How oils and sauces add up (and what to do about it)
You've tracked your protein. You've logged your carbs. Your meals look reasonable on paper.
And yet the scale isn't moving and you genuinely can't figure out why.
One of the most common culprits, and one of the easiest things to overlook, is what you're cooking with and what you're adding on top.
Oils, sauces, dressings and spreads are calorie-dense, easy to underestimate and almost universally underlogged. They don't look like much on the plate. They don't feel like a meal. But they add up faster than most people realise.
The olive oil example
The other night I was cooking dinner. My partner suggested adding more olive oil to the pan and I did what I always do — measured it first.
One and a half teaspoons of olive oil is around 60 calories and 6.8g of fat. Not huge in isolation. But consider what a typical day of cooking actually looks like:
A small pour to cook eggs in the morning
A drizzle over a salad at lunch
Some to roast vegetables with dinner
A little extra in the pan while cooking the protein
That's easily 150 to 200 calories from oil alone across the day. Unlogged, because it never felt like something worth tracking. Not because you were being dishonest — just because it's invisible.
This is not about avoiding olive oil. It's genuinely good for you and has a real place in a balanced diet. It's about knowing it's there so you can make intentional choices around it.
What tends to go untracked
Oils and fats are the most common category but they're not the only one. Here's a realistic list of what often slips through:
| Food | Amount | Approx. calories | Approx. fat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | 120 cal | 14g |
| Butter | 1 tsp | 35 cal | 4g |
| Coconut oil | 1 tbsp | 120 cal | 14g |
| Cooking spray | 3-second spray | 25 cal | 3g |
| Mayonnaise | 1 tbsp | 95 cal | 10g |
| Aioli | 1 tbsp | 95 cal | 10g |
| Caesar dressing | 2 tbsp | 120–160 cal | 12–17g |
| Balsamic glaze | 1 tbsp | 45 cal | 0g |
| Soy sauce | 1 tbsp | 10 cal | 0g |
| Tomato sauce/ketchup | 1 tbsp | 20 cal | 0g |
| Peanut butter | 1 tbsp | 95 cal | 8g |
| Tahini | 1 tbsp | 90 cal | 8g |
These are approximate values only. Calories and fat can vary depending on the brand, serving size and how much you actually use.
A couple of things stand out from that table. The creamy sauces: mayo, aioli, Caesar dressing are where the biggest gaps tend to appear. Two tablespoons of Caesar dressing on what feels like a healthy salad can add ~160 calories and ~17g of fat before you've considered anything else in the bowl.
Peanut butter is another one. A tablespoon logged is a tablespoon. But the lick off the spoon while making a smoothie, or the little extra spread because the bread was thick, tends not to make it into the app, and it does add up.
Why this matters for fat loss specifically
If you're eating in a calorie deficit and not seeing progress, untracked oils and sauces are one of the first things worth looking at. The maths is straightforward: if you think you're eating 1600 calories but you're actually eating 1800 because of unlogged cooking fats and condiments, your body responds to 1800, not 1600.
This isn't about being obsessive or weighing every gram forever. It's about building enough awareness to understand where your calories are actually coming from, so that when something isn't working you have somewhere useful to look.
For women who feel like they're doing everything right and still not moving, this is one of the most common and most fixable gaps. It doesn't require a dramatic change, just a bit more attention to what's going onto the pan and into the dressing.
Most women don’t realise how quickly these little extras can close the gap between a calorie deficit and maintenance.
Practical ways to track more accurately without overthinking it
The goal isn't to weigh every drop of oil for the rest of your life. The goal is enough accuracy that your numbers are meaningful.
A few things that actually help:
Measure while you're learning. Spend a week or two actually measuring your cooking oils with a teaspoon or a food scale. You'll quickly learn what a tablespoon looks like in your pan versus what you've been pouring, and that awareness tends to stick.
Use a spray bottle for cooking oil. A couple of sprays coats the pan adequately and uses a fraction of what a pour from the bottle does. Worth the small investment if you cook with oil daily.
Track dressings and sauces separately. When you log a salad, log the dressing as its own entry rather than estimating it as part of the meal. Most popular condiments are in MyFitnessPal and it takes ten seconds.
Choose lower-calorie flavour options where it's easy. Fresh herbs, lemon juice, chilli flakes, vinegar, soy sauce and spice blends add a lot of flavour for minimal calories. They're not a replacement for olive oil or dressings when those are what you actually want, but they're useful when you're trying to add flavour without adding much else.
Build the calories in. If you cook with oil regularly, estimate a daily amount and log it as a habit rather than meal by meal. Even a rough estimate is better than nothing.
The flip side: don't cut the fat
It's worth saying directly: this post is not an argument for removing oils and fats from your diet.
Dietary fat is essential. It supports hormone production, brain function, absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and satiety. Women who cut fat too aggressively often find their hormones suffer, their mood drops and their hunger becomes much harder to manage. If you want to read more on this, the post on omega-3 and hormonal health covers the fat-hormone connection in more detail.
The point is awareness, not avoidance. Know what's in your meals so you can make intentional choices. If the olive oil is worth it, use it and log it. If the Caesar dressing is what makes the salad enjoyable, have it. Just know it's there.
For me personally, measuring my oil means I can use those calories somewhere else: an extra snack in the evening, a piece of chocolate after dinner, something that feels more satisfying than an extra pour into the pan that I wouldn't have noticed anyway.
A note on tracking tools
If you're using MyFitnessPal to log your meals, oils and sauces are all in the database. Search by brand where possible, generic entries like "olive oil" are generally accurate but branded products sometimes vary. Weigh liquid oils in grams rather than trying to estimate teaspoons and tablespoons if you want the most accurate result.
The companion post on accurate tracking in MyFitnessPal covers the broader principles of getting your numbers right if you want to go deeper on that.
The practical takeaway
If your tracking feels accurate but results aren't matching, oils and sauces are one of the most practical places to look. Not with anxiety, just with honest attention.
Measure for a week. Check your condiment habits. See where the gap might be. For most people it's not dramatic, it's a hundred or so calories a day that makes a meaningful difference over weeks and months.
Small adjustments, consistently applied, are where results actually live.
If you want a done-for-you structure where the calories and macros are already calculated — including realistic amounts for cooking fats and condiments — my 6-week and 8-week meal plans are built exactly for that. Real food, realistic portions, no guessing.
Or if you'd like a personalised look at your current intake and where your numbers might not be adding up, the Build My Diet assessment is the place to start.
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Read next:
Tracking food on MyFitnessPal: why accuracy matters more than you think
Have you been eating low calories but can't seem to shift your weight?
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