If you're watching what you eat and exercising but not losing weight, you could be sabotaging your diet and not even know it.
Friends Louisa Biteler and April Timat catch up while working out. The two moms especially like to get their exercise in after eating too much of their favorite snack foods.
"Chocolate and potato chips," Biteler said.
"That's when the salty chips come out or the popcorn with lots of butter," Timat said.
But there are foods that could be sabotaging your diet that aren't so obvious.
"A lot of beverages we drink and things we add to them can add up," Sanford Registered Dietitian Teresa Beach.
Beach says your favorite coffee drink could be the culprit of weight gain.
"Plain, old black coffee is great, but if you like it with a little extra sugar or creamer that really packs on the calories without really feeling like you're getting a lot of extra calories," Beach said.
Even if you do workout, try to limit your snacks to 150 calories or less. That's where you may fall into a trap with these pre-packaged 100 calorie snacks.
"You don't want to just grab this and think it's only 100 calories, so I'll go ahead and eat another one," Beach said.
Beach says many people don't stop with just one or two of these in a day. To avoid eating too much, you might want to just bring one bag with you to work.
"Really it only takes 100 extra calories a day over what you burn to lend to about ten to 12 pounds in a year," Beach said.
Some people looking for a healthy snack grab a meal replacement bar, like a Cliff Bar, which has 230 calories.
"You're thinking it's a health bar, and here you are getting more calories and maybe more fat than a candy bar," Beach said.
Another possibly misleading label?
"Sugar-free chocolate sounds like it's going to be healthier," Beach said.
But looking at the label, you see Hershey's sugar-free chocolate has 30 fewer calories than the regular chocolate, but more of those calories are from fat.
"Any kind of fat-free or sugar-free products; compare them to the regular one. Sometimes there may be products that are only ten calories different and have more fat," Beach said.
That doesn't mean you can't ever eat these foods. You simply might have to work out more in order to not gain more weight.
Beach says many people also eat too big of a serving of meat. You should limit yourself to three ounces for a meal. Another way of adding calories is frying your foods.
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