The horror, the horror!
 

I used to love those Arizona drinks in the watermelon and grapeade flavors. I decided I might want one again now and so I looked at the calories on them. 300 calories per can! 300! That's equivalent to more than half a honeydew melon, a big bowl of oatmeal, or an entire frozen dinner. I had no idea how many calories were in those, and I used to consume them on a regular basis! :eek:

I used to drink almost a 2liter of Mt Dew a day. There are 170 calories in a 12 oz can!! :eek: :eek:

I never used to like Mountain Dew until a few years ago but I do now. I'm grateful for the fact that if i really want a soda, there are diet versions available that even though they might not be the healthiest thing on earth at least won't make anybody fat.

I'm glad you were able to kick that habit! Good job!

What gets me about the Arizona drink is that it has more calories than a frozen bean burrito of the kind I used to eat which were only 200 calories.

Thanks! I kicked it years ago and surprisingly didn't really lose weight when I stopped drinking it. I switched to Sierra Mist Free and that would be all that I drank all day long. Now that I have stopped that as well and limit myself to one Diet Coke a day and the rest of what I drink is just water and maybe a small glass of 1% milk, that has helped with the losses.

Good for you on looking up the nutrition before going out and buying that Arizona drink.

Thanks. I think the difference for me now is that I can visualize how much food is in how many calories. If I see a food that is really calorie dense like that with what I would consider to be a small serving size and I can visualize a much bigger portion of a different food for the same 'calorie cost', then it helps me to realize what a 'rip off' that drink is.

My substitution for the Arizona teas are the Lifewater 0 calorie lean machines (they may actually have a few calories, but probably not more than about 5). I like the cherimoya punch and the fuji apple pear. I could drink as many of those as I could in a day and not come close to the calories in just one Arizona, and they have vitamins!

I can promise you that there are people every day that consume them on a regular basis (along with many other items) and would be shocked if they ever looked at the label. I think most people rather not know, even though it's right in front of their face.

Yes it totally changes your outlook on food in general when you know the calorie contents of things, not just the numbers but the amount of food those numbers potentially represent. The calorie content of many things I used to eat shock me.

I used to drink those things all the time - it's tea right? How bad could tea be? Yikes!:eek:

I know I didn't think they were that bad either. I think I might have even read the label before, but until I started food logging, I really didn't know how much food 300 calories equated to, or how many calories I should be eating, etc. so it would have just been a number to me before. Now that I have more of an understanding of these things, the amount of calories is shocking.

Isn't FitDay wonderful? It has been such a huge eye-opener for me too. Although I was pretty familiar with total calories, the ability to see what proportion of calories fits into each of the catagories is a huge help. At 1200 cal, which is my target for losing weight, Arizona ice tea is 1/4 of my daily load... and all sugar:eek:

I'm exactly the same way. I read a label and go "OMG I can eat this, this, and THAT for what's in ONE of these. It's a huge eye opener. I haven't tried the Sobe LifeWaters, but I do like a couple of the Fuze Slenderize drinks. The regular Fuze have too many calories in them, but the Slenderize ones have like 5 per bottle. A very good trade!!!

We were discussing what we wanted for lunch one day and one of the guys at work said "go to Moes and bring me back something". I proceeded to look up the nutrition in a HomeWrecker with chicken and black beans and Sweet Baby Jesus Lying in the Manger!! It was almost my entire day's worth of calories! Over 900 calories in a burrito!!! That's not counting the chips and queso or the large sweet tea (with refills) that's I'd consume AT LUNCH! It's completely shocking. When I pointed all these things out to my coworker he said "Yeah, but I'm still gonna eat it, so I'd rather not know what's in it." Where now I'm the exact opposite. I won't eat it unless I know how it's prepared or what's in it.

I used to love the three cheese nachos for Qdoba - I didn't eat them all the time, but maybe once every couple weeks. When I started counting calories, I went to their website where they have a nutrition calculator, so you can calculate exactly how many calories are in your dish, with all your customized toppings and whatnot. I kid you not - 1400 calories. I haven't been back since.

I think restaurants just want to make food taste good rather than worrying about calorie contents and all of that. That's one reason why some restaurants have fought having to list their nutrition information.

It's like Paula Deen said in that one interview "Honey I'm your cook, not your doctor".

Basically it's up to us to educate ourselves and know that nobody else is going to look out for us.

That's another good one! Do they have a diet version of the banana colada? I remember liking that flavor but I can't remember if it was the low calorie version or not.

Most definitely! In the book I just read, it discusses how restaurants analyze ingredients so that they create food that is the most easy to eat, which means you keep eating more even before you realize you're full. They play with three things...sugar, fat, and salt, to get the optimal balance of each. Food manufacturers has as their main goal to keep people coming back for more. They spend billions of dollars on their research each year. Being educated, as Ruby says, is your best defense.

Face it, if food tasted mediocre, we'd all just eat to live and be slim.

I just finished a Fuze :). I haven't seen the banana one in a slenderize version, though.

I don't think they make a slenderize version of the banana. At least I haven't seen it or checked it through the back door. I'll ask my Coke guy tomorrow. He'd know. (See aren't y'all glad you've got a receiving manager around to ask these questions to vendors)

When I started my journey one of the first rules I applied was to 'Stop drinking calories'.

It was startling how many calories I consumed from Coke, Tea w/sugar, Coffee w/sugar. Now my beverage of choice is water and I can't believe I ever found a Coke to be refreshing.

It probably has a synergistic effect with all the other faux foods people consume. :D