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.