you've just eaten.

Not exact value but a very good estimate.

This works better in the long term because simplifying the process means better chance of keeping track and because you'll understand how much you've eaten, you'll actually end up being much more accurate in your assessment.

Let's look at a few examples to illustrate this further:

Check out our number for calories in donuts, one plain or chocolate covered is 225, one crème filled is 325.

Now this rule cuts across brands (even the hard to find ones) or fast foods. Whenever you choose to eat a donut, the final number will be very close to what we've give here.

But it does more than that.

Imagine you're at a really expensive restaurant and you order this internationally acclaimed and obviously really expensive pastry. And you wonder... how many calories is this exotic delight?

To answer this question, ask yourself this: Is what I am eating look and taste like a jelly donut? Is it about the same size and is it probably or at least seemingly made of similar things. If so put down 325 when you get home.

If not, maybe it's more like a... fudge square.

You see what we're getting at?

Check out the closest food values at Zacking! and give it your best estimate.

Let's do a couple of more examples...
...Starting with our 1 spoon of food rules... and we can assure you that this a Zacking! exclusive.

Each serving spoon of food is either 75 calories or 125 calories. As long as the food item can fit into a spoon, it's either 75 or 125.

125 for food that is fried or cooked in lots of butter/cream, 75 for food that uses little butter/cream or less oil.

So what kind of foods fit in a spoon? Well, mashed potatoes are one, lasagna is another. If you see that the Mashed potatoes you're eating have a lot of cream/butter in it, it's 125/Spoon. If not we're looking at 75 calories a spoon.

If it fits in a spoon than these are the numbers for it.
Examples of foods that don't fit in a spoon are a Turkey leg or a steak.

For these we have our deck of cards rules. For example beef the size of a deck of cards will be 250 calories. So next time you have a steak, ask yourself this: In terms of size, how many deck of cards is this steak?

If it's roughly equal in size to 3 deck of cards (a 9 oz. steak), the number is 750 calories.

To check out all of Zacking! Foods please go to Zacking.com and click "Foods". You have to be a member to see 'em but our membership and the entire website is completely free.

This is Victor Locke for Zacking.com. Thank you very much for watching and we hope this helped simplify weight management for you.

1. By: zackingtv
2. Categories How To
3. Views 787
4. Added :30-Mar-08
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5. Related Link: Zacking! - Weight Management Simplified