Beware of the “Halo Effect” – when a food has “perceived healthfulness”, but in reality, is a calorie bomb.
Such as:
Salads loaded with dressings and croutons
Anything with avocados
Nuts and nut butters
Trail mix
Etc etc etc
— Jason Helmes (@anymanfitness) June 17, 2019
Yeah. I see Fat Acceptance types say things like, “I only eat a handful of nuts a few times a day as a snack, and my regular meals.”
An adult-size handful of nuts, depending on the nut and the hand, is 200-500 calories! So, eating a few handfuls a day means that you’ve met your daily calorie limit already without any other meal. Nuts are highly caloric, as are “salads” loaded with bacon, dressing, hard-boiled eggs, etc. A lot of people eat supposed healthy food to complete excess and then claim they have no idea why they can’t lose weight, and claim to only be eating a few hundred calories a day because they have no idea the energy density of the food they eat.
Sometimes, I eat a few ounces of nuts and a piece of cheese or two for lunch. I’ve had people comment incredulously, “That’s all you’re eating?”
Indeed, that’s all I am eating, because that’s 600 damn calories right there. That’s enough for anyone’s lunch.
Absurd portion sizes and lack of knowledge (and lack of wanting to possess knowledge) of energy density in foods dooms many people to eating 3,000 calories a day when they think they are eating 1,000.