---
title: 'Hidden Mistakes that Ruin your Diet (and you still dont know why)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=cTeK6iUpfL8'
video_id: 'cTeK6iUpfL8'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 527
---

# Hidden Mistakes that Ruin your Diet (and you still dont know why)

> Source: [Hidden Mistakes that Ruin your Diet (and you still dont know why)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cTeK6iUpfL8)

## Summary

This video exposes sneaky ways food manufacturers and common tracking habits can derail your diet without you realizing it. It covers deceptive serving sizes, misleading labels, weighing cooked versus uncooked food, and the habit of eyeballing high-calorie ingredients like oil. The host offers practical advice to read labels carefully and measure portions accurately.

### Key Points

- **The Cookie Serving Size Trick** [00:03] — A cookie labeled 120 calories per serving is actually 480 calories because one serving is only a quarter of the cookie. The small asterisk hides the serving size details.
- **Always Check the Asterisk** [00:31] — The US serving size system can mislead consumers. If a calorie number seems too good to be true and has an asterisk, the fine print likely changes everything.
- **Zero-Calorie Butter Spray Loophole** [01:10] — A 226g bottle of butter spray contains roughly 2,000 calories of fat, but because serving sizes under 5 calories can legally be rounded to zero, the product is sold as zero calories with 1,130 tiny servings.
- **Fat-Free Doesn't Mean Healthy** [02:05] — Manufacturers often remove fat but replace it with sugar to make products taste good. This turns a 'healthy' low-fat product into a sugar bomb.
- **Protein Bar Percentage Trick** [02:54] — Some protein bars list protein as a percentage with a tiny percent symbol, so '25% protein' can look like 25g. On a 40g bar, that's only 10g of protein.
- **Granola Buzzwords Sell Illusions** [03:35] — Packaging claims like gluten-free, non-GMO, all natural, and made with real ingredients have no clear legal definition and are used to mask products that are mostly sugar and unhealthy fats.
- **Weighing Cooked vs Uncooked Food** [05:30] — Tracking apps let you choose cooked or uncooked state. 200g of uncooked rice has about 730 calories, while cooked rice has only about 260 calories. Using the wrong state can wipe out a calorie deficit.
- **Don't Eyeball Oil and Sauces** [06:37] — One tablespoon of oil is 120 calories, and eyeballing usually adds more. Small daily overshoots compound, so saving just 60 calories per day equals 1,800 calories per month.

### Conclusion

The key to protecting your diet is vigilance: read nutrition labels carefully, verify serving sizes and fine print, and always weigh foods (especially oil) in the correct cooked or uncooked state. A digital kitchen scale is an inexpensive insurance policy against hidden calories.

## Transcript

at least I think so. Let me check the label. See, here it is. 120 calories per serving. Wait a second. What is this asterisk right here? Hold up. Let's look at it from the backside. Uh, what? What do you mean one serving of this cookie
is just one quarter? Who in their right mind came up with this? Oh, so the whole mind came up with this? Oh, so the whole cookie is not 120 calories. It's 480 cal. Ah, yes. Good old Americans and their amazing serving size system that
the living hell out of the customer. Huh? Well, if you live in the US or in some other country that shows everything by serving sizes, you need to be really careful because as I have shown you with the cookie example, there is just so
much to foolery going around. When the product promises a calorie number that seems way too good and it has this small little asterisk next to it, you better find what it says and read it very carefully because the food manufacturers
will do anything in their power to deceive you. And if you are not careful, your calorie deficit can disappear very quickly and you wouldn't even know why and suddenly your diet is ruined. The craziest example of this serving size
manipulation is with butter spray which I have actually already talked about in one of my previous videos. So, here is a quick recap for you. Normally, 1 g of fat is 9 calories. So, you would expect this 226 g bottle of butter spray to be
around 2,000 calories, right? Thankfully, due to the amazing serving size system, this bottle of pure fat is now zero calories. Yay. Uh, no, I'm just kidding. Thanks to a loophole in regulation which says that if a serving
is less than 5 calories, they can legally say that it's zero calories. So, the manufacturers just make the servings so tiny that they can fit it into less than 5 calories. That's why there is 1,130
damn servings, which will just never stop blowing my mind that this is legal. If you are unaware of this and you use these sprays thinking that they are zero with it, then you can't act surprised that instead of losing weight, you are
gaining weight. And there is one more nasty trick that you can see all over the world which is most commonly seen in dairy products. But this trick is used pretty much all over the place. The trick is that the label says that the
product is fat-ree which is true. But what they don't tell you is that they took out the fat but then replaced it with sugar to actually make the product taste good. So you think that you are getting a healthy low-fat product but
you are just eating a sugar bump instead. So, always check the nutrition label no matter what it says on the front. We can definitely agree that the serving size system leaves a lot to be desired and that the system that is
being used in the EU and some other countries is much better as they need to show the nutritional value per 100 g. So, it's much more transparent. And while it seems more transparent, that is not going to stop people from trying to
fool you. So, let me share with you some of my favorites. The funniest one I encountered in the store is the labels of some protein bars where instead of protein bar has, they just put the percentage instead. But they really make
sure that the percentage symbol is either really small or hard to see. So when it shows 25% protein and you are not really paying attention, you might think, "Oh wow, 25 g of protein. That's nice." But then you double check it and
you notice the percentage symbol. And then you see that the protein bar itself is like 40 g. And once you realize how little 25% of 40 grams is, you burst out laughing and you put it right back on the shelf. The other product I find
really hilarious in the way the packaging is made is granola. They love to put all the buzzwords on the packaging like gluten-free, non-GMO, all natural, made with real ingredients, etc. To make it more appealing to people
who want to be health conscious but have no knowledge of what it actually means to eat healthy. And the companies making these products know this very very well revolves around just selling the illusion of a healthy product. But in
reality, it's just a bunch of sugar and unhealthy fats. And I really wouldn't be surprised if you told me, "Yeah, my mom buys something like that every week the fact that the front side of the package says it's healthy or tries to
look healthy doesn't actually make it healthy. All these ridiculous claims is kind of what makes it hilarious because most of these words don't even mean anything. Like, what do you mean it's made with real ingredients? What does it
mean that it's all natural? Because all these claims don't really have any clear legal definition. You can pretty much put these claims on anything you want. Hey dude, why do you have this barrel of red poison in your kitchen? I don't
elsewhere. And it said that it was all natural and made with real ingredients, so I figured it would be fine. Huh. >> [music] >> Interesting.
So, the takeaway should be that you should always read the nutrition label carefully because it can completely ruin your diet without you even knowing why. And if you would like to avoid similar situations in the future, I would highly
plans. No matter if you want to bulk up, cut down, or just maintain, I got exactly what you need. It's basically a step-by-step guide that will take your hand and help you build your perfect diet and you will never have to worry
about ruining your diet for some unknown reason as I have included everything that I have learned in the 10 plus years of being in the bodybuilding game. So, if that sounds good, check the first link in the description. The other
bleeding calories is when they weigh their food. If you are not really experienced in the realm of nutrition, there is something that might have never difference can be really big. Pretty much all the nutrition tracking apps
always let you choose exactly how you want to weigh the food. Meaning that you can choose if you want to measure in a cooked or an uncooked state. Take rice for example. And look how different the macros are for cooked versus uncooked.
The difference is just massive. Imagine that you count the calories of cooked rice, but you are actually weighing uncooked rice. So you think to yourself, "Okay, I'm going to have 200 g of rice. That's only like 260 calories. Cool."
But in reality, that's like 730 calories instead because you are using the wrong nutrition facts. And suddenly that 500 calorie deficit that you set for your diet in order to lose weight is gone. And guess what? That means no more
weight loss for you. It's crazy how small things like that can instantly pretty obvious, but this applies to basically any food that you cook. Doesn't matter if it's rice, meat, potatoes, pasta, or whatever else. You
need to pay close attention to if it says cooked or uncooked. By now you would think that there can't be any more hidden traps that just ruin your diet. But there is and it's actually really common. So I'm like 99% sure that you
are guilty of this mistake that is just ruining your dieting progress. That mistake is just eyeballing various condiments and sauces and most crucially eyeballing oil. That's where you are most definitely bleeding hundreds of
calories if you are not measuring the amount at all. See, just 1 tbsp of oil is 120 calories. And when you bust out the cooking pan and start eyeballing it, do you think that you will be able to get just one tablespoon in there? And
let's be honest, the answer is most definitely no. Even I would say that I'm generally pretty good at eyeballing stuff because I have been doing it for so many years. But when it comes to using oil, just don't be lazy and use a
spoon. Even if you go over your desired amount, just a little bit each time. This is very much a compounding effect. So you might not see difference right away, but as we all know, your weight loss journey is a marathon, not a
sprint. And even if you saved just like 60 calories per day by not eyeballing everything, in a month that's 1,800 calories. And in order to burn one pound of fat, you need to burn 3500 calories. So you can basically get rid of an
additional pound of fat in 2 months just by using a spoon. That sounds like a pretty good deal if you ask me. Sure, eyeballing is pretty convenient. And if you do it with some low calorie sauces, etc., it will be completely fine, but
butter, it's always good to measure precisely as the calories can sneak up on you really, really quickly to make sure that your diet doesn't get ruined Always pay close attention to the nutrition label and to the actual
serving size and then actually weigh out the amount of food that you will use. No this video right now and you don't even have a kitchen scale at home, what are you doing? Go buy it right now. Because without being able to properly weigh
impossible. Wow, look at this beauty. Go check it out.