episode 196: nutrition labels 101
This week, we're diving into a topic that can feel confusing and stressful—reading nutrition labels. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the numbers or used them to reinforce restrictive eating habits, this episode is for you.
We're stripping away the emotional baggage and getting down to the basics: how to use labels as a tool for understanding what's in your food, without judgment.
I break down why labels matter, especially when it comes to things like portion size, protein, and calories.
But more importantly, I explain how to look at this info from an objective place, focusing on what your body needs rather than what you think you should restrict.
Whether you're trying to make sure you're getting enough protein or simply want to understand how foods affect your energy and fullness, this episode is full of practical tips.
How to read nutrition labels without falling into the trap of labeling foods as “good” or “bad.”
The importance of portion awareness and why it matters for protein, calories, and fiber.
What calorie-dense actually means and how to use these foods in a way that feels good for your body.
The difference between an “efficient protein source” and a food that just has a little protein.
Why weighing certain foods, like peanut butter or pasta, can be a game changer.
How to shift your mindset from restriction to abundance using objective information.
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196
[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening. This is episode 196. If you listened last week, I said 195. I realized it when I was editing, but I'm not really going to go back and change those things. It's just not worth it. Um, my editing skills are minimal. I know enough to use GarageBand, put on my intro, my outro.
I know how to take out certain things, and I've got some other tools that do it, but I minimally edit these things. What I record is pretty much what you get, um, because that's just real life. So let's see. This is getting published on Monday, September 23rd, which means that if you have been on the interest list for one to one coaching, you have an email from me in your inbox this morning with all the info to schedule a consult.
If you want to schedule a consult. And that will also, if you do end up deciding to move forward with coaching, if it's a good fit on both sides, um, you also then get a 50 [00:01:00] discount, um, each month. So yeah, I'm not going to talk too much about that today because the early interest list is done. You're either on it or you're not.
And if there are still spots available, Um, after those consults are booked, then I will open it up to everyone else. Um, okay. So here's what I wanted to talk about today. This is kind of a follow up from an episode a few weeks ago where I talked about, um, was it the, I think it was the sugar episode. And I mentioned something about like reading labels and I was like, Oh, I could do an episode on that.
So I wrote down some notes and finally here it is. So this is going to be like a really. Um, I think I'm going to call it like a functional, tactical, practical sort of episode. All about how to read labels on nutrition labels on food, why it matters, what to pay attention to, what not to pay attention to, what to do with it, how to make it relevant to you.[00:02:00]
So, um, Here's the thing. If you're listening to this podcast, it means you probably have some type of a history likely of some type of disordered eating, which means that looking at nutrition labels is just kind of like a loaded thing, right? Because it's either looking to see how many calories are in something, how much sugar, how many carbs, and then labeling that food as good or bad.
So a lot of baggage attached to these things. I don't mean baggage in a negative way because I get that. I feel that and I've been there. And so I want to acknowledge that. and also acknowledge that there's also clinical scientific information about food, which is relevant and helpful and that we do need to know as human beings who eat.
And so part of the work of, um, shifting and improving your relationship with food is learning how to look at certain things around food with a more objective point of view. It doesn't mean you get rid of the emotions, but you can get rid of the emotions. It's about learning how to have kind of the skills and the tools to see where you are.
are really emotionally [00:03:00] charged and where you do have a lot of stories and how can we respond to that with kind of more factual, objective information. And learning and knowing how to read labels is very much one way to do that. So one of the biggest reasons why looking at labels can be helpful and important is for portion awareness, is to understand what is in a given portion of food, especially when it comes to things like protein.
Right? And if you are someone who's working to get more protein into your daily diet, and again by diet I just mean way of eating, understanding how much protein is in a chicken thigh, or a yogurt, or um, a serving of cereal, right? Anything. It runs kind of the, the gamut of food. is important, um, so that you can start to build up an understanding of what's in the food that you are eating.
And this applies also to like fiber, to fat, so you can make sure that you are getting the nutrition that you need. When you start to think about it in, in [00:04:00] that way, in terms of focusing on getting what I need, not on Avoiding things or restricting how much I can have it really starts to kind of flip the whole thing on its head and you start To come at it from an abundance mindset rather than a restriction mindset, right?
I'm learning how to re label so I can make sure I'm getting all the food and nutrition that I need to feel good So I'm not hungry between meals that I'm not having cravings, so I'm not irritable Not, Oh, I'm only allowed to have X amount of this because it has 500 calories in a serving or something like that.
Right? This is about getting info, getting objective, and learning how to identify foods in terms of what their jobs are and how they make you feel, not as good or bad based on the amount of calories or carbs that they have. There's obviously a ton of information on Nutrition Label, and what I'm going to focus on today is going to be protein, it's going to be fiber, um, it's going to be calories to have an understanding of that, and probably, [00:05:00] and, and maybe around like, like added sugars a little bit.
Um, and also the portion size, the serving size. I talked about this on Instagram a couple of weeks ago about granola, right? So let's just go from the top down on the label, right? Because the top thing you're getting, you get the serving size, they're going to give it to you. usually by weight in grams, but then they'll also sometimes say like a cup or a third of a cup or two cups.
And I will tell you right off the bat that the measurement, if it's a cup, and the weight that they give you are going to be very different. So if you were to scoop out a cup of, let's say, dry pasta, And I happen to know that a serving of dry pasta is two ounces. It's going to probably weigh a lot more than two ounces.
So usually the weight is a much more accurate way to estimate the portion size. So if you're someone who has no idea what four ounces of chicken looks like, or what two ounces of pasta looks like, that is a very helpful skill to have in life so that you can understand what you are putting into your body and how it makes you feel.
Weighing out [00:06:00] things for a short portion of time has a lot of value in it, just to educate yourself. It's like if you didn't know how much a, how much like five dollars was worth or what it could get you, you'd have to understand that. You wouldn't just go into a store and expect five dollars to buy you, you know, a new car.
You have to understand like, What is the intrinsic value and impact of the food that you're eating? And in order to do that, you have to know, like, what's in it and how much of what's in it in, like, a certain portion size. And again, I understand this is hard for people, and I include myself in this group, coming from a background of pretty severe or even any form of disordered eating.
Because our relationships with those things are so emotional and so charged and so guilt and shame ridden. And again, this is the work of learning how to respond to those thoughts with more objective, factual, um, information. So looking and getting a sense of, well, what is the portion size of this? And then thinking like, well, do I know what that even looks like?
If I don't, [00:07:00] great, I'm going to measure it a couple of times so I can see. And if I do, cool, then I know. And then as you look at the serving size of it, how much it is, and you look at the calories, you start to get a sense of like, what role this food plays for you, right? If it's a really small serving size with a lot of calories, that means it's a very calorie dense food.
It means there's a lot of calories packed into a very small amount of food. Chips, cookies, snack foods, I would even say like protein bars, granola bars, certainly desserts. But also things like peanut butter, avocados, nuts. These are all very calorie dense foods. Small amount of food with a lot of calories in them does not make a food good or bad.
This is very important. It just means factually, it's calorie dense. Just like a brick is more dense. Like, than a feather. I don't even know if that's an accurate example, but like, a pound of bricks and a pound of feathers, they both weigh a pound, but you need a lot more feathers than bricks to get to a pound, because the brick is more dense.
A brick isn't better or worse [00:08:00] than a feather, it's just different. It's made up differently. So, understanding looking at that, something like, let's say, watermelon, right? A serving of watermelon might be like, two cups, and it's like, you know, 100 calories, that's not very calorie dense, right? You can eat a lot of food for not a lot of calories.
You know, pretty much all vegetables, non starchy vegetables and fruits will fall into that category. Um, lean proteins will fall more into that category. Um, And again, it doesn't make those foods good. It just means that you use them in a different way. You might use them to really fill up your stomach and eat for volume and to get a lot of nutrition, whereas we're going to rely on the more calorie dense foods to do different jobs, sometimes just for pleasure when it comes to the foods that have no nutrition.
And the calorie dense foods that do have nutrition Again, off the top of my head, nut butters, nuts, avocado. We're just, we're going to use them. We're going to be aware of how much of the portion we are using. And when it comes down to this, when I talk about [00:09:00] calories, calories are a unit of energy. That is all that they are.
They are not good. They are not bad. More calories is not bad. Less calories is not good. Calories are a unit of energy. And human bodies evolved over time and need to eat calories in order to survive. When you eat more calories than your body needs to kind of function and live for the day, you will gain weight.
When you eat around the same amount of calories that your body needs to live and function each day, you will maintain your weight. When you eat less calories than your body needs to live and function on a given day, you will lose weight. You will lose weight. That is how weight loss happens. That is laws of thermodynamics, right?
Because a Calories unit of energy energy is not created or just or created or destroyed. It simply changes form So when we look at foods that are calorie dense They're not fattening. They're not bad for [00:10:00] you. They're not junk food They just have more calories packed into a smaller amount of food and sometimes that makes them less filling And because they are less filling, then we start to eat more of them, and then we inherently intake more calories than we really need or want to because there's so many calories packed into a small amount of food.
And so when that happens, right, like it's understanding that it's important to know around how much food your body needs each day. So that you can feed yourself and take care of yourself appropriately, right? Just like you need to know how much money is in your bank account so that you can either save or spend accordingly, it's the same thing.
We just have all of these moral and emotional connections to this stuff. And it's hard to separate ourselves from that. And that's what I'm trying to do with this episode, um, is start to help you give a more, less emotional, more [00:11:00] factual, more objective way to think about What you're eating, why you're eating, how much you're eating by getting the factual information of what is in that food and learning how to think about it as such rather than good or bad.
So, right, starting to move down the label, right? Now we know what is the serving size, how many calories are in that serving size. So I start to know what kind of a role that it plays in my overall diet. And again, by diet, I simply mean way of eating. Um, you know, then next on the nutrition label at the top is grams of fat.
Fat is at the top, carbs are kind of in the middle, and protein is at the bottom. And there's other stuff in between, right? So, actually, I'm going to jump to protein. because that's really like the focus of so much of what I talk about and the thing that people struggle the most with. So when you are looking for protein rich foods, or I'm really the better term that I use is an efficient source of protein, right?
And you are working towards [00:12:00] getting an efficient source of protein to be the center point of as many meals as possible. When you look at the amount, the grams of protein on that label, it's going to give you the grams per serving, right? You want that to be at a minimum 15 to 20 grams in one serving and in some cases you might double the serving right certainly of like animal protein.
I eat, a lot of people eat more than the serving size, which is typically measured at three to four ounces. You're typically going, most people will eat more than that. Right? When you have eggs, it shows, it shows the nutrition for one egg. Most people eat more than one egg, right? So you're going to obviously multiply it accordingly.
But when you are looking at food and considering it as your efficient protein source, you're It needs to have at a minimum 15 to 20 grams of protein shown on that label for that single serving. Okay, that's the first criteria. The second criteria is that it has 10 or less grams of carbs for that same serving.
Because [00:13:00] if it has more carbs, like let me give you an example, I'm going to use lentils for an example. A serving of lentils has off the top of my head, I think about 10 grams of protein, which is right off the bat already less than what I'm telling you it needs to have, but I'm still going to talk about this.
Because you might think, oh, 10 grams of protein is a lot of protein. A lot is relative. But when you look at how many carbs that 10 grams of protein comes along with, it's like 35. So in order to get 10 grams of protein, you have to eat 35 grams of carbs. That is not an efficient way to get protein. Is it a way to get protein?
Yes. Are lentils wonderful, delicious, nutritious, and packed with lots of good stuff? A thousand percent yes. Are they an efficient way to get protein? No. They're not. So, this is why reading labels is important. So your efficient sources of protein, I'm going to say it again for I think the fourth time, 15 to 20 grams labeled there, 10 grams or less of carbs, simply because you want this to be your efficient source of protein.
It's not because carbs are bad. When you're picking your carb for that meal, great. Carbs could be 30 [00:14:00] 40 grams a serving and only a few grams of protein, right? It switches. I'm talking specifically about foods that you are using for protein, not all foods in general, right? The cookies that you buy don't need 20 grams of protein.
I just want to make sure I'm being very clear about this. And then when we look at fat, That's going to be kind of, we want that to be somewhere like, I would say like the five to ten to gram range, five to ten gram range. Again, for your efficient protein sources. For your fat sources, avocado, cheese, nuts, nut butters, butter, oil, mayo, cream cheese, your fat grams could be ten plus.
And the protein could be low, the carbs could be low. Those are also typically going to be very calorie dense foods. Foods that are made up of fat and are fats are calorie dense because there are more calories per gram of fat than there are calories per gram of carbs and protein. There are four calories in one gram [00:15:00] of protein or one gram of carb, and there are nine calories in one gram of fat.
You don't need to know that, it doesn't matter, I'm just mentioning it. Fat, by definition, is more calorie dense, meaning it gives has more energy to it. One gram of fat has more energy in it than one gram of protein. So we want to use it and know that accordingly. So when we're looking at foods, let's, so let's get off the efficient protein thing, right?
I think that I've like gotten my point across there. When we're looking at like snack foods, right? Sweets, foods that are pretty much only for enjoyment and pleasure. You don't need to kill yourself looking at the nutrition label. You don't need to look for protein, right? There's all these like health ified snack foods out there like high protein tortilla chips and right the protein ice creams and all this stuff like that's another episode for another day, which I think I've actually done.
Um, But it is important, right? Because those [00:16:00] foods, um, cookies, cakes, ice cream, all this stuff, are easy to overeat. And they are easy to overeat because they taste delicious, because they are a combination of sugar and fat with different textures and flavors and whatnot. And they just light up the dopamine centers in your brain.
And they are easy to overeat. They are not filling, and you can just keep eating them. And they are very calorie dense. So let's take Oreos, for example. I don't have it in front of me so I don't know, but I'm going to guess that on the side of the package, it's going to say, you know what, I'm just going to look it up in a calorie app really quick.
Hold, please, while I do this. Um, of course, I can't find one. Do I even have one on my phone? I thought that I did. Where is it? Um, wow, this is getting, oh, there it is. Okay, I missed it. Here we go. So, oh gosh, I have to log in. Alright. Oreos. Oreos. [00:17:00] Sorry. Bear with me. Please. I will not edit this out. Okay. So. Okay.
So I just looked this up in a calorie tracking app. On the, on a side of the package of Oreos, it's either going to say two cookies or three cookies as a serving. But this app is telling me that one Oreo cookie has 53. 5 calories in it. 8 carbs, 2. 3 grams of fat, half a gram of protein. Okay, so on the side of the package, I have a feeling it's going to tell you that three cookies is a serving, which is going to be close to 160 calories.
Okay. Why is it important for you to know that? It's important for you to know that so that you can be taking care of your body in a way that works for you. If you think that 10 Oreos is a serving, and that you can eat 10 Oreos for 160 calories, There's gonna be implications for that, right? Will you gain weight over time?
Yes. Is gaining weight bad? No, gaining weight is not inherently bad. But if you are eating in a way because you are not educated or don't understand what's in your food and you don't know how to feed your body [00:18:00] and give it the energy that it needs in a way that lines up with its requirements, That can become a problem over time.
If you know that Ten, that three Oreos is a serving and ten Oreos is bigger than a serving you're like I really want to have ten Oreos I really want this right now. Okay, fine, right? Like this is not saying any of these things are good or bad This is about having a knowledge and an understanding so that you can make choices, right?
Three Oreos I mean you can eat three Oreos and like a minute. It's like nothing. It's not filling. It's, you can pop them down, they are gone. And boom, right? There's like 160 calories, fine. But just having an understanding of that, and then knowing how to use it as such, right? And knowing that like, there's obviously like very little protein in that, fine, we don't need to have protein in it.
The only purpose of that Oreo is to taste good. But understanding what's in it is important, right? Like, and this is not. I think, I think [00:19:00] there's like a, a, a potential for this to come off as like, and you guys know me, so I don't even feel like I need to caveat this, you know, I'm not even going to do that because if, even if this is your first time listening, someone, you found this podcast somewhere and you know a little bit of what I'm about and I have dessert and cookies literally every day of my life.
And also, it's important to understand. what's going into your body and how you are taking care of yourself, right? Just like, and I know the bank account is kind of like a cliched example, but it's relevant and it makes sense. We wouldn't put money in or take money out of our bank account kind of frivolously without thinking about it, without thinking about the bigger picture.
It's the same thing, right? Do you want to have Oreos every day? Great. Eat Oreos every day. I have some type of dessert or sweet at least once a day. This isn't about that. This is about understanding what's in it and understanding what a portion size is. And that, and in order to do that, you need to read a label and understand [00:20:00] what it means.
Um, right, it's easy to see three Oreos, 160 calories. It gets a little trickier when things are by weight, right? Like two ounces of pasta blows people's brains. A tablespoon of peanut butter. Which is actually 16 grams. If you weigh out 16 grams of peanut butter, which if you've never done this before, I highly encourage you to do this.
I also highly encourage you to weigh out two ounces of dry pasta. Your mind will be blown about how much it is. Far less than you think it is. Two ounces of pasta, I don't know who that fills up. It's not a meal for anybody. This is why I personally don't eat pasta a lot because I eat so much to feel full and then it ends up A, being more food than my body needs, then my stomach wants to feel and I just feel gross and full and it just doesn't feel good for me.
Pasta for me is a side dish, not a main course. Also because it's not an efficient protein. I digress. Um, but I highly encourage you to weigh out 16 grams of peanut butter. is not a lot of peanut butter. I [00:21:00] guarantee you if you're eating like an apple and peanut butter as a snack, you're eating way more than a tablespoon, which isn't good or bad, but you need to know that, right?
If you are someone who wants to lose weight, is thinking about losing weight, has struggled with weight, this stuff matters. And it becomes a skill that gets incorporated into everything we do because as you start to prioritize efficient proteins and veggies at your meals, you naturally regulate your overall calorie intake.
So this isn't something you have to do constantly all of the time. This is a skill that you start to get an awareness of, of the foods that you tend to eat a majority of the time, and then it starts to be kind of, it kind of becomes like ingrained, right? Just like you know, like how much 5 will get you at the drugstore or at the grocery store, you start to understand like, Well, I know how I'm going to feel after I eat, like, you know, four or five ounces of chicken and I know what's in that.
And again, like, this isn't to say at all that you need to be calculating the stuff in your head. You don't. But if you have [00:22:00] no sense of what's in anything you're eating, we do have to get some information. Um, If only to start to realize when I eat a bunch of protein at a meal, I feel like this. When I don't eat a bunch of protein at a meal and I eat like a much more carb based meal, I feel like that.
And to start to be able to connect some dots. Um, but if you don't know what's in anything you're eating, you can't really connect those dots. And then we continue to reinforce these inaccurate old stories around good and bad and feeling guilty and having no control and all of this stuff. So,
I think that's kind of, it's got longer than I expected it to. I think that's kind of really what I wanted to talk about, right? So to kind of summarize, reading labels as a way to get factual, objective information around food so that you can start to have a way to think about food other than good or bad or [00:23:00] right or wrong, clean or dirty, right?
And think about how those foods make me feel, how calorie dense are those foods. What are the jobs of foods? Is the job of this food to just taste good, or is the job of this food to help fill me up? Can that, can one food do both, right? These are things that we have to explore and learn about, and understanding what is in food is an important piece of data to help us do that.
Remembering that calories are units of energy. They give our body energy. Human bodies cannot exist without energy and energy input, which comes in the form of food. Food. Our bodies, everyone's body has a different amount of energy requirements on a daily basis. Understanding what's in your food helps you meet that need in a way that feels good, in a way that ensures you are getting enough of the nutrition you [00:24:00] need, of the enjoyment you need, of the fullness that you need, so that you are not constantly obsessively thinking about food all the time.
Right? All this intersects and overlaps, um, and I think that's like, that's really it. I think that kind of captures everything. I'm sure I just missed something in my summary. So I hope this was helpful. If you've got questions, always reach out, um, and I'll see you soon next week.