Are Pickles Good for Weight Loss? Calories & Sodium

Quick Answer: Yes, pickles can support weight loss when used strategically. Dill pickles deliver big, bold flavor for just 5-10 calories per spear—making them useful for adding satisfaction to lighter meals without spending much of your calorie budget. The catch is sodium. Most pickles carry 150-300mg per spear, so portion control matters. Use 1-2 spears or ¼ cup of slices as a crunchy condiment alongside protein and vegetables. Sweet pickles add sugar and roughly triple the calories, so keep those occasional. The all-pickle "pickle diet" is a different question, and the answer there is no.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: The Pickle Paradox
• What About the Pickle Diet?
• Why Pickles Actually Work for Weight Loss
• Complete Pickle Breakdown: Varieties, Calories & Nutrition
• How to Buy the Best Pickles for Weight Loss
• Making Your Own Lower-Sodium Quick Pickles
• 5 Balanced Meals That Use Pickles Perfectly
• 6 Creative Ways to Use Pickles Beyond the Jar
• 7 Mistakes People Make With Pickles (And How to Fix Them)
• Frequently Asked Questions
• The Bottom Line

Introduction: The Pickle Paradox

Pickles occupy a strange place in weight-loss advice. Half the internet treats them as a free food you can eat by the jar. The other half warns you off entirely because of the sodium.

Both positions miss what is actually going on, which is that pickles are a trade rather than a freebie.

Here is the trade, with real numbers. A tablespoon of mayonnaise on a turkey sandwich is about 94 calories and 90mg of sodium. Swap it for a dill spear and you are at roughly 7 calories and 225mg. You have saved 87 calories and taken on 135mg more sodium. Whether that is a good deal depends entirely on which of those two numbers is your constraint.

Run the same comparison against ranch dressing and it looks different again. Two tablespoons of ranch is around 130 calories and 265mg of sodium, so swapping in a pickle spear saves you 123 calories and 40mg of sodium. That one is a straight win.

Almost nobody writing about pickles does this arithmetic, which is why the advice comes out as either "eat all you want" or "avoid entirely." Neither is right. Most people arrive at this question through the extreme version of it, so that is where we will start. After that: which varieties to choose, how much to eat, when the sodium genuinely matters, and how to build meals around them.

What About the Pickle Diet?

Every couple of years the pickle diet resurfaces, usually on TikTok, usually attached to a claim about ten pounds in a week. The premise is that pickles are almost calorie-free, so you can eat them in unlimited quantity and the deficit takes care of itself. Some versions add pickle juice on the theory that it burns fat or flushes water weight.

The premise is half right, which is exactly why it keeps coming back. Pickles genuinely are 5-10 calories a spear. But the arithmetic that makes them useful as a condiment is the same arithmetic that makes them useless as a diet.

Start with sodium, because it is the part that gets skipped. A cup of dill slices carries somewhere around 1,200mg. The federal guideline is 2,300mg a day, and the American Heart Association's optimal target for most adults is 1,500mg. So one cup of pickles is half a day, or most of a day, before you have eaten anything else. Do that at every meal and drink the brine on top and you are north of 4,000mg without trying.

Then the gaps. Pickles contain no protein, no fat and no meaningful carbohydrate, which is precisely why they cost so few calories. Protein is what protects muscle while you are in a deficit, so a diet built around a food with none of it takes the wrong tissue off you. Fat is required to absorb vitamins A, D, E and K. Neither is optional, and a few days of eating around both shows up as fatigue and poor concentration long before it shows up on the scale.

The water-weight claim is backwards, which is the part worth understanding. Sodium makes you retain fluid, not shed it. Anyone drinking pickle juice the week before an event to look leaner is achieving the opposite of what they intend. And any early drop on the scale is the calorie restriction doing it — eating almost nothing will produce that whether the almost-nothing is pickles, cabbage soup or grapefruit — which is why it comes back the moment normal eating resumes.

So the honest verdict is not that the pickle diet is dangerous. For a healthy adult over a few days it mostly is not, though if you have high blood pressure or kidney disease the sodium load is a real problem and a conversation for your clinician rather than a blog post. It is that the pickle diet is ineffective, in the identical structural way every single-food diet before it has been ineffective. Nobody sustains it, and nothing about it builds a habit worth keeping once it ends.

Which leaves the useful version of the question, and it is the one the rest of this guide answers: pickles are not a diet, they are a condiment that makes lower-calorie food worth eating.

Do Pickles Break a Fast?

Strictly, yes. A spear has 5-10 calories and a true fast means none. Practically, that is small enough that most people fasting for metabolic reasons rather than as a discipline will not notice, and a single spear is not what determines whether a 16-hour window works for you.

Pickle juice is the more common version of the question and gets the same answer with one caveat. It is close to zero calories, but it carries a lot of sodium in a very small volume. Some people drink an ounce during a fasting window specifically for the electrolytes, which is reasonable enough. Just count it toward the day's sodium rather than against your calories. If you are fasting before bloodwork or a procedure, ignore all of this and follow the instruction you were given, which usually means water only.

Why Pickles Actually Work for Weight Loss

Three things are doing the work, and only two of them are as strong as most articles claim.

The Volume-to-Calorie Advantage

This is the real one. A medium dill spear, about 35 grams, gives you crunch and sharp flavor for 5-10 calories. Compare that against what people normally reach for to make a meal interesting: a tablespoon of mayo is around 94 calories, two tablespoons of ranch about 130, a quarter of an avocado 60-80.

The volume matters as much as the calorie count. You can eat a full cup of pickle slices for 30-50 calories. A cup of almost anything else you would snack on—chips, crackers, cheese, nuts—starts at 200 and climbs from there. Eating a large volume of food for very few calories is one of the few reliable levers in weight loss, and pickles are unusually good at it.

The Satisfaction Factor

Weight loss fails more often from boredom than from hunger. People eat plain grilled chicken and steamed broccoli for eleven days, decide healthy eating is miserable, and order pizza.

Sharp, salty, acidic food fixes that cheaply. The tang makes a plain protein taste like a decision rather than a punishment, and the crunch adds texture to otherwise soft meals like rice bowls and wraps. Your brain reads both as satisfaction, and it does not much care that they arrived for seven calories.

There is a pacing effect too. Nobody inhales pickles the way they inhale crackers. Assertive flavor slows you down, and eating slowly is quietly one of the better portion-control tools available. If flavor-without-calories is the problem you are solving, our guide to hot sauce and health covers the same trade from the other direction.

The Vinegar Claim, Honestly

Here is where most pickle articles overreach, including earlier versions of this one.

Vinegar does appear to blunt post-meal blood sugar. A meta-analysis of clinical trials in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice pooled eleven studies and found a significant reduction in postprandial glucose and insulin response. A more recent 2022 systematic review of short-chain fatty acids and glycemic control found a smaller acute effect for vinegar and flagged meaningful heterogeneity, risk of bias and publication bias across the literature.

But look at the doses. Those trials used roughly one to two tablespoons of vinegar taken with a meal. A pickle spear carries a fraction of that acetic acid—on the order of a tenth of the studied amount, once you account for how much brine a 35-gram cucumber actually absorbs.

So the honest version is this: the vinegar research is real and it does not transfer to your pickle spear. If you want the glycemic effect, you would need to drink vinegar, which is a different article. Eat pickles because they make food taste good for almost no calories. That reason is sufficient and it is the one that actually holds up.

Complete Pickle Breakdown: Varieties, Calories & Nutrition

Not all pickles are equivalent. Here is what you will find at the store.

For everyday use, dill, kosher dill and half-sour are the picks. Half-sour in particular sits at the bottom of the sodium range while tasting milder, which makes it the easiest variety to eat regularly. Sweet pickles and relish are fine occasionally, but at three to four times the calories for the same volume they stop being a free swap.

Why Sodium Matters

Sodium does not make you gain fat. It makes you retain water, which shows up on the scale and clears in a day or two once your fluid balance settles. If you eat half a jar and wake up two pounds heavier, that is water.

The number that does matter is cumulative. At roughly 225mg per spear, two spears a day is 450mg—close to a fifth of the 2,300mg daily guideline. Three is 675mg, or 29%. That is nearly a third of your sodium allowance spent on a garnish, before you have counted the bread, the deli meat, the cheese or the sauce.

That is not an argument against pickles. It is an argument for knowing what they cost. If you have high blood pressure, kidney disease, or have been told you are sodium-sensitive, this is a conversation for your clinician rather than a blog post. For everyone else, the practical move is to spend the sodium deliberately: pickles at lunch means skipping the salted chips alongside them.

How to Buy the Best Pickles for Weight Loss

Most grocery stores carry thirty or more options. Three things on the label separate them.

Start with serving size, because brands are not consistent. Some list nutrition per spear, others per three slices or per ounce, and comparing across those without noticing is how people end up eating three times what they think. Standardize on per-spear or per-quarter-cup and convert everything else.

Then sodium, which varies more than anything else on the shelf. Dill pickles run anywhere from 120mg to 400mg per spear depending on brand. Across three servings a day that is the difference between 360mg and 1,200mg, which is not a rounding error. Look for something in the 150-250mg range.

Finally, added sugar, which turns up in jars labeled dill more often than you would expect. The ingredient list should read cucumbers, water, vinegar, salt, spices. If sugar or high fructose corn syrup appears and you did not deliberately buy sweet pickles, put it back.

Fresh Refrigerated vs. Shelf-Stable

Refrigerated pickles are usually fermented or minimally processed, which means better texture and, if the label says naturally fermented or unpasteurized, live cultures. Shelf-stable jars are heat-treated, so they are softer and have no live cultures, but they are cheaper and identical on calories and sodium.

For weight loss the difference is irrelevant. Buy on texture preference and price. If gut health is a separate goal, read the label carefully, because plenty of products marketed as fermented have been pasteurized and no longer contain anything live.

Brands, Budget and the Deli Counter

Rather than chasing brands, buy on characteristics: firm texture, short ingredient list, under 300mg sodium per spear, no added sugar. Store brands regularly match name brands on all four at half the price.

Buy the largest jar you will finish in two or three months. Per-ounce cost drops sharply with size, and a gallon of dill spears usually beats the snack-size jars by a wide margin.

If your store has a barrel or pickle bar, ask for a taste before committing, because the variation is enormous. Ask whether they are full-sour or half-sour—full-sour means fully fermented and considerably tangier, half-sour is milder and crunchier. Half-sour is the easier one to eat every day. If they make them in-house, it is worth asking whether there is a lower-salt batch.

Quality Indicators

Four things tell you most of what you need to know through the glass. Color should be bright — bright green for dill, bright golden for bread and butter; a dull olive-green usually means overprocessed or old stock. Texture should look firm rather than mushy or shriveled, because deflated-looking pickles will be soft ones. Brine should be relatively clear in a vinegar pickle, though some cloudiness is normal in a fermented one; very murky brine in a shelf-stable jar is a bad sign. And once it is open, the smell should be sharp and vinegary, or pleasantly funky if fermented. Anything chemical means leave it.

Making Your Own Lower-Sodium Quick Pickles

If you eat pickles often enough that the sodium is adding up, making your own is the single most effective fix. Refrigerator pickles need no canning equipment, no sterilizing, and no particular skill. They are ready in four hours.

Basic Quick Pickle Formula

For one quart jar:

• 3-4 small to medium cucumbers, sliced into spears or coins
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup white vinegar (or half white, half apple cider)
• 1-2 teaspoons salt — start at 1, which is roughly 40% below commercial levels
• 1 tablespoon sugar or sweetener (optional)
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 tablespoon dill, fresh or dried, or 1 teaspoon dill seed
• ½ teaspoon peppercorns (optional)
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)

Method

1. Wash the cucumbers thoroughly. If they are waxed, peel them—wax stops the brine getting in. Slice into spears, four to six per cucumber, or quarter-inch coins, and trim the ends.
2. Put the garlic and spices in the bottom of a clean quart jar, then pack the cucumbers in vertically for spears or in layers for coins. Snug, but not crushed.
3. Combine water, vinegar, salt and sugar in a small saucepan and heat just until dissolved. Two or three minutes on medium. No need to boil.
4. Pour the warm brine over the cucumbers until fully submerged, leaving about half an inch at the top. Cool to room temperature, roughly thirty minutes, then seal and refrigerate.
5. Wait. Four hours minimum, twenty-four for anything good. They keep two to three weeks in the fridge.

A few things make a noticeable difference. Soaking the sliced cucumbers in ice water for half an hour before packing makes them dramatically crisper. Brine that is too hot will soften them, so lukewarm is the target. Kirby cucumbers hold their crunch better than standard ones, though smaller firm cucumbers of any type will do. And if you are going to the trouble, make two jars.

Once the base recipe is comfortable, the variations are obvious enough: a sliced jalapeño and extra pepper flakes for heat, ginger and rice vinegar in place of dill for something closer to an Asian pickle, or four to six garlic cloves and double dill if you want the flavor turned all the way up.

5 Balanced Meals That Use Pickles Perfectly

These are templates rather than recipes. Each one shows where the pickle is actually earning its place.

Meal 1: High-Protein Tuna Power Bowl (385 calories)

• 1½ cups mixed greens (15 cal)
• 5 oz canned tuna in water, drained (100 cal)
• ½ cup cooked quinoa or brown rice (120 cal)
• ¼ cup diced dill pickles (10 cal)
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved (15 cal)
• ¼ cup diced cucumber (5 cal)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil and lemon dressing (120 cal)

The acidity cuts through the tuna, which is the job that would otherwise fall to more dressing or a handful of cheese. Protein and fiber together keep this filling for four or five hours. Mix the chopped pickle straight into the tuna with a little mustard before it goes in the bowl—the flavor distributes far better than it does scattered on top.

If you would rather not assemble this yourself, our Weight Loss Meal Plan runs on the same logic: high protein, portion-controlled, macro-balanced. Calories, protein and allergen flags for every meal on the current menu are listed on our meal nutrition page if you want to check the numbers yourself.

Meal 2: Loaded Turkey Wrap (425 calories)

• 1 whole wheat tortilla (120 cal)
• 4 oz sliced turkey breast (120 cal)
• 2 tablespoons hummus (70 cal)
• 3-4 pickle slices (5 cal)
• 1 cup shredded lettuce (10 cal)
• ½ cup shredded carrots (25 cal)
• 2 tablespoons diced red onion (10 cal)
• Mustard to taste (0-5 cal)
• 1 small apple on the side (60 cal)

The pickles are what make this read as a deli sandwich rather than diet food. Pat the slices dry with a paper towel first, or the tortilla goes soggy by lunchtime, and wrap it tightly in foil if you are prepping ahead.

Meal 3: Chicken and Rice Pickle Bowl (615 calories)

• 5 oz grilled chicken breast (250 cal)
• ¾ cup cooked rice (175 cal)
• 1 cup roasted broccoli (100 cal)
• 2 tablespoons chopped dill pickles (5 cal)
• 2 teaspoons olive oil for the vegetables (80 cal)
• Hot sauce and a pickle juice drizzle (0-5 cal)
• Fresh cilantro (optional)

The pickle juice is the interesting part here. It behaves like a light vinaigrette without the oil, which is where most bowl calories quietly hide. Toss the chopped pickles through the rice while it is still hot so they release into it rather than sitting on top.

Our Complete Meal Prep Guide covers batching components like this so the assembly takes two minutes on a weeknight.

Meal 4: Protein-Packed Burger Plate (485-540 calories)

• 5 oz lean ground beef or turkey burger (225 cal)
• ½ whole wheat bun (60 cal) or a lettuce wrap (5 cal)
• 4-5 pickle slices (5 cal)
• Tomato slices (10 cal)
• Red onion slices (5 cal)
• Mustard (0-5 cal)
• Baked sweet potato fries, 4 oz (230 cal)

This is the classic burger experience at roughly half the calories of the restaurant version. Pickles are non-negotiable here—they are a large part of what makes a burger taste like a burger. Use thick-cut slices and layer them between the patty and the tomato, which keeps the bun from going soft.

Meal 5: Greek-Style Chicken Salad (460 calories)

• 2 cups romaine or mixed greens (20 cal)
• 5 oz grilled chicken breast, sliced (250 cal)
• ¼ cup diced dill pickles (10 cal)
• ¼ cup chickpeas (85 cal)
• 2 tablespoons crumbled feta (35 cal)
• ¼ cup diced cucumber (5 cal)
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes (15 cal)
• 1 teaspoon olive oil, red wine vinegar and oregano dressing (40 cal)

Pickles and feta together give you enough salt and tang that the dressing barely has to do anything, which is where the calorie saving comes from. Worth noting that this combination is also the saltiest meal on the list—if sodium is your constraint rather than calories, halve the feta.

6 Creative Ways to Use Pickles Beyond the Jar

1. Pickle Juice Salad Dressing

Shake together ¼ cup pickle juice, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon Dijon and a minced garlic clove. The brine supplies acidity and salt, so you need far less oil than a standard vinaigrette. Best on heartier salads with grains or protein in them.

2. Pickles in Tuna or Chicken Salad

Finely chop pickles into canned tuna or shredded chicken and cut the mayo right back, using a tablespoon or two of Greek yogurt for creaminess plus mustard and diced celery. Saves 100-150 calories a serving and tastes sharper.

3. Pickle-Brined Chicken

Leftover brine makes a genuinely good marinade. Two to four hours before grilling or baking is enough. The chicken stays noticeably juicier through a week of meal prep, which is the usual failure point with batch-cooked breast.

4. Chopped Pickle in Ground Meat

Two or three tablespoons of finely chopped dill pickle per pound, mixed into burgers or meatballs. It keeps the meat moist from the inside, which matters most with turkey.

5. Pickles with Eggs

Chopped pickle in scrambled eggs sounds wrong and is not. The tang cuts the richness. Deviled eggs made with pickle juice and Greek yogurt instead of mayo land in roughly the same place for a fraction of the calories.

6. Pickle Slices as Chips

Drain, pat completely dry, and serve with a protein-forward dip like Greek yogurt ranch or hummus. Chips and dip for 50-80 calories instead of 300-400. This one is specifically useful for evening snacking, which is where most days come apart.

More ideas along these lines in our 29 healthy snacks for weight loss.

7 Mistakes People Make with Pickles (And How to Fix Them)

1. Eating pickles as a meal

Pickles are water and salt with essentially no protein, fat or meaningful carbohydrate. Having "just pickles" for lunch means being genuinely hungry two hours later and overeating at dinner. Pair them with 20-30g of protein and something with fiber or fat in it. They are a condiment, not the center of the plate.

2. Assuming all pickles are the same

Sweet varieties carry three to four times the calories of dill. Sodium ranges from 150mg to over 500mg per serving depending on brand. Those gaps compound fast when you eat pickles two or three times a day. Read the label once per brand and then stop worrying about it.

3. Eating them by the jar

"They're only 20 calories" is true and beside the point. Half a jar is 1,000-2,000mg of sodium in a sitting, which your body handles by holding onto water. Hence the puffy feeling and the two-pound scale jump. One or two spears per meal, or a quarter cup of slices, spread across the day rather than all at once.

4. Drinking pickle juice

A shot before a workout is a reasonable thing some athletes do. Drinking it regularly means taking on a lot of sodium while getting none of the volume or crunch that made pickles useful in the first place. Cap it at an ounce or two, and prefer using it in marinades and dressings where it is doing actual work.

5. Avoiding pickles entirely because of sodium

This is the mistake that costs the most. Cutting pickles usually means the flavor gap gets filled by mayo, ranch or cheese, which trades 135mg of sodium for several hundred calories. Unless you have been told to restrict sodium specifically, that is a bad swap. Keep the pickles and spend your sodium budget deliberately elsewhere.

6. Ignoring how your own body responds

Some people retain noticeably more water from salt than others. Some find vinegar-heavy food triggers reflux. If you feel consistently bloated or uncomfortable after eating pickles, that matters more than any general guideline. Reduce the portion, try fermented varieties, or eat them less often.

7. Counting pickles as a vegetable

They are cucumbers, but pickling does not preserve the nutrition of a fresh one, and the volume you eat is far smaller. A plate of protein, rice and pickles is missing a vegetable. Add the broccoli.

If building balanced plates is the part that keeps slipping, our Build-a-Meal Plan lets you filter by calories and protein and pick meals one at a time—the Weight Loss filter surfaces everything under 500 calories. For the wider food list, our 100 Best Foods for Weight Loss guide is the deeper resource.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the pickle diet safe for weight loss?

It is not dangerous for most healthy people, but it does not work. Pickles have no protein, no fat and no meaningful carbohydrate, so a diet built on them costs you muscle rather than fat, and a cup of slices carries roughly 1,200mg of sodium — over half the 2,300mg daily guideline. Any quick drop on the scale is calorie restriction and water, and it returns as soon as you eat normally. If you have high blood pressure or kidney disease, the sodium load is a genuine concern worth raising with your clinician.

How many pickles can I eat per day?

One to two spears or a quarter cup of slices per meal is a sensible ceiling, which lands somewhere around three to six spears across a full day. The limit is sodium rather than calories: at roughly 225mg per spear, three spears is close to 30 percent of the 2,300mg daily guideline before anything else on your plate is counted.

Do pickles break a fast?

Strictly, yes — a spear carries 5-10 calories and a true fast means none. Practically that is small enough that most people fasting for metabolic reasons will not notice it. Pickle juice is close to zero calories but carries a lot of sodium in a small volume, so count it toward your sodium for the day rather than your calories. If you are fasting before bloodwork or a procedure, follow the instruction you were given instead.

Can I eat pickles every day while losing weight?

Yes, in moderation — roughly 1-2 spears or a quarter cup of slices per meal. The thing to watch is total sodium across the whole day, not the pickles in isolation. Two spears runs about 450mg, close to a fifth of the 2,300mg daily guideline, so if you are eating them at every meal, choose lower-sodium brands and go easy on other salty foods.

Do pickles help burn belly fat?

No. Nothing you eat burns fat from a specific area. Pickles help with weight loss indirectly, by adding flavor and crunch for almost no calories so you are less likely to reach for something calorie-dense to make a meal interesting. That is a real effect, but it is about compliance rather than metabolism.

Are fermented pickles better for weight loss than regular pickles?

Not for weight loss specifically. Fermented pickles may offer gut health benefits from live cultures, though many shelf-stable versions are pasteurized and no longer contain them. On calories and sodium the two styles are close to identical, so pick whichever you will actually eat and watch the portion.

What's the best time of day to eat pickles for weight loss?

There is no magic time. Pickles work whenever they help you stay inside your calorie target, which for most people means lunch and dinner. The only timing worth avoiding is a large portion right before bed, since the sodium can leave you retaining water overnight.

Can pickle juice help with weight loss?

Not meaningfully. Pickle juice is very low in calories, typically 0-5 per ounce, but it carries up to 400mg of sodium in that same ounce and none of the volume or crunch that makes pickles useful in the first place. It works better as a marinade or dressing base than as something to drink.

Do pickles cause water retention and bloating?

They can, temporarily, if you eat a large portion or are not used to salty food. That shows up as scale weight and is water, not fat, and it clears within a day or two. Smaller portions, extra water and lower-sodium brands all reduce it.

Are bread and butter pickles okay for weight loss?

They can fit, but they carry added sugar — roughly 20-30 calories and 5-7g of sugar per quarter cup, against 5-10 calories for dill. That is three to four times the calories for the same volume. Keep them as an occasional thing and use dill or sour varieties for everyday eating.

Should I rinse pickles before eating them to reduce sodium?

It barely works. Rinsing removes some surface brine, but most of the salt has already moved into the cucumber, so you lose flavor without losing much sodium. Buying a lower-sodium brand or making your own with less salt in the brine does far more.

The Bottom Line

Pickles are not a weight loss food. They are a cheap way to make weight-loss food taste like something you would choose.

Stick to dill, kosher dill or half-sour for everyday eating, keep portions to a spear or two, and remember that the sodium is a real cost even though the calories are not. Two spears a day is a fifth of your sodium allowance. Spend it knowingly.

Skip the vinegar claims, and skip the pickle diet. The research behind the first used doses ten times what a pickle delivers, and the second fails for the same reason every single-food diet fails. The honest reason to eat pickles is simply that they turn a plain chicken breast into a meal you will make again next week.

Try one serving at lunch tomorrow and notice two things: whether the meal was more satisfying, and whether you felt puffy the next morning. That tells you more about your own body than any guideline will.

If you would rather skip the assembly, our Weight Loss Meal Plan delivers portion-controlled, macro-balanced meals, and Build-a-Meal Plan gives you the same food with full control over what turns up in the box. If you have not ordered before, how it works covers ordering, shipping and reheating in a couple of minutes.