A Common Tracking Mistake - Serving Sizes

Another common mistake people make when tracking is misunderstanding serving sizes when reading labels.

Something like a pack of uncle bens rice is 250g.

And people may tend to consume an entire pouch for themselves.

And when you scan the back, it might give you the number of calories for one serving size.

However, in this case one serving size is actually only half the pouch. So you could easily end up only tracking half the calories that you actually had.

So it is really important to stay aware of what a serving size actually is and what you are having, otherwise what you are tracking could be inaccurate by hundreds of calories.

Another prime example of this is big share bags of things like crisps or popcorn. They will say on them – only 96 calories per serving. Then on the back you realise a serving is 30g not the entire bag.

Or on a pack of biscuits – only 88 calories per serving!! A serving being one biscuit, not the entire packet.

Now this may seem obvious to some, but it is easy to be unaware of these things or mislead by them and it can be costly!

Food companies are very aware of the fact that there are lots of people who are trying to lose weight, and if people think that their products are bad for them, they are less likely to buy them!

So they do things like alter serving sizes, so they can use their marketing to give the impression they are low calorie, so you buy them.

So always check the serving sizes.

The more often you do it, the more aware of these things you will be, and the more accurate your tracking will be.

The more accurate your tracking, the better the progress you will make.