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You can lose weight by eating fewer calories and by increasing your physical
activity. Reducing the amount of total fat and saturated fat that you eat is
one way to limit your overall calorie intake. However, eating fat-free or reduced-fat
foods isn't always the answer to weight loss. A fat-free food is not necessarily
low in calories; in fact, it could be higher in calories because of added sugars.
Calories may also be added when you eat more of the reduced-fat or fat-free
food than you would of the regular item. For example, if you eat twice as many
fat-free cookies as you would regular cookies you actually have increased your
overall calorie intake. The following list of foods and their reduced-fat varieties
demonstrates that just because a product is fat-free, it doesn't mean that it
is "calorie-free."
| Fat-Free or Reduced Fat |
Regular |
| |
Calories |
|
Calories |
| Reduced-fat peanut butter, 2 T |
187 |
Regular peanut butter, 2 T |
191 |
| Reduced-fat chocolate chip cookies,
3 cookies (30 g) |
118 |
Regular chocolate chip cookies, 3 cookies (30
g) |
142 |
| Fat-free fig cookies, 2 cookies (30 g) |
102 |
Regular fig cookies, 2 cookies (30 g) |
111 |
| Nonfat vanilla frozen yogurt (<1%
fat), 1/2 cup |
100 |
Regular whole milk vanilla frozen yogurt (3-4%
fat), 1/2 cup |
104 |
| Light vanilla ice cream (7% fat), 1/2 cup |
111 |
Regular vanilla ice cream (11% fat), 1/2 cup |
133 |
| Fat-free caramel topping, 2 T |
103 |
Caramel topping, homemade with butter, 2 T |
103 |
| Low-fat granola cereal, approx. 1/2 cup (55 g) |
213 |
Regular granola cereal, approx. 1/2 cup (55 g) |
257 |
| Low-fat blueberry muffin, 1 small (2 1/2 inch) |
131 |
Regular blueberry muffin, 1 small (2 1/2 inch) |
138 |
| Baked tortilla chips, 1 oz. |
113 |
Regular tortilla chips, 1 oz. |
143 |
| Low-fat cereal bar, 1 bar (1.3 oz.) |
130 |
Regular cereal bar, 1 bar (1.3 oz.) |
140 |
Source: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Nutrient data taken from Nutrient Data System for Research, Nutrition Coordinating
Center, University of Minnesota.
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