It's So Easy to Overeat

My wife and son had some fast food for dinner. It wasn't today necessarily; this particular post refers to a dinner they had awhile ago from McDonalds. My wife tried the Angus Mushroom and Swiss Burger; it's a 1/3 of a pound of meat with mushrooms and swiss cheese (surprise!), onion, pickles, and tomato with a large sesame seed bun.

Seeing as I'm obsessed with nutrition information from restaurants, one of the things I love about McDonalds is that they are very forthright with their nutrition information. By going to their nutrition site, you can easily look up info on particular items or even create a "McMeal" that will compile nutrition information for your meal in total.

My wife's burger and medium fries came to a tad over 1100 calories. She had unsweetened tea, so she had a non-diet soda...scary.

That was for a burger and fries! It's a meal order...you can get this by a number at the menu! Many people who think they need to cut back or are overweight may justify their meal choices in part by comparing it to what other people are having. My assumption used to be that if you can get it by a menu number at the restaurant, how bad can it be? Other people must be getting it too.

But when you stop to think that your nutrition information is based on a 2000 calorie diet, and that most people should be getting somewhere between 1600 to 2500 calories a day (depending on your activity levels)...1100 calories is a significant portion of the caloric intake for the day.

Once in awhile this probably isn't bad. But when it's a habit, you can see how one sandwich with an average side apparently can easily push your calorie intake numbers.

It's not necessarily a "fast food" thing. Going to the nutrition side and getting a cheeseburger and medium fries (and tea or water to drink for 0 calories) comes to only 680 calories. For a meal, looking solely at calories, that's not too bad. I say looking solely at calories because it's not a panacea of nutrition, but if we ate a perfectly balanced meal for every meal every day of our lives then our lives would probably feel pretty boring.

In my little world that is a major problem for overeating in America. Our portions and calorie densities we fit into those portions are so easy to overdo. If you're careful it's not so bad. I gradually had cut back my once-a-week McD's breakfast to just having a McMuffin; that was a 4 ounce sandwich (believe it or not, it's really about 4 ounces despite its size) that came to 300 calories.

But if you have a yummy sausage, egg and cheese McGriddle? 560 calories. The McSkillet Burrito with sausage? 610 calories. The Sausage burrito isn't bad...300 calories. Unfortunately the meal option for breakfast is 2 burritos and a hash brown for a total of 740 calories and 41 grams of fat. If I told the dietitian working with me that I was having that kind of breakfast she's probably shake her head and wonder what was wrong with me. Pre-op, of course. Trying to down that much fat and quantity of food at one sitting would mean that I probably have something off-kilter in my head (the meal in total has 26 grams of protein, though!)

In other words, it's very very easy to eat too much, and relying on restaurants or other people in those restaurants as rulers by which to measure your adherence to being "average" in your eating habits is going to lead you down a road of obesity.

If you want to lose weight you have to be proactive to some degree and start monitoring your intake. So far the best tool I've found for me (aside from the surgery) is to monitor your caloric intake through a journal. It means being organized, it means sticking to your routines of recording things. It's a pain. But for many people it would probably be a real eye opener to what their habits really translate to.

Since having the surgery I now monitor the quantity, not calories, in food. I keep meals to 6 ounces or less. I avoid sugared foods, chocolates, etc, and I have some peanuts during the day when I'm feeling woozed or heading out to do something of some exertion like riding bike or exercising. Just keeping your meal sizes reasonable (especially with the requirement that I try focusing on getting calcium and protein in each meal) can really help keep your calorie count down as a side effect.

But it means having to keep your kitchen scale handy. Seeing as I can't take my particular scale with me, it means prepping most of my meals at home and taking them with me, although I've found that having something like half a Panera sandwich is enough for an entire meal now (even those calorie counts can get rediculous if you have what they sell as a basic meal...the pick two's soup and 1/2 sandwich? Check out the calorie info on their site...)

Restaurants are trying to turn a profit. They do it by giving the public what the public wants. The public wants to feel good about overindulging...the public doesn't word it that way, but that's what they want. So relying on the fast food joints and sit-down restaurants to validate your eating habits? Probably not the best idea.

Anyone else have thoughts or ideas to share?