The Fiber Bars War

Yes! It's time for the Fiber Bars War. In the past several weeks, I've noticed several new fiber bars on the grocery shelves and I decided I needed to compare them.

Today, I am comparing the Fiber One Oats & Chocolate bar (a personal favorite of mine up to this point), the Quaker Fiber & Omega-3 Dark Chocolate Chunk bar, and the Kellogg's Fiber Plus Antioxidants Dark Chocolate Almond bar.

The one thing I want to mention up front is that they are all pretty close to the same size, but the Kellogg's bar is a tad smaller. Also, they all contain 9 grams of fiber. That's a pretty big chunk of your daily fiber intake! (Want to know how much fiber you should eat per day? Check here.)

First, we have the Fiber One Oats & Chocolate bar, which has been around a while. I even talked about it in an earlier post. It is very tasty and was even mentioned as a good snack choice on The Biggest Loser. However, many people think these bars contain too much sugar to constitute a regular go-to snack. (And if that's the case, then some people may not eat ANY of these bars . . . but me? I'm willing to take the risk.)

The next bar is a new bar from Quaker. It is also very tasty and very comparable to the Fiber One bar. I liked it, but there wasn't anything that made it stand out from my Fiber One staple.

Finally, we have the Fiber Plus bar from Kellogg's. I have to admit, I AM IN LOVE with this bar. Maybe it is unfair that I'm putting it up agains the other sad nut-less fiber bars - but the addition of almonds to this bar is just YUMMY. It has become my favorite fiber bar of choice.

But how do these bars stack up nutritionally??

Let's find out! I've created a chart below that compares the nutritional information of each bar.

Dietary Information	Kellogg's	Fiber One	Quaker
Calories	130	140	150
Total Fat	5g	4g	4g
Sodium	50mg	90mg	35mg
Dietary Fiber	9g	9g	9g
Sugars	7g	10g	7g
Protein	2g	2g	2g
Calcium	10%	10%	-
Iron	4%	2%	4%
Vitamin E	20%	-	-
Zinc	20%	-	-
WWP*	2	2	3

They are all pretty comparable - but I believe my new love, The Fiber Plus bar wins this war! Less calories and 1g added fat, but added vitamins and AWESOME flavor. I don't even care that it is a little bit smaller!!

I thought maybe the almonds made the difference, but when I went to the store recently, I found another flavor of Fiber Plus - Chocolate Chip. Amazingly, the stats are the same as the bar with Almonds, except it only has 120 calories and 4g of fat. Woohoo!!

So the next time you're in the grocery store - pick up your fiber bar of choice - you'll be glad you did. (Especially if you pick this one!)

I'm so distracted . . .

I hope you can understand why. :-)

Still on the way down . . .

I lost another 1.4 pounds this week. I'm a little frustrated, because it seems to be coming off a lot slower this time around. (Punishment for my 6 month stress fest.)

I need to start scheduling my day better - as I work at a desk job all day and then I have to come home and grade papers for my online classes that I teach. My life is sitting in a chair!

I'm considering buying one of these.

Do you sit a lot for your job? What kind of things do YOU do to keep active in these situations?

Calories?

One thing I'm always trying to figure out is how many calories I really need each day, and how much I burn. Obviously, if you burn more calories than you take in, you'll lose weight.

I found an awesome website (which I've probably mentioned before - but it's just THAT awesome) that calculates your BMR and RMR (Basal Metabolic Rate and Resting Metabolic Rate). These are basically the number of calories you burn if you do absolutely nothing for 24 hours.

But this website also has a really cool activity calculator where you put in your weight and the amount of minutes you do something. If you keep track of all of your activities in a twenty-four hour period, you could see how many calories you've burned.

Got a minute? Check out Calories Per Hour and their informative calculators!