www.thelighterweigh.com
Many people mistakenly believe that if a meal contains lettuce, it is automatically healthy. Salads are often some of the more fattening items on the menu. I laugh when people order a caesar salad because they are "on a diet". A caesar salad is beyond fattening. And a taco salad is never a healthy choice; you know your salad is unhealthy when it contains anything fried or is topped with sour cream. Even just a plain salad with regular salad dressing can sabotage your diet. Salad dressing has lots of calories and fat. Blue cheese and caesar salad dressings are the worst- they have about 76 calories and 8 grams of fat per tablespoon. And most people use much more than 1 Tbsp when dressing their salads. Other regular salad dressings have about 55 calories and 6 grams of fat per tablespoon. Light salad dressings have about 30 calories and 1.5 grams of fat per tablespoon and fat-free salad dressings have about 20 calories per tablespoon. Regardless of the type of dressing, be careful of serving sizes!!!
A patient's family recently told me that prior to coming to see me, they had been trying to lose weight on their own. They like to go to Burger King for the convenience- so they had begun to order salads to help them lose weight. They typically ordered a crispy chicken salad- and topped it with a packet of croutons and two packets of the light italian dressing. This "diet" meal contains 710 calories and 45 grams of fat! I told them that if they had eaten a small burger and small fries, they would have SAVED themselves 190 calories and 20 grams of fat!
Be very careful when eating salad. Try to use a small amount of a fat-free or low fat dressing- or better yet, learn to enjoy salads with just a splash of balsamic vinegar!
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2 comments:
Hey I found your blog cause you commented on mine! I just spent some time reading through most of it and want to say, KUDOS to you for wanting to help children with weight problems. It took me forever as a child to figure out how to loose weight and keep it off. I did learn a few things I'm very grateful for though and have been able to pass on to my children.
I gave up counting calories and fat grams long ago. As you probably know from reading my blog that I'm an ingredient freak. I found if I eat only good ingredients (as many as fresh as possible;)and drink plenty of good water, I never have a problem. I have taught my kids the really good, good and bad ingredients and we pretty much just say away from the bad ones. And have learned to make VERY TASTY foods from the really good ones;)
It may be similar to your green, yellow, red light foods. What kind of foods are in the green light section? And can they be eaten as much as wanted?
My ingredient list can be found at
http://simplehealthytasty.blogspot.com/2008/04/ingredients-what-to-look-for-when.html
Thanks for a great blog, parents need all the help they can get!
Tam
My program is a calorie-based system. Fruits, vegetables, and fat-free cheeses are free foods that can be eaten as often as desired. I teach children about why some foods are healthier than others and I help them learn to make healthier choices. I use the color system to help keep the overweight children in a healthy calorie range so they can lose weight. I teach them that some green foods are healthier than others (although they all have the same number of calories). Thanks for your kind words. I love what you are teaching your children. We all need to spend more time teaching our children about healthy choices!
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