An extra drop of wine , a can of coca cola at the restaurant, a sugary coffee in the middle of the afternoon, some oil added to dishes without dosing it. All these seemingly harmless gestures are clear examples of useless calories, the intake of which opens the door to overweight for many.
| USELESS CALORIES | ||
| 10 g of olive oil | 90 calories | if you don’t dose the olive oil with a teaspoon, it’s easy to overdo it without realizing it |
| 10 g of grated cheese | 40 calories | cheeses are high – calorie foods. Excluding lean ones such as cottage cheese or ricotta cheese, generally their caloric content is between 300 and 500 kcal per hg |
| 2 sugary coffees | 62 calories | in the example we have considered the addition of an 8 gram sachet of sugar for coffee by replacing it with a similar quantity of brown sugar, only 2 Kcal would be saved |
| 10 grams of extra pasta | 35 calories | all in all a modest quantity that is easy to achieve if you don’t weigh the pasta before cooking it; unfortunately pasta is quite caloric but not very satiating if it is not combined with a little fat and protein |
| 1 sugary drink | 130 calories | sugary drinks are not as harmless as they seem, the addition of carbohydrates with a high glycemic index makes them particularly caloric and not very satiating |
| 100cl of wine 12% Vol. | 66 calories | even alcohol contains a certain amount of calories; the greater the concentration of the alcoholic beverage, the greater the calories; precisely 5.6 Kcal per degree of alcohol (Vol %) |
| Whole milk instead of p. skimmed (400 ml) | 72 calories | an example of how many calories are “hidden” in the food that contains them. The taste is similar between the two types of milk but the calories are higher in whole milk because it is richer in fat. The same goes for natural yoghurt (50 kcal per 100 grams) and fruit yogurt (80-120 kcal per 100 grams) in which the excess of sugar dramatically increases the caloric intake. |
| A couple of candies | 10 calories | this food provides approximately 4-8 calories per piece (excluding low-calorie candies which have almost zero calories) |
| A chocolate (10 g) | 55 calories | an extra chocolate a day compared to the caloric requirement, would make us gain about 2.5 kg per year |
| TOTAL | 560 kcal | x 365 days = 207320 Kcal / 7800 = 26.5 kg of fat gained per year |
| YOU READ WELL! If we took in 560 calories more than we need every day, we would risk gaining over 25 kg per year | ||
Observing this table, even the most skeptical should realize how dangerous it is to pay little attention to what you eat. Normal daily gestures, which are often not given the right weight , can become the main culprits of our obesity .
If to all this we add occasional binges and meals cooked outside the home (for example canteen and restaurant ), in which the dishes are often prepared by adding excessive quantities of condiments, the caloric surplus risks becoming very substantial.
This explains why some people cannot understand their overweight.
“I eat so little and I’m fat… I’m probably unlucky because I’m genetically predisposed to gain weight ,” is the obvious conclusion for many.
It’s actually just bad eating habits.
Unfortunately a sedentary person consumes few calories during the day and it is really easy for him to take more than necessary. It must however be considered that without major sacrifices in terms of taste and palatability of foods , it is possible to limit the damage by eliminating the so-called “useless calories”, often hidden behind bad eating habits.
No one expects the scale to be used to weigh each individual food, but the more a person is sedentary, the more the calorie constraint is important and at the same time difficult to respect. Different speech for a sportsman who can indulge in some extra “dietary luxuries”, thanks to an above average metabolism and caloric expenditure .
