This Dietician Highlights How Hidden Calories Can Wreck Your Diet Without You Noticing That

A ‘diet’ remains to be one of the most misinterpreted word in the health and fitness space is. Although it is often associated with a specific-type of plan, like a weight loss plan, it should ideally be used to indicate the type and the amount of food we feed.?

Fortunately, Instagram influencers, such as Amanda Meixner, decipher fact from with their posts. Like this post where Meixner distinguishes between why your diet should be about ‘fueling’ not ‘running’ your body with a handful of lightweight food.?

Meixner’s suggestion is not to starve yourself or skip meals to lose weight as that will only lead to binge eating later on.?

Australian dietician Paula Norris, another influencer has been making a lot of headway by demonstrating why dieting disasters can be hard to spot through her eye-opening Instagram posts.?

Here’s an example of two identical ‘healthy-looking’ salads; one that contains 535 calories and the other that contains 995 calories.?

The difference: The calorie heavy dressings, too much grain and not enough vegetables can result in a salad that can hold as many calories as a risotto, says Norris. The ingredient split of both the salads are given in the post below. You’ll realize where the extra calories are coming from when you get through the list.?

It’s even harder to spot the differences with some of her other posts, such as this burrito.?

The difference: Of course, the burrito on the left is much larger in size (adding about a 100 cals), but the other smaller, lesser noticeable elements packs on an additional 300 cals.?

Norris does make it clear though that her posts are NOT to encourage calorie counting but are to demonstrate the impact that ingredient manipulation can have on the overall calories in a meal (obviously important for those of you who are trying to lose weight).?

The lesson to be learnt from this post is that you can enjoy smaller quantities of the food items you love, without sacrificing any of it, at half the caloric cost!?