The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

I’m somewhat less fastidious on the weekends - I don’t count my calories and I don’t stick to my mealtimes. I still listen to my body for signs that I’m full and make healthy eating choices, but I’m a little less aware. Yet, I seem to drop a little weight over the weekends and gain it back during the week. Or perhaps I’m continuing the loss over the weekend then show the gain over the week? Or maybe my scale is messing with my head.

Part of my Traineo review (to be posted imminently) was testing the groups feature, so I set up a fatbloggers group at http://fatbloggers.groups.traineo.com/. If you’re interested in Traineo, come by and see what the groups feature has to offer and take a gander at the full review, which should be posted later today. If you’re interested in seeing what the world of online fitness journals has to offer, hang on to your hats - I’ll be reviewing a slew of them in the coming weeks as part of a review series, and expect to design a feature-matrix chart based on your feedback of what features are important to you. If the review gets popular enough, maybe we can even interview some of the developers..?

Thank you for visiting The Life Ledger. If you enjoyed this article, check out the related posts below and subscribe to our feed.

During my active weight loss period on Optifast, one member of the medical staff told an interesting story about a species of crab called the Mexican Crab. According to the story, this species of crab has an interesting trait - if you put one two in a bucket, they are more interested in dragging each other back into the bucket than attempting to climb out themselves. Real or not, the anecdote illustrates an important lesson in making lifestyle changes - eliminate the Mexican crabs in your life.

I bring this up because I’ve had some pretty nasty bouts with emotional eating lately. Last night, I got home at 10:00pm from work and immediately started emptying our cabinets - bread, peanut butter, pretzels - the world was my oyster, and I intended to gobble it up. Talking to me didn’t work, as I was aware that I was emotionally eating; making alternative suggestions didn’t work, as I wanted everything. My wife finally had to grab my arms and physically restrain me for a moment to give me a chance to get a grip. Afterward, I put all the crap away and had some peaches. I sure love my wife.

People say a support system is necessary to successful weight loss and lifestyle change, but they don’t mention how you have to be an active participant. You have to be willing to listen to advice and share your dilemmas and struggles. You can be your own Mexican crab, dragging yourself down by giving in to the urges and emotional battles, and not seeking support when you need it.

Not being a Mexican crab also means helping others where possible, even if they don’t necessarily want it. I constantly tell people how many calories are in the foods they’re eating - it’s become a joke among my co-workers, but several now read the label of everything they eat. They may still eat the food, but I’m not trying to change their habits - just their awareness. I also talk about food with my parents - recently, I suggested a hormone-free brand of beef, which they said tasted good enough to warrant the extra price. I constantly discuss the “real cost” of food - the impact on our bodies from eating refined and processed crap, and the impact on the environment from growing and processing corn. I have to keep in mind though - being a Mexican crab can be not listening and sharing, or going overboard and prostletizing.

Thanks to my wife, I satisfied my emotional angst last night without resorting to comfort food. I thank her every day for her awesome, positive presence in my life. Thanks to Dave, who began his weight-loss and lifestyle change journey before I began mine, I saw how achievable lifestyle change is - it’s certainly not easy, but the benefits are innumerable and worth the effort. I thank both Dave and my wife for holding me accountable.

And thanks to you, Life Ledger readers, who knowingly or not also help - if you are reading this, you are a member of my support network, someone I am transparent and accountable to. I appreciate your support, and offer the same.

No real change, in neither weight, nor eating habits nor exercise. I’ve gone biking a couple of times, but nothing real consistent. Dave has gotten me interested in running again - it’s been my dream for a while to run in a Disney marathon. Maybe I’ll make that happen in 2008.

It’s interesting, it appears my appetite is linked to the amount of sleep I get - the less I get, the more ravenous I am the next day. Dave figures it’s my body trying to overcompensate for my low energy by seeking energy elsewhere, and that makes sense. It’s tough on those days to remind myself I’m not actually hungry. I actually go against the grain a little - where most people swear by not eating anything after a certain time (usually between 6 and 8), I usually eat my last snackish meal between 8 and 10. People forget that we burn calories even while we sleep - eating something small that late at night helps me not be hungry first thing in the morning. Works for me, won’t work for everyone.

A little site news - the Traineo review is almost complete; I’m hoping to post it tomorrow. I didn’t realize how much effort goes into writing reviews. It’s fun, but it takes a lot more time than I thought. I’ll have more reviews sometime soon-ish, continue the getting started series, and we’ve been working on some actual tools and resources unique to Life Ledger that will start going live hopefully in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

A couple of weeks ago, I figured my 2-day weight gain must have been related to the Chicken Parmigiana I ate for lunch one day. I’m a curious person by nature, and becoming much more interested in knowing the nutrition information for the foods I eat, so I decided to investigate the caloric value for my meal.

I started my search on Olive Garden’s website. Sadly, after drilling through the site map and searching for nutrition information, it appears Olive Garden’s site lists only menu items and descriptions, but no nutrition information. I recalled Consumerist had posted a huge table of restaurants’ nutrition information and checked it to make sure I wasn’t missing it - turns out they came up empty-handed too.

Recalling that Starbucks prints a pamphlet available at stores, I decided to visit my local Olive Garden. I received this one-page, front-and-back pamphlet titled “Garden Fare” that listed only “low fat” menu items:

Surely, a restaurant chain as large as Olive Garden would have more nutrition information available than this paltry disclosure! I called the Guest Relations number listed on the pamphlet (1-800-331-2729) and asked the person who answered the phone if they have more nutrition information available than what’s listed on this pamphlet - no, the Guest Relations person replied. I asked if she had nutrition information available for the Chicken Parmigiana I previously ate - no, she replied, the pamphlet listed all the nutrition information she had available. I wonder what kinds of questions these people are supposed to be able to answer?

Olive Garden breadsticks

So, this pamphlet is all I’ve got to work with. There are some interesting things to glean from it - for instance, the breadsticks that are automatically left at every table is not listed. A glance at calorie-count.com lists the breadsticks with 140 calories per breadstick. Holy crap! Remember that Subway’s 6″ Italian bread loaf has 200 calories, and there’s gotta be at least 3x, if not 4x, the amount of bread in a 6″ loaf. Breadsticks are one of those uncounted calories - they appear, you munch while talking and waiting for the real food. At 140 calories per breadstick, you can’t afford not to count these. Wonder what ingredients are lurking in Olive Garden breadsticks…

Here’s something else that’s interesting - they list Italian dressing, but not the nutrition information. Serving size is listed as 2 fluid ounces, which equals 4 tablespoons. Again turning to calorie-count, I see Olive Garden’s regular dressing is 90 calories per 2 tblsp, or 180 calories per serving. CalorieKing lists Olive Garden’s light dressing at 37 calories per “serving” (I’m assuming this is 2 tblsp), or 74 per serving. Compare this to something like Kraft’s Zesty Italian at 109 calories per 2 tblsp, and Olive Garden’s isn’t that bad. They do define their serving size as twice a normal serving size, but the salads are big enough to share anyway. That is, assuming their serving size of salad is one bowl…

And that Chicken Parmigiana? No nutrition information. The closest I can find is CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, which lists a serving at 793 calories. 1 oz of eggplant is 10 calories; 1 oz of chicken is 47 calories. The chicken pieces were definitely larger than my palm, so I’d guess they were roughly 8 oz each - 80 calories of eggplant versus 376 calories of chicken. Substitute chicken for eggplant in CalorieKing’s listing for Eggplant Parmigiana, and you’ve got a meal with 1089 calories - and that may not even include the pasta! Even eating half of my meal, I consumed 220 calories plus the pasta - no wonder I gained weight two days in a row. And to think I used to eat at least two breadsticks, half of a salad, an appetizer and an entire meal - easily 1800 calories in one sitting.

Definitely not conducive to my new healthy lifestyle.

Update - it appears Olive Garden lists the Garden Fare pamphlet on their site at
http://www.olivegarden.com/menus/garden_fare/. How about giving us all your nutritional information, Olive Garden? What do you have to hide?

I used to drink at least four venti (large size for Starbucks n00bs) quad-shot caffe mochas a week. I have since given those up, but after reading about the “latte effect” on financial blogs like TheSimpleDollar, I got curious again - how many calories was I consuming with each quad-shot mocha? (For that matter, how many uncounted calories do we as Americans consume from beverages and snacks?) Turns out each venti quad-shot mocha was 390 calories (add 100 calories if you take whipped cream). While specifying skim milk drops the calories, most people, like me, just accept the default.

That’s a lot of calories for a drink. Some have even more:

• A venti hot chocolate is 450 (add 100 for whipped cream)
• A venti white chocolate mocha is 530 + 100
• A venti white hot chocolate 620 + 100
• Going for cold blended drinks? Venti fraps range from 260 (Tangerine) to 620 (Strawberries & Cream) - even the “healthy” Pomegranate has 390. Add 130 for whipped cream.
• Even the light blended coffee fraps have 200+ calories.

Adding a tasty treat to your tasty beverage? The lowest-calorie item is the lowfat blueberry muffin, weighing in at 280 calories. Other items range from 280 (plain bagel) to 520 (coffee crumble cake). Some items still have trans fats. Apparently, the nutrition information changes depending on location, so check out the Starbucks nutrition page more accurate info.

Now, before I get slammed again, like I did talking about Subway - yes, there are choices involved. You could choose a smaller drink. You could choose soy or skim milk (soy has more calories and, depending on brand, may have HFCS, by the way). You could choose a different drink - black coffee has nearly 0 calories. The point isn’t the choices you could make, it’s awareness of the choices you do make - how often did I mindlessly visit a Starbucks and walk out with a venti quad mocha and blueberry scone for a total of 800 uncounted calories? Uncounted, because it’s small, not a meal and mostly beverage. Were I not aware of the caloric value of these drinks, how can I make a healthy choice regarding my Starbucks consumption? Healthy lifestyle choices require mindful decisions, which I cannot make without educating myself on things I consume.

So, what about this “latte effect” I mentioned earlier? According to the basic premise, every time I would buy a $4 coffee, I should instead put that $4 into savings. Trent at The Simple Dollar presents a nice breakdown of the impact the latte effect could have:

If you walk into a coffee shop on your 25th birthday and plunk down $4 on a latte, that $4 goes away. If you just took that $4 and stuck it under your mattress for 40 years, you’d just have $4 when you’re 65. But if you took that $4 and put it in an investment that earns 5% (like a treasury note) for 40 years, you would have $28.16.

Let’s say again that you buy a latte a week until your 65th birthday. That’s 2080 lattes, which costs a total of $8,320 (and that assumes the price will not go up for 40 years, which means it’ll be more than that in reality). With that same investment, you’d have $26,590.67 at age 65.

Granted, there’s no direct analog to applying the latte effect to physical fitness - there’s no calorie bank you can places calories into when not spending them on a venti mocha, whereupon at age 65 you suddenly shed 80lbs. There are, however, two important concepts that do apply:

1. Every single calorie I consume counts towards weight loss.
   No matter how big or small - whether snack, meal or beverage - every single calorie contributes to obesity. Just like every single unbudgeted dollar spent keeps you from being rich, every single unbudgeted calorie consumed keeps you from your ideal weight. It is, of course, much more complicated than that, but the basic concept stands - count every calorie.
2. Every single food and exercise decision I make impacts my lifestyle.
   Saying to yourself “it won’t hurt to have a piece of chocolate just this once” is a fallacy - one choice becomes a pattern, patterns turn into habits, and habits become permanent mindless routine. Instead of reacting to a momentary impulse or craving, treat your body like a bank account and budget for that chocolate. Are you going to finger-food party later? Eat greens and fruits for your meals prior and walk an extra mile at lunch. Budgeting your calories helps you keep it real and honest, both with eating and finances. Before, I would charge a treat on my body’s charge card and pay finance charges - “I’ll walk an extra 20 minutes tonight to work off this chocolate.” Now, I budget ahead of time, making choices instead of reacting to impulses.

Now that I budget my calories and dollars, I have a healthier body and money in the bank. Still drinking those Starbucks drinks and eating Starbucks scones and muffins? Head over to http://www.starbucks.com/retail/nutrition_info.asp and start budgeting for your snacks, or apply the “latte effect” to your life and start saving what you’d spend. Your body, and your bank, will thank you.