Count That Carrot
The importance of counting calories. - even measly carrot calories
|
|
Something's wrong with your scale. You're on a diet but the numbers aren't moving. Maybe it's time to Count That Carrot!
Of all the vices known to man, losing weight is perhaps the most difficult to manage. After all, food can't be avoided. We must eat to live, but like the old cliché some live to eat. With the onset of the 21st Century comes the promise of thinner thighs, rock-hard abs and vanishing bat-wings with superheroes named Olestra, aspartame, and saccharine.
Just about everybody's heard all the latest gimmicks from the 'snake-oil salesmen of the lose-weight-fast world':
"Lose weight while you sleep. Lose 100 pounds in 10 days. New miracle drug. Mega metabolism booster. Eat all you want and still lose weight. Eat yourself thin."
I feel thinner just reading this; skeletal even. And "Mega" could be a viable candidate for the next Spielberg dinosaur sequel.
However, by now we should have all realized that the quickest way to gain weight is to go on a diet. Sure, in the beginning you lose 10 pounds then the holidays roll around and you fall off the weight wagon. You not only gain the 10 pounds back but 5 to go with it. (Not everyone hates fruitcake.) Then spring pops up and as we envision our bodies (still encased in their thermal fat layer from winter) being lodged into that summer thong of yesteryear, we make a massive effort to ditch the excess - and fast. So, off comes 15 pounds just in time for summer grilling; then on goes 25 pounds. It's a vicious circle. So you may ask, "What's one to do?"
One plan of attack is to wise up on the number of calories contained in the foods we eat. One can count fat grams until the onset of world peace - and yes, fat intake is vital to total nutrition. However, unless you are in England, a pound is a pound is a pound, which comes to about 3,500 calories. If your normal calorie allotment is 2,000 calories per day and you take in 2,010 calories then the 10 calories will be stored as fat - even if they are derived from an innocent carrot. Of course, you'd have to pig-out on that extra carrot calorie count for about a year before it becomes melted into your thighs, but just how innocent is that carrot then?
|
|
|
|
