[Joszac]

I have been counting calories to lose weight. I use food labels and calorie counters to do so. I am happy with my weight loss so far but one thing I'm not understanding is calculating fat, protein and carb calories. At the end of the day I add up my calories. Then I add up the fat, protein, carb (9,4,4) calories to see if they match. They don't. It is always close to 100 calories more when adding the fat, protein, carbs than it is total calories. Just to see what would happen I then subtracted my fiber (counted it at 4 calories a gram) and I can get closer to my calorie total than the other way.

So am I doing something wrong in the calculations or is it that food labels and counters are not true to the actual calories and fat, carb, protein per serving??

[DixC Chix]

I think the 9/4/4 is rounded for ease of math. Alcohol is 7 cal per gram. 100 calories is still pretty close.

ETA: some food labels give calories after deducting fiber and some don't and neither is labelled as having done it one way or the other.

[Joszac]

Originally Posted by DixC Chix

...

ETA: some food labels give calories after deducting fiber and some don't and neither is labelled as having done it one way or the other.

Really? Wow, how can they do that and not have to tell you? Like I mentioned I'm happy with my weight loss but confused by the, IMO, rather large difference in total calories.

[geoblewis]

They don't even have to give you an exact number for calories on the item either. The package can say 300 calories for 100 gm, but when you weigh the item, it can weigh more or less than 100 gm. And calories on packages are rounded up or down to the nearest 5 calories.

I always pad the calorie count by 10% and I don't count calories burned at all. And then I don't have to get so crazy with math. There's just too much math to be having real fun!

[Lovely]

Originally Posted by geoblewis

They don't even have to give you an exact number for calories on the item either. The package can say 300 calories for 100 gm, but when you weigh the item, it can weigh more or less than 100 gm. And calories on packages are rounded up or down to the nearest 5 calories.

I always pad the calorie count by 10% and I don't count calories burned at all. And then I don't have to get so crazy with math. There's just too much math to be having real fun!

Crazy that even the nutritional labels that are supposed to be helping us stay healthy are "lying" to us!

[April Snow]

if you are happy with your weight loss so far, then I would say to just keep doing what you are doing and not worry so much about the math!

[Joszac]

Thank you all for your thoughts on this. I guess I just don't like when things don't add up the way they APPEAR they should. I'm not too concerned about it for weight loss just wanted to try to understand it. I guess if the 9,4,4 is an approximate figure that might explain some of the problem and the rest is that labels and counters aren't exact either.