Spent 2 months meal prepping and actually gained 4 pounds instead of losing

I started meal prepping every Sunday back in October, the full deal with a food scale and everything. I was following these low calorie recipes from a blogger out of Austin and portioning everything to the gram. After 8 weeks of eating chicken and rice six different ways, I stepped on the scale and I was 4 pounds heavier. My clothes felt tighter too. Turns out I was using way too much olive oil and peanut butter in my dressings and snacks, stuff I never bothered to log because it felt like 'healthy fat.' The bitter truth is you can eat 'clean' all day but if you aren't measuring every drop of oil or spoonful of nut butter, you're probably eating more than you think. Has anyone else had a similar experience with a health kick backfiring like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylor.reese19d ago

Hang on, you were measuring the chicken and rice to the gram but not tracking the oil and peanut butter? That's wild. So did you weigh a single tablespoon of olive oil once and think, "that can't be right," or did you just never even look at the bottle to check the calories? I'm asking because I fell for the same trick with Trader Joe's almond butter, where a serving is two tablespoons but I was easily putting in four.

elizabethmason19d ago

Yeah I did that shit with olive oil for way too long. I was measuring everything else perfect but just drizzling oil straight from the bottle like it was water. Finally got a food scale and weighed out 14 grams of olive oil one day and almost dropped the bottle. That little puddle was 120 calories. Now I keep a spray bottle of olive oil in my kitchen and track each spray as 7 calories, makes a huge difference without feeling like I'm drowning in oil.

angela_harris18d ago

The olive oil thing is SO real, I did the exact same with coconut oil for months before I realized what I was doing. @elizabethmason your spray bottle hack is honestly genius, I need to try that because measuring every drop just makes me want to give up.