If you want a donut (or whatever your treat may be) eat it! An occasional donut will not kill your fitness goals.
Cheers to Diggers and Donuts
Eating donuts together has been a weekly date with my son for a while now. Back when they were doing the construction by Barrett and Cobb Parkway in Kennesaw we had a “Diggers and Donuts” date once a week.
Do you know what will kill your goals?
Completely depriving yourself of things that make you happy. Even worse, you could be eating “healthy” foods that are killing your fitness goals and not even know it. Nothing makes me more frustrated seeing people consume snacks and drinks that are marketed as healthy but are loaded with sugar. What happens is, you think you just at some thing healthy so later in the the day you give yourself a treat not knowing that you probably already put a more than a frosted donuts worth of sugar in your body!
Rewind to last week, while watching This Is Us on demand, through the tears rolling down my face (I know I’m not the only one), I found myself watching a commercial for a “fruit and nut bar”. That commercial ruined my mood. One minute I was floating in the This Is Us wonder cloud and the next I was drafting this blog post (aka. mini rant).
Why did the “fruit and nut bar” commercial send me into rant mode?
One word, SUGAR.
The bar in the advertisement has 18 grams per serving. While yes, it was made from minimally processed natural ingredients, it had 18 grams of sugar!
To put that into perspective, my rule for my clients is less than 10 grams of sugar per meal/snack (preferablely closer to 5 grams). The national dietary standards say women shouldn’t be eating more than 30 grams of sugar a day.
A glazed donut from Dunkin Donuts, has only 12 grams of sugar.
A half a Hershey’s Chocolate Bar, has only 12 grams of sugar.
I’m not saying don’t eat the “fruit and nut bar.” I’m just saying when you do, know what you are eating. And if you don’t particularly like that “healthy” snack, don’t make yourself eat it because the commercial said it was healthy. It’s not worth it.
I prefer that when I’m eating toward my daily sugar intake that I taste and enjoy the sugar. There are far too many things with more sugar than you would expect. For example, the following can all be significant sources of sugar:
- Pasta sauce
- Granola/Energy bars
- Flavored yogurt
- Salad dressing
- Breakfast cereal
- Dried fruit
- Ketchup
You could eat these things…
OR you could eat the damn donut (or your favorite treat)…
I know what I would choose.
I choose balance.
I choose to know what is in ALL the food that I eat, even the ones (or maybe especially the ones) that are marketed at “healthy.”
Then I DECIDE to eat the damn donut! (not every day)
Cheers!
