please help, calculating how much fat and calories?

Hi, can you give us an example of the food you are buying? Even fresh foods such as meat and vetg still have nutritional values printed on them.

Failing that, log onto the tesco's grocery website (as if you are about to order something for home delivery) and find the item you are looking at and look up the nutritional info there.

HTH

Hi there,

The advise my nurse gave to me was, if I'm cooking/eating fresh veg and grilling meat (in the george foreman) then I don't need to worry about it - obviously the meat needs to be lean if it's mince etc, and sausages are a no-no.

So if you're making yourself a meal of vegetable rice in stuffed peppers, you don't need to worry about it, not unless you add olive oil or butter (both are no-no's). Just check the labels of other food, and try to keep to less than 5g of fat (total) per 100g.

Good luck!

Fand

are sausages a no no? ive had em with no side afects but i go to tesco and buy the reduced fat ones as they are filled with rice rather than crap cuts of meat!!! when i went to weight watchers one sausage was a points value of 1 so id give em a go !! x

Hi sticky bun,

It is difficult to get your head aroubnd portion sizes and servings. I have found a great website

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmi-m.htm

that has a section on portion sizes that makes it a bit clearer. They also have a card you can download that has all the common portion sizes detailed.

Ignore the BMI bit - too depressing!

I would say sausages are an infrequent treat. Yes, they are nice but they do generally contain a lot of fat and salt and there arr tastier things out there!

LellyM

Hope you're having some success and no it's definitely not a stupid question. As someone else has pointed out, when it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables they aren't somethign you need to worry about. Just minimise the amount of fat you use in cooking them and avoid oily dressings on salads. The main things which contribute fat to your diet are meat (check the label as all meat has the nutritional value and fat % on it and trim off visible fat and chicken skin), dairy products (go for low fat milks, spreads and yoghurts and avoid cheeses as most cheese is around 30% fat - a little bit won't d you much harm but i can never stick to a little) and nuts and seeds which concentrate fat - again labels should give you an indication of the fat content per serving or per hundred grammes.

Refined carbohydrate is the other risky bit - alot of prepared foods like breads, cakes, biscuits, pastries, juices and even soups have refined sugar or other carbohydrate which you tend to metabolise quickly and leads to lots of highs and lows in your blood sugar. Wholegrain ingredients like flour are better for evening out your blood sugar.

Lastly alcohol is fine as an ingredient as the alcohol itself is usually boiled off in cooking but alcoholic drinks have high calorific values and can undo your god work on the food side very quickly

I bought readers digest low fat no fat cookbook a few years ago which does all the working out for you and the recipes are very varied and tasty if you want something to take some of the hard work out of it

Good luck