Nutritional information just a click away

I started changing my diet at the end of April. I started slow, with just a few modifications -- no soda, no sweets -- and then tweaked things here and there until I'd ditched all crap from my cupboards and kept only the healthy goods. It took a while before I'd identified all my wrong-doings. In the beginning, for example, I'd liberated myself from sugar and was eating loads of fruits and veggies but hadn't quite caught on to the whole low-fat thing. It hit me one day after eating a Pizza Hut personal pan cheese pizza. Sitting like a lump in my stomach, that mini-pizza told me I'd made a wrong turn when I pulled into that Pizza Hut parking lot. So I rushed home, sat in front of my computer, and began hunting for nutritional information on the gut buster I'd just consumed. I found it. It wasn't good.

My little pizza cost me 620 calories and 26 grams of fat. It came with 69 carbohydrates and seven grams of sugar. So I didn't bomb on the sugar thing but holy cow did I go way wrong on everything else. Ever since that day, I've been investigating all sorts of food items before I eat them. Before my husband I went to Red Lobster with a gift card, I took a peek at the stats on those yummy cheesy biscuits. Yikes -- 160 calories and 9 grams of fat fill one Cheddar Bay Biscuit.

I've since checked up on fresh fruit -- seems one cup of most fruits come with about 100 calories, some natural sugar, and no fat -- and kiddie snacks, and anything that makes me wonder. If you'd like to do the same, check out calorie-count. You can also visit restaurant sites directly. Try these Web sites for the lowdown on McDonald's, Subway, and Taco Bell.