Calorie Free too good to be true?

Posted on by Revive with Stephen Hall

Diet sodas, Walden Farms, Splenda

Hey guys, I want to spend some time talking to you about calorie free products. They’re great, adding loads of flavour and sweetness to our diets without the added calories. Research has shown that when kept in moderation our bodies are able to metabolise them without harmful effects and can help us lose weight. So why on earth would I ever bad mouth these products? Well as someone who has been dieting down for over 30 weeks my consumption of them has risen, and with that so has my understanding of potential pit falls.

Calorie free does not mean exactly that, as governing bodies allow companies to use this terminology if they are under a certain number of calories. In reality what does this mean? For example, if we take Walden Farms chocolate sauce (which I love).

Per serving Walden state that the product is calorie free, however there is actually 5 calories per 32g serving. That’s not exactly a lot, but say you were using a variety of these sauces through the day and using generous servings, that could really add up. Plus how many of you chew sugar free gum? I must get through almost a pack everyday now, and each piece actually contains 5 calories as well. Oh and I love Pepsi Max, again this too contains a small number of calories. You see where I am going here, before you know it you have actually consumed a decent number of calories from ‘calorie free’ sources.

As I said my consumption of these has been increasing as my diet has gotten harder. I hadn’t until recently really thought much about the above, thinking that they couldn’t be having any real impact. But, on a bad day I could in reality be getting close to 150 extra calories that I wasn’t accounting for, and imagine I have a bad week, an extra 150kcal every day, that’s over 1000 calories more than I thought. That 1000 calories could be the difference between losing the extra bit of fat I wanted.


So next time you see something ‘calorie free’ bare in mind that it does in fact contain a small number of calories, and these can add up. This is why I love IIFYM or Flexible Dieting, you count everything, there are no ‘free’ foods, because we know anything that contains energy will impact our bodies.