Calorie Counting

Because I am a moderately nice person, and because I have been blown away by counting calories and by an obsession of finding out how many calories are in some of my adored foods, I have compiled a list of links to popular fast food restaurants. Remember, one combo meal can equal the majority of your daily caloric intake!! I’ll update the list as I think of new places!!

Starbucks
http://www.starbucks.com/retail/nutrition_info.asp
(Starbucks does offer “skinny” options)

McDonald’s
http://www.mcdonalds.ca/en/food/calculator.aspx

Wendy’s
http://www.wendys.com/food/NutritionLanding.jsp

Tim Hortons
http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/menu/nutrition-calculator.html

Taco Time
http://www.tacotimecanada.com/nutrition.php

Subway
http://www.subway.com/applications/NutritionInfo/index.aspx

Quiznos
http://www.quiznos.com/subsandwiches/Products.aspx

Pizza Hut
http://www.pizzahut.com/Nutrition.aspx


Calorie Counters
(more for individual foods, some name brand items, etc)

Fit Day
http://www.fitday.com

The Calorie Counter
http://www.thecaloriecounter.com/

Talking Fat: For You...

I notice that I haven’t posted in awhile…it’s not from lack of trying; mainly just from lack of interest – ya, my interest.

So first off, I know you read this blog. If you are still eating a 1000 calories a day, I will personally kick your *ss.
Here is why – and if you read my blog closely you will know – but a 1000 calories a day constitutes a crash diet. Your body will hit starvation mode, which means that instead of loosing weight, you will start to gain weight again. As soon as you introduce food to your body, your starved ass will attack it, and hold on to it like there is no tomorrow. At your height and weight, you can’t eat 1000 calories a day. You want to loose – not gain, right? I know that weight loss should be an overnight process. It’s not. Find a website that can calculate for you, how many calories you need to maintain your weight. Then work in a daily deficit of 750 calories. Two pounds a week is the MAXIMUM amount you should be loosing. I know it sucks. Especially when you can put on more than two pounds every week. Weight loss wasn’t meant to be fast. If you want to quicken the weight loss, then work out – it burns more calories, and converts fat to muscle, which makes you look lighter than you actually are. Also, muscle burns more calories just to maintain– it’s a good reason to work out.

Actually – here is the calorie maintenance calculator…enjoy!
http://www.caloriecontrol.org/calcalcs.html

So…I have been asked to keep talking about the fat burn. I can’t really say I’m a good authority on it at the moment. It is funny to be reaching this stage, and be doing the research that I should have done almost a year ago. No, I am mistaken. I am not really researching topics related to weight loss – the majority of my reading pertains to staying away from the ugly chemicals that inundate North American food. That sh*t scares me. Fortunately cutting all those chemicals out is actually beneficial for overall eating habits. Sort of.

I am pleased to say that I am over two weeks meat free. Now, that isn’t to say that I will stay entirely meat free on a permanent basis. I won’t give up my love for Chinese food for the rest of my life. Or chicken curry. Or beer battered chicken strips. Life is just too short to cut out so much enjoyment. But, for the majority of the time and for the health benefits, I will be meatless. No more mass quantities of animal hormones!

At the moment I can’t really write too much about healthy living and weight loss. Even though I have given up meat, I have eaten more food in the past two weeks than I have in the past year. I’d like to think that the veggies are making me hungry, but I know that the calories are chalking up. It doesn’t help that I have also rediscovered my passion for beer. Thank you to the Fox and the Hedgehog for carrying Leffe. Right now I feel bloated from a night of drinking, followed by overindulgence in vegetarian, but calorie-filled chilli. I have kicked up my workouts by several notches, but have been having trouble maintaining my daily workout regime. Yup, I am hitting the wall.

But listen, it happens. I am not excessively worried about it – just a little bit.
I repeatedly tell individuals, that changes need to be made gradually – November 2007, I started eating healthier and working out. In October 2008 I gave up refined sugars. In March 2009 I gave up meat and most dairy products. Over the same time, I have increased the intensity of my workouts. Gradual changes…not overnight.
Ok that’s it for weight right now – I need to step my butt on a scale and see what the damage of my recent indulgences has been. And I need to get my head out of the clouds. But don’t worry…I’ll talk more about the food process in future blog entries. And maybe about general life too. Who really knows these days…?????

Talking Fat #7: Part 2

Admittedly, some days I hate this. The past couple of weeks have been really hard again. I am an emotional eater – the more stressed I am, the more sugar I like. And the past few weeks have been stressful…Plus the inundation of Valentine’s Day chocolate has been difficult to ignore. Needless to say I have been calorie splurging for the past couple of days – ok, for the majority of the past week. And as it turns out, the “weight maintenance” porridge/oatmeal I have been eating, isn’t the healthiest of options. So yes, the scale has gone up a couple of pounds, and I am not pleased, but I'm not overly worried.

I have consistently had weight declines (minus the normal fluctuations that a woman experiences at certain times of the month), so having an increase is a bit disheartening. I had basically stopped calorie splurging because of that nagging mentality “every day that I take off, is two extra days tacked on”. Doesn’t it suck that calories are so easy to accumulate, but take double the effort to burn? Unfortunately, there comes a point that your body needs a break from the hardcore diet insanity.

Even with the gain, I do recognize the necessity that I am coming to a point that I need to stop obsessing. My body is kind of telling me to f*ck off (ya, I said it), and there is a point that you need to let it adjust.

Now for the educational portion of this drivel. The one thing that drives me crazy is seeing the number of people who have become dependent on places like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, etc. While a lot of fast food places claim to have become “healthy”, people really need to take a closer look at the caloric intakes of their favourite items. A lot of those meal combos contain the majority of calories that a person should consume for a day - in a single meal! The reality is, most individuals have a combo for lunch and then a full dinner; meaning they have exceeded their daily caloric necessities. Combine fast food with our sedentary lifestyles, and you can begin to understand why so many North Americans and Europeans are heading towards obesity.

I have worked in a school since 1999. In that time, I have been shocked by what I have seen students consuming as apart of their daily meals. It is now common to see kids eating a fast food over the lunch hour. Then combine this with chocolate, candy, icing, etc and the perception of a well-rounded lunch is achieved. I am actually a huge advocate for banning junk food in schools, and was quite in favour of banning items like Mr. Noodles. To read more about schools that have successfully banned bad foods, click on the following link http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/11/sugar.free.school/index.html.

My present gripe is with Starbucks. I was fairly shocked by the calorie content of a lot of the food items at Starbucks. My favourite item is the ginger molasses cookie; it tips the scale with 400 calories. My favourite beverage is a strawberries and crème blended cream – with whip it is a mere 500 calories. Combined, these two items though a tasty treat, are about half of my daily caloric intake!! And these two items certainly don’t fill me up for any length of time. I also like the blueberry muffins – they are only 450 calories…ha! Luckily my Café Americano is only around 20 calories. It has to balance somewhere...

So my advice to anyone who is dieting, is to go online and do a nutritional check. Some times it is difficult to find out caloric values (for instance, Starbucks is a pain in the butt; they leave it to their individual stores to post nutritional data for food – which means it doesn’t get done; I have had to use Google to find out the truth!). Again, I recommend fitday.com to find out caloric values.

One way to tell whether the food you are consuming is good or not is based on the consistency of your excrement (poop, crap, etc). Yup. That’s right. Unless you have other health issues that impact your bowels, your poop is a good indicator of your diet. As I am not into the habit of discussing poop, you can Google it (though I’ve never tried). Or you can try a simple experiment – tomorrow, eat a ton of junk…see what happens the next morning. The following couple of days, eat healthy – and notice the difference. I took a Medical Anthropology course a few years ago; we discussed the consistency of poop – highly entertaining.

Anyways, if you don’t mind, I am going to finish chugging my double chocolately chip blended cream, eat my ginger molasses cookie, and wallow in my guilt.

Talking Fat #7: More Calories Part 1

**This is another split entry**

Pic: Europe 2004**


This “dieting” thing has gone on far longer than I ever expected. As mentioned, I had seriously underestimated my starting weight. An ordeal that I expected to be over within ten months, has now dragged into month fifteen. I anticipate that I still have another five (plus) months to go. The deceptive part, is that even if I am “finished” in six months, I am not truly finished. This is a permanent lifestyle change; six months down the road I will have to start worrying about maintaining the weight loss – not just about how to kick start it.

The problem with weight loss for the clinically obese, is that there is always a substantial risk that the weight will pack back on. I don’t really understand the reasons for this. It is almost like our bodies suddenly became programmed to store additional fat; as soon as the opportunity materializes, our bodies become highly opportunistic. The larger problem is that the weight gain is never equivalent to the loss; it is usually accompanied by an additional 50 or more pounds. I have already realized that I have sluggish metabolism – at 30, a woman’s metabolism declines even more – so in 2 years my metabolism will clinically dead.

Unfortunately I have been down this road before. As a teenager I was fat – after my dad died of an apparent heart attack (he was obese, with high blood pressure), I had a wake up call. During my last two years of high-school, I went through a substantial period of weight loss, just by cleaning up my eating habits and working out constantly. I think I was more hardcore back then – cleaning up my eating habits was actually a literal period of starvation. I started this present ordeal by cutting back to 1000 calories a day. In high school I was eating far less than that on a daily basis. I worked out a lot, and it became a sickness. I really had no idea what I was doing, but it worked (or so I thought). The weight was pouring off, and I was finally getting the body that I had wanted. I didn’t matter how I did it, just as long as I got it done. Let’s face it though – 13 years ago, I don’t think we knew as much about eating healthy as we do now. Most people really did believe that low calorie diets were the only way to loose weight. That’s why the mentality is so engrained in us now.

At around the same time I knew several others who were going through the same ordeal. I had a co-worker who was using Weight Watchers, a friend who was using weight loss pills, another friend who was using starvation…and so it goes…It was all about getting to the end goal the fastest way possible. We each considered it healthier to be thin, with little consideration as to the unhealthy ways that we were achieving our goals.

Now here is the thing: we all gained our weight back. And then some…

None of us considered the long term aspects of weight loss. Basically speaking, which ever method you use to loose weight, is the method that you will use for the rest of your life in order to maintain that weight loss. Maybe there is a point at which you can splurge for prolonged periods; maybe your body does hit homeostasis after awhile; mine never did.

This is one of my biggest fears; I wake up daily with that gnawing fear of weight gain. I would love to go back to the freedom with which I used to eat. I would love to not work out tomorrow and maybe the next. Or get up in the morning, and not have to plan out my caloric intake for the day. Oh, and I would love to not feel guilty if I decide to not work out, or eat chocolate....TBC...

Talking Fat #6: A Tale of Two Scales

As I’ve mentioned, I spent nearly eight months in complete ignorance of my weight. In retrospect that was probably a good thing. Had I known my starting weight, I likely would have driven myself crazy. I guess I am still shocked by what I likely weighed when I started. I never felt that overwhelmingly obese. Actually, about a week ago I found out the BMI of a 5’5 female weighing 300 pounds – I was politely told by a website that I was “extremely obese”. Thanks. Ok, so it hurts to hear, but it’s true – I was.

Having been active, and unimpeded by my weight, I just never felt like an ‘extremely obese’ person. Except on a plane – in a plane seat, I felt like a beached whale. In order to avoid embarrassment, I sucked it in so I never had to ask for a seat belt extension. I was riding dangerously close to extension territory though. Other than those ill fated plane trips, I was a thin person stuck in the body of an ‘extremely obese’ person.
During the initial weight loss, I actually took guidance from my clothes to the degree of my success. Starting at a size 24-26, it seemed to take no time at all to get down to a size 18. When I hit 18, it was like a mini party – I swore (and still do) that I would never cross that 20 threshold again.

Ignorant bliss can only last for so long. In July 2008, I finally had to let the walls come *shattering* down. After a heated discussion with the guy I am presently seeing, I knew I had to find out the real number (don’t worry, he’s supportive – I was being the difficult one!). But here is the problem – weight loss, especially extreme weight loss, is a highly emotional battle. There are times that you feel as though you are going nowhere. There are the moments that the fight is just too much to deal with, and the body and mind enter into a state of emotional exhaustion. In July I really thought I was well below 200 pounds. I had to be. I figured I was close to my initial goal of 180 pounds (which was actually supposed to have been crossed in April 2008).

I hated our bathroom scale – a relic that is actually ten years away from being classified as an archaeological artefact. So the following day I stumbled into Walmart (good old Walmart). Apparently scales have changed in the forty years – I was confronted by a number of models, each with fancy gadgets and various programmable features. Since my goal was strictly to weigh myself, and not to program it to play movies, make margaritas, or reach lunar orbit, I finally settled on a basic digital model. Hell, I thought digital was pretty high-tech.

So that night was the grand unveiling – finally finding out the result of 8 months of hard work and emotional upheaval….
And then there was the shock that followed…
Ya. So as it turned out I didn’t weigh 180 pounds. I didn’t weight 200 pounds. Noooo…I was still over 210 pounds (and I’m not saying by how much). Now by July, I had already gone down a bunch of sizes….huh…surely it had to be wrong.
So I tried our old, archaeological specimen scale. And it had the exact same weight. huh. Not good.
I’m not going to claim that the fallout from this discovery was pretty. I’m also not going to claim that I handled it like a trooper. Oh no. I certainly did not handle it well. But that is when I knew that my starting weight had been well over what I had expected. WELL OVER (with emphasis). There were tears. There was stress and anxiety, and that nagging voice in the back of my mind that kept saying “You aren’t finished yet, not by a long shot!”
I am the first one to tell people not to live by the scale while they are dieting. You can’t. It’s too much of a mind game. For instance, I know that my weight naturally fluctuates by at least 10 pounds on a monthly basis. One day you step on the scale, and it reads 5 pounds heavier than it did the previous day. That little shock is then followed by an emotional breakdown. The longer you are on this path, the harder it is to accept those moments.

As a result of that initial weigh-in shock, I did live by the scale for quite awhile. Every day, multiple times a day, I would check the number. There was method to my madness though – the whole reason my weight got out of control was because I had quit weighing myself in 1999. Now I must never let my nerves get the better of me. Even if the reality is too difficult to deal with, it is better to know than to return to blissful ignorance. While in London, my one splurge purchase was a scale – I had to know that my weight wasn’t going back up (especially since I was living off sandwiches, and Tesco sandwiches are like the holy Mecca of unhealthy – thanks mayo)

A couple of nights ago, I was again confronted by the stress of a weight fluctuation. I cross referenced the two scales and realized there was a five pound discrepancy. Granted, five pounds isn’t a lot. But when you are working towards moving down, watching it go up is really disconcerting. So basically it is the battle of the scales- the old relic versus the newer digital one. The newer digital one is reading a lower weight, and it is the one that I will favour. And you know what? I’m ok not knowing which one is right – just as long as the number starts moving downwards again.

I have been praised for my conviction to this process, and the changes that I’ve made. Unfortunately you also reach a point that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done – all that matters is how far you have to go. Right now I am in one of those lulls. It is so close, and I could care less that I have gotten here – all I care about is the moment that I finally arrive. I know that I stand in a relatively tumultuous place. I fear the day that I return to London, and am too tired to work out on a routine basis. I won’t have a grill, so I won’t be able to cook as healthy as I have been. The fear of returning to the Old Leanne, is overwhelming, and yet I haven’t fully arrived at the New Leanne. Oh if only this was somehow simple!

The day after I weighed myself for the first time in nearly 10 years...I wasn't a happy camper :-p

Talking Fat 4: Food Part 2

I am going to breakdown my intake based on what I eat now – though it hasn’t changed much from the beginning, except that I am up to about 1500 calories a day.

Breakfast:
1 yogurt (either the small cup of Yoplait, Danon, etc – 35-40 calories)
½ banana
Either a slice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter, or a cup of Special K cereal with a small amount of skim milk

Lunch:
This is fairly dubious. Sometimes I will eat a cup of soup (low sodium), sometimes its coffee & a muffin at Tim Horton’s. Sometimes it’s the other ½ of the banana. Other times it’s another slice of toast with peanut butter. And sometimes I don’t quite get there.

Dinner:
Salad – sometimes I garnish it with a small quantity of cheese; sprayed with salad spritzers (15 calories per 10 sprays!)
1 boneless/skinless chicken breast grilled (seasoned with either Mrs. Dash, bruschetta sauce, or whatever else I’m feeling)
Broccoli…lots and lots of broccoli (sometimes served with cheese)
Usually another vegetable (beans, corn, whatever)
I will also grill a pork chop periodically, but generally chicken is the food of choice.

Snacks:
Rule of thumb for snacking: cut it out at least 4 hours prior to bedtime or your body won’t have time to process the calories. Wasted energy.
These are the snacks that I regularly indulge in:
- coffee & muffin at Tim Horton’s – seems unhealthy but you have to select the “right” muffin; there is a lowfat blueberry muffin, and a wholegrain raspberry muffin. If I have eaten either of these, I adjust my caloric intake accordingly.
- Fruit: following my workout, I will often have a piece of fruit (generally apples or oranges). Remember though – fruits are high in sugars, and even though they are good sugars, they are still sugars.

Other Tidbits:
Because I am a snacker I have gotten into the habit of carrying candy – you have to be careful because candy can be detrimental – I choose sugar free werther’s, baskin robbins candies, etc. It gives me the illusion that I am eating a tasty and unhealthy treat. Ya. it’s about the mind games.

Water – often times you are hungry because you are thirsty. Drink lots of water.

Don’t buy it – the simplest lesson I learned: if you don’t buy it, you won’t have it to eat. Once I stopped buying cookies, chips, donuts etc, I couldn’t eat them!! So simple.

Don’t eat out every day…or even on a regular basis. Sheesh.

Oh and actually read the label on the foods you eat – look to see if there are trans fats, what the caloric breakdown is, etc. And cut out the frozen dinners. I don’t care how lean cuisinish it is…learn to cook for yourself.

Eating healthy is huge commitment. Initially I allowed myself a weekly splurge – on that day I ate everything “bad” that I could possible find. After a few weeks of doing this, I realized that it wasn’t worth it. I felt sick afterwards; and then I realized that for every day I splurged, I was adding on one or two days to this whole ordeal. Sure I have times that I don’t eat healthy – I go out to dinner with friends, there are the big holiday meals, etc. I think what you actually have to realize is that you must accommodate your splurges. I try to be careful – if I am going to have a calorie splurge, I try to compensate by either making sure I do my work out, or I forgo my coffee and a muffin, or do something to try and offset the impact.

Here is the other big thing – I try and stay away from grains, dairy, and starches (which I absolutely love!). I miss pasta, and alfredo sauces but in order to be successful it is just best that I don’t eat them. You need to realize what works for you.

After being on this “diet” for over a year, I do allow myself to eat some items that weren’t originally on my list. I will periodically indulge on chocolate – but I still need to leave it with my mom because I apparently lack self control! Once or twice a week I go to Starbucks and have their molasses cookie (mmmmmm) and a tall strawberries & cream with no whip – on those days, I adjust calories.

Oh…and green tea. I drink a ton of tea…copious amounts. You may hear that green tea is the “secret” to weight loss. I don’t really buy it – you need to drink A LOT of green tea to be able to boost your metabolism – but it is a zero calorie alternative to straight water, so I drink it.

Ultimately though, it is about finding out what works for you, and developing your own tricks and mind games. And about making healthy decisions. These are not short term changes and they aren’t applicable just for the duration of the so-called diet. When you make the decision to change your eating habits, you must maintain those changes. You can’t just eat healthy for a year and revert back to old habits. It’s hard, but it is worth it. I think anyway!

Talking Fat #3: Food for Thought (PT 1)

Food…mmmmmm. Food has been my longest and most consistent relationship. There is nothing wrong with food – unfortunately there is a difference between eating “good” food and eating empty calories that just fill you up for the short term, but ultimately lead to binge eating.

Ok, so when I started this, I was clueless how to eat. Actually, I still am – I’m just not as clueless as I was then. Make sense?

Alright, so anyway – when I got fully underway, sometime in late November 2007, I decided initially to begin by eating 1000 calories a day. Ya. That’s not so smart.

Let me clear up a big fallacy about calorie cutting. First off- one pound is equal to 3000 calories. So let’s pretend that you do absolutely nothing one day – you don’t breathe, move, your body doesn’t do anything on the cellular level, and you use 0 calories – but you somehow consume 3000 calories. You have just consumed a ton more calories than your body needed – and you gain a pound because you are doing to burn those calories up Now this is a virtually impossible scenario, because you always burn calories, even while asleep.

Same deal – now let’s pretend that you eat one thousand calories, but expend 3000. Well, simple math: you have a 2000 calorie deficit. Tomorrow you eat another 1000 calories, and expend 2000 calories – you have another 1000 calorie deficit. A pound is lost over the course of 2 days.

These are very simplified scenarios, and it is nowhere close to being so cut and dry, but it is an illustration of how all of this works.

I have read a lot of different theories on weight loss - some people say that 1 pound a week is alright – some say 2. I hold true to the belief that your body will tell you if you are being an idiot.

During the first couple of weeks that you diet, you will loose a fair amount of weight – the beginning is really easy – sometimes deceptively so. You will find yourself in the this amazing euphoria, which can make it really difficult further down the road, when your weight appears to be stuck. I will discuss the middle, during another blog entry.

Now here is the problem with purposely trying to create a substantial caloric deficit: starvation. Your body eventually has a couple of different responses. It will either enter starvation mode, which means that it will hold on to every single calorie possible – which can ultimately lead to weight gain. Another response is muscle eating – you might loose weight, but that weight is coming from the muscle that your body can’t support – not really a good thing. Another potential risk of substantial calorie shortages (and associated weight loss) is rapid weight gain – you know the people who have lost copious amounts of weight, and then suddenly gain it all back (almost overnight) with an additional 50 pounds? Ya. This is partly why.

But you still do need to have a calorie deficit to loose weight – just not a substantial one. What you need to do is work out your BMI and what it would take to maintain your weight at your given height. So if you are 5’4 and weigh 120 pounds it will take far fewer calories to maintain yourself (depending on activity level) than it will take someone who is 5’4 and 280 pounds.

Alright so I started by severely cutting my caloric intake. And to be honest, it wasn’t that bad (but again, you shouldn’t do it). In order to keep track of my intake and output, I registered on http://www.fitday.com/; a site that does all of the calculating for you!! Nice deal.

K..I'm leaving it there for now...talk soon ;-P