Calorie Counting Fats and Carbohydrates in Your Diet

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The Essentials of Healthy Weight Loss

On a gram-by-gram basis, fat has more calories than carbohydrates or protein. Therefore, eliminating fat or cutting down on the amount you eat helps you lose weight. However, if fat is replaced with carbohydrates, as it is in many fat-reduced and fat-free products, the total number of calories in a serving may not be reduced. Consequently, no weight loss occurs.

The following table shows you how reducing fat in a product doesn’t always mean that its calories are reduced, too.

Lowfat Doesn’t Always Mean Low Calorie

Food	Portion	Calories
Refrigerated whipped topping	2 tablespoons	25
Lite refrigerated whipped topping	2 tablespoons	25
Canned turkey gravy	1/4 cup	30
Canned fat-free turkey gravy	1/4 cup	30
Fig bars	2	110
Fat free fig bars	2	100
Canned refried beans	1/2 cup	100
Canned fat-free refried beans	1/2 cup	100
Peanut butter	2 tablespoons	191
Reduced-fat peanut butter	2 tablespoons	187
Vanilla frozen yogurt	1/2 cup	104
Nonfat vanilla frozen yogurt	1/2 cup	100
Homemade caramel topping	2 tablespoons	103
Fat-free caramel topping	2 tablespoons	103

But in some cases, a lower fat content does mean fewer calories, especially when it comes to dairy products. The following table gives a few examples.

Where Lowfat Does Mean Lower Calorie

Food	Portion	Calories
Cottage cheese, 4% milk fat	1/2 cup	110
Cottage cheese, 1% milk fat	1/2 cup	82
Whole milk	8 ounces	150
Fat-free milk	8 ounces	85
Yogurt, lowfat	8 ounces	155
Yogurt, nonfat	8 ounces	135
Vanilla ice cream	1/2 cup	135
Vanilla ice milk	1/2 cup	90

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/calorie-counting-fats-and-carbohydrates-in-your-di.html