The Evil Goodness of Theater Popcorn

July 26, 2010 Leave a comment

At about 9:15 last night, I shut off the computer and headed to watch the season première of Mad Men and the latest installment of Entourage.  It was three hours after I had eaten dinner, and I wanted something to snack on while I watched.  I grabbed a bag of 94% fat-free microwave popcorn.  Then my eyes caught a glimpse of two large bags of theater-style, pre-popped popcorn that Mrs. Spidey had bought for our daughter’s end-of-school party.

The theater style popcorn was too good to pass up, and I soon found myself in our basement with a large-sized serving bowl full of this evil goodness.  75 minutes or so later, with both shows under my belt, the bowl was empty.  I felt a strange mixture of tasty satisfaction and oily dietary calamity.

1,030 Calories and 57g of Saturated Fat of Evil Goodness

I know theater popcorn is bad for me.  Don’t we all?  When I plan to see a movie, I will eat a lighter meal in advance, making room in my daily calorie intake for the popcorn.  But with that oily aftertaste in my mouth last night and the “tasty satisfaction” quickly disappearing, I vowed to remind myself today just how evil this popcorn is.

The fan was first hit back in 1994, when the Center for Science in the Public Interest published an exposé on just how bad movie popcorn is from a health and nutrition perspective.  The Center updated the report late last year, and found, for example, that AMC, which owns the theaters we frequent, has a whopping 1,030 calories and 57 grams of saturated fat in the 16 cups of popcorn in its large popcorn — without any buttered topping.  According to CSPI,

That’s like eating a pound of baby back ribs topped with a scoop of Häagen-Dazs ice cream—except that the popcorn has an additional day’s worth of saturated fat.

I’m still stunned.

This means, even if and your kid or significant other split a large popcorn,  you end up with 500 calories and 28 grams of saturated fat.  That’s 25% of the daily intake from a 2,000 calorie diet and 50% of those calories from fat.  The popular Zone Diet recommends 30% of calories from “good” fats, which would be 600 calories in a 2,000 calorie per day diet.  Eating 1/2 a large popcorn would provide you with 250 fat calories, nearly half of the daily allowance.  Although coconut oil is among the healthiest of fats, I still don’t think anyone recommends getting fat in this way.

By the way, a large tub at AMC also has 580 mg of sodium.  So when you split a tub, you get 290 mg, which is 12% of your daily recommended intake of 2,400 mg.

The popcorn I ate last night, purchased at our local Dierberg’s, is from the C.R. Frank Popcorn Company here in St. Louis.  The bag holds 2 pecks, which I’ve learned is 4 gallons or 64 cups.  I won’t bore you with the math, but trust me, based on the nutrition facts, that 16 cups (the size of a large AMC popcorn) or 25% of the bag results in 700 calories, 40 grams of saturated fat, and 1,300 mg of salt.  Calories and grams of fat are less, but salt is more, and, like AMC, this popcorn generates 50% of its calories from saturated fat.

320 Calories and 2.67g of Saturated Fat for the Same Amount

Microwave popcorn, on the other hand, is indeed better.  However, watch out for serving sizes.  Labels can be confusing.  In our pantry we have the Pop Secret 94% fat-free buttered microwave popcorn.  One bag has 2 servings or 12 cups.  If we gross up to 16 cups (again – trust me on the math), we get 320 calories, 2.67 g of saturated fat, and 1,120 grams of sodium.  So, you get fewer calories and only 7.5% of your calories from fat, but also get an awful lot of salt to go with it.

I did this research for myself to show once again how bad this theater popcorn can be.  I learned that microwave popcorn also has its nutritional challenges, but is better.  Will I stop eating popcorn at the theater?  Certainly not, but at least I can’t complain that I don’t know how evil it is.

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Our New Las Vegas Vacation Diet

July 20, 2010 1 Comment

Mrs. Spidey and I are finishing up a four-day vacation in Las Vegas. We’re staying at the new Aria hotel in City Center, and I’ll have more on that in Wednesday’s travel post.

We like Las Vegas. We’ve been here about once each year in the recent past, usually while our kids are off at summer camp.  Over the years, we’ve stayed at ten different hotels on the strip. We like sitting by the pool and relaxing. We like gambling a bit. We like the food, and we like the spas.

While we aren’t newbies and know our way around, I know we are more like the average tourist.  We aren’t high stakes gamblers, preferring slot machines over table games.  We aren’t in for the weekend from Southern California solely to party.  We don’t stay out often much past 1:00am, and, if we do, it’s because I’m in the casino playing lower denomination slots.

And, like most other average tourists, we’re watching both our bottom lines and our waist lines.  I think this year we may have figured out one easy way to do both and enjoy ourselves.

(As a quick side note – if you think you are overweight and want to feel good about yourself, come to Las Vegas.  I think all the stock footage the networks use when talking about obesity was shot here.  If you don’t think Americans, on average, needs to lose some pounds, come to Las Vegas.)

Not eating is not the answer to watching your finances and your calories.  On our trips, we have eaten at some very good and very expensive restaurants. We’ve eaten at Alex at the Wynn and Sinatra’s at the Encore. We’ve also eaten at both Capital Grille and Morton‘s here, and the restaurant up in the Eiffel Tower at Paris. We also ate at the now-closed Commander’s Palace in about 2005, when it was still at the Alladin, which has since morphed to Planet Hollywood.

Our new Las Vegas Vacation Diet has five parts:

  1. Eat a big breakfast at a buffet sometime after 9:30.  Take a few pieces of fruit or cookies with you for snacks later.
  2. Hit the hotel spa/gym in the afternoon for a workout.  (This may be the most critical step.)
  3. Snack on the free apples, oranges and drinks in the spa.
  4. Eat dinner at about 7:oo or so at a buffet.  Again, take a piece of fruit or two for later.
  5. Walk up and down the strip, avoid taxis where possible.  (For example, you can’t really walk to Rio, the Palms, or Hard Rock.)

No, I’m not nuts for including two buffets as part of a diet.  First, I’m not assuming you will lose weight in Las Vegas.  That’s stupid.  Of course you won’t. The challenge is to limit how much you gain.  Second, if you have willpower and stop when you are full, buffets at the better hotels do have good food and good variety.

Thanks to the good people at Harrah’s, there is also a great economical way to make this happen.  They’ve introduced something call the Buffet of Buffets.  For $40 (after joining their Total Rewards frequent player program – which is free), a person can eat at seven different buffets under the Harrah’s umbrella for 24 hours.  This isn’t three meals, this is legitimately unlimited.  You can slip in any time for a dish of ice cream or banana, although be wary of long lines to be seated, as you can’t avoid them.  You do not have to stay at one of their hotels to be eligible.

We went to Paris for brunch on Sunday morning and purchased our 24-hours worth there.  (We did pay $10 more per person to cut the ridiculously large line.)  We strategized to eat breakfast a bit later, so we’d have time on Monday morning to eat breakfast again within the 24 hours.  We later had dinner at Planet Hollywood and breakfast Monday at the Flamingo.  Of course, if you want to have lunch as well, you can.  We were still full from breakfast nearly to dinner time.

You need to factor the spa/gym cost into your equation.  Here at the Aria it’s $30 per day ($80 for three), but that includes the drinks and food noted above, plus sauna, steam room, whirlpools, towels, robes, etc.  We recommend a workout followed by at least 90 minutes of relaxation up in the spa.

That nets to $70 per person per day for food and exercise, not including tips.  We challenge you to eat three meals here for under $70 per day without going to McDonald’s or something else you can find back at home.

We didn’t follow this diet two days in a row because, honestly, we can’t take buffets that many times in a row for dinner.  As noted above, we do like good restaurants.  We also like breakfast buffets, which is why we chose to start our 24 hours in the morning.   However, if you can take buffets at every meal, then, thanks to Harrah’s, you can utilize this New Las Vegas Vacation Diet for your entire stay and watch your bottom line and your waistline.

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No More “Skinny Jeans” or “Fat Jeans” For Me

July 12, 2010 Leave a comment

Over the past week, I have been to Nordstrom twice to shop for clothes for myself.  Two visits in a week is well outside my comfort zone for clothes shopping frequency.  I am a “surgical shopper.”  I know what I want, go to the store, find it, and leave.  I’m sure the salespeople at Nordstrom call me “an easy mark.”  Fastest commissions they’ve ever made.

I visited Nordstrom in order to retool my wardrobe during their annual sale.  Timing of the sale was perfect for me.  Two pairs of my dress pants recently wore through in the wallet-pocket on my right rear, and my dress shirts are fading and ripping.  Given that items are roughly 33% off during the sale, and I had an opportunity to shop before the sale officially starts, this was the time to retool.  I had avoided shopping long enough.  I bought a sport coat, three pairs of dress slacks, two pairs of casual slacks, five dress shirts, three casual shirts, two belts, nine undershirts, and some dress socks.  I’m eagerly looking forward to the cathartic exercise of cleaning out my closet to make room.

In the process of buying all these clothes, I decided to remove the shackles of the “skinny jeans” and to end the specter of the “fat jeans.”  No longer would I worry about the waist size or the inseam or the collar size.  Instead, I bought clothes that were comfortable and looked good.  Nothing more.

Size Doesn’t Matter Anymore

As I write this, I’m admitting an ugly secret among many men.  Like many women, we have our “skinny jeans” – the pair we always want to fit into when we can finally lose those last five pounds.  I’m also admitting that we have our “fat jeans,” the jeans that are comfortable but that we never, ever want to wear, because wearing them means we desperately need a diet.  As long as the fat jeans are too big, our weight is o.k.

(My wife informed me this evening that “skinny jeans” are now a specific type of jeans.  Who knew?  I’m pushing forward with this posting anyway.)

The fact that men have skinny jeans and fat jeans probably isn’t that much of a revelation.  Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry so vainly transformed his 32″ Levi’s into 31″ Levi’s just to say he wore the same size as in college?

Any person whose weight fluctuates probably has a wardrobe that ranges in size.  But the desire to wear the skinny jeans and avoid the fat jeans often results in stuffing ourselves into clothes that are uncomfortable.  It results in bloated closet shelves with items we can’t and don’t wear.  I know I have been guilty of that.

I made the decision to eliminate my skinny and fat jeans for four reasons:

  1. I just had my annual physical and the blood tests came back with great results.  I may be heavier than I want, but I’m healthy.  I’m proud of being healthy.  It’s o.k. to be the clothes’ size I really am.
  2. Life is too short to worry about fitting into this or fitting into that.  I’m not obese, and I am not in health danger from my weight.  I want to be comfortable for the rest of my life.
  3. Having a closet that only has clothes that fit you and that you wear is something unique and special.  I’ll credit Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness Project for that revelation.
  4. It dawned on me that, no matter what I think, when I’m wearing stuff that is too small or too large, everyone knows.  Who am I fooling?

We’ll see how it goes.  I’m sure, if nothing else, I’ll enjoy the comfort.

———————–
I weighed myself this morning for the first time in two weeks.  I was at 192.6, which is basically steady, despite seemingly eating too much and exercising too little.  It goes to show that, if you eat smartly, you can still eat a lot and maintain your weight.

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Using Committment Bonds to Lose Weight

July 5, 2010 3 Comments

(Last week, I wrote about “Lose It,” an iPhone app I recommend.  This week, I want to introduce you to a second weight loss tool.)

At the end of 2008, I decided that I needed to lose weight.  It was time.  Clothes were too tight and, as someone who had turned 42 just a few months earlier, I was starting to think about being around for my kids and grandkids, etc.

I had inner motivation to succeed, but I didn’t have any real “kicks in the butt,” such as an upcoming event or, thankfully, drastic health problems.  Through work, I was introduced to a web site called “Stickk.com” and became convinced that this site could offer the motivation that I needed.  In the end, it did.

Stickk.com provides a mechanism through which people like you and me can make commitment bonds.  In a commitment bond, we agree to do something on a regular basis.  It might be exercising, walking the dog, reading to your kids or studying for the bar.  If we don’t live up to our commitment, then we agree to pay a certain amount of money.  Stickk.com allows you to select your goals, the time frame, and your amount donated, and offers options for payment, be it to a charity or to another person against whom you are competing.

In my case, I agreed to a commitment bond (Stickk.com calls them “contracts”) to lose one pound a week for 20 weeks.  If I didn’t stay on pace towards my goal, I would contribute $75 for each week I was behind.  When I weighed myself each Thursday, I updated my weight at the site, and my wife (the “referee”) validated the entry.

The notion of a commitment bond is based on a scientific concept called “loss aversion.”  Loss aversion is the fact that we feel the pain of loss more than we do the joy of a gain.  In terms of weight loss, loss aversion suggests that paying me $75 to lose a pound a week is a great incentive, but it isn’t as much of an incentive as taking away $75 if I don’t stay on pace.

Not convinced?  Think about it this way:

  • I start both diets even, no money gained, no money lost.
  • If I sign up for a reward program and decide to stray off plan, I’m really no worse off.  I never had the money in the first place.
  • If I sign up for a commitment bond and decide to stray off plan, I am worse off.  I’m out money.  I have greater motivation and incentive.

Stickk.com has three other features that are intriguing.

  1. It offers basic community functionality.  This was important to me, because I told friends and relatives about my goals and encouraged them to sign up as a Stickk.com supporter.  Once they registered, they received emails telling them about my success or failure.  Who wants to fail in the eyes of friends and relatives?
  2. It allows donations to charities, but also to “anti-charities.”  If it’s more motivation, you can agree to donate, for example, to the Clinton Presidential Library or the Bush Presidential Library, one of which is likely an anti-charity for you.
  3. When you sign up for a commitment bond, you give your credit card number, so the money is automatically deducted when you fail to miss a goal.

There is no doubt that some payment programs work for people to lose weight.  And certainly commitment bonds at Stickk.com are based on honesty in reporting.  Cheating can, and does occur. But, if you take the commitment bond seriously, invite friends as online “supporters,” and sign up for a meaningful amount ($75 per week would hurt me), I think this is great motivation.

How did it work for me?  I lost 20 pound in 20 weeks with a total payout of $75.  Some days, I exercised morning and evening, just so I didn’t have to payout that money.

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Losing It with “Lose It”

June 28, 2010 4 Comments

In last week’s Diet and Exercise Monday post, I wrote about my theory that making good decisions in what amounts to a cumulative 15 minutes per day is the foundation of any diet.  Of course, this assumes that you’ve got the right food nearby to help you make that decision.  Choosing between a Snickers and a Three Musketeers isn’t going to cut it.

This week and next,  I want to introduce you to two tools that I use or have used during diets and explain why they work for me, and you can see if they work for you.  As I diet or try to stay in shape, simplicity and ease of use/understanding is important to me, and I’ve found tools that help me get there.

The first tool is an application for my iPhone called “Lose It.”  It is a free application made by a company called FitNow and has a solid 4-star rating across over 10,000 raters and over 9,000 reviews.  Lose It is a basic application that tracks your weight, exercise, calorie intake all towards a goal weight and goal date.  I won’t repeat the screen shots here, but their Web site has a good representation.

Lose It works for me because of the following features:

  1. Clear indication of your recommended daily calorie intake, based on your current weight, age, goal weight, and length of time you wish to get there.
  2. Easy entry of any weight entry and a graph showing your progress that automatically adjusts its scale as time goes on.
  3. Extensive database of grocery store and restaurant foods.
  4. Easy entry of any food from a nutritional label.
  5. Easy entry of exercise, either from its database or from a custom creation.
  6. Shows how many more calories you can eat per day based on what you’ve eaten and how much you’ve exercised.
  7. Shows the nutritional value each day in summary, including % of calories from fat, carbs and protein, which are important to those that follow the Zone Diet.
  8. It’s free.

Since I first downloaded it, Lose It has expanded to include an online community, where some of your goals and achievements are shared with others.  The web site also provides more data and more reports from what you’ve put in your iPhone.  I don’t use the site, but it does seem like a logical expansion point.

I know this sounds like an advertisement (and I wish they were paying me!).  I’m highlighting Lose It because of its simplicity.  Weight loss and exercise are challenging to begin with.  Weight loss sites and tools can be so complex.  This application isn’t complex.  It’s also mobile, meaning you don’t have to keep a written log to enter later when you don’t have access to an internet-connected computer.

The simpler weight loss and exercise can be, the more likelier it is that we’ll do it.  Lose It helps with the simplicity.

Next Monday, I’ll introduce you to a tool that helps with the psychology of weight loss by creating some interesting incentives.  See you then.

——————————-

This week was better than last week.  I hit my target and lost 1 pound.  I’m now 1.6 pounds down after two weeks, 0.4 pounds behind pace.  Perhaps if I hadn’t eated that scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and french toast IHOP combo last week, I would have made it.  Boy, did that taste good.

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Lose Weight by Dieting for Just 15 Minutes a Day

June 21, 2010 3 Comments

Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, for just 4 payments of $99.99, you can learn the secrets of the 15 Minutes Per Day Diet.

Or – for the one-time, never-to-be-repeated special offer — it’s free for those who keep reading.

There are probably thousands if not tens of thousands diet plans available on the Internet. I searched Google for the phrase “diet plan” and it returned 4.5 million results. Phew! Some tell you what to eat. Some give you the food to eat. Some tell you when to eat. Other sites simply provide tools to help you track what you eat. In the “sponsored” area for my search were ediets.com, jennycraigathome.com, dietbymail.com, weightlossplans.net, bistromd.com, trimin4.com, sparkpeople.com, and shopperswebmart.net. Trimin4 has the most intriguing headline, suggesting it can help you “lost 18 pounds in four days.” That’s has to be healthy, right? I resisted and didn’t click on the link.

Searching Amazon for the word “diet” in book, yielded nearly 51,000 results and searching “diet books bestsellers” still yielded 165. That’s a lot to make your way through. Me – I need just 15 minutes a day.

Unfortunately, I’ve dieted too much in my life and have lost over 20 pounds on three separate occasions over a span of about 30 years. (That doesn’t include the 20 pounds I lost while an exchange student in Leningrad on the vodka-caviar-potato diet.) With these diets and many more failed attempts, I’ve learned what works for me, and I’m going to share it with you, not for 4 payments of $99.99, but for free.

Before going further, let’s stipulate that the way you lose weight is when you consume less calories than you burn over a long period of time. Let’s further stipulate that exercise, eating regularly, and eating healthy foods are very important. Consuming 1,500 calories a day in ice cream while burning 2,000, just isn’t a good way to go. I really don’t think

So – how do I diet?

I diet to lose 1 pound per week. That’s right – just one pound. Losing one pound a week is easy. There are many tools you can use to determine what calories you need, how many you can eat to lose 1 pound per week, and what calories each food has. But the beauty of 1 pound per week is that there is no pressure and you can cheat quite a bit. Last year, when I lost 20 pounds in 20 weeks, I had pizza and beer on more than once, but I always followed it up the next day with extra exercise and preceded it with some days that I cut back a bit more than normal. On a few occasions, towards the end, I exercised twice the day before weigh-in, but I was able to pull it off. Losing one pound per week is much healthier than having the weight drop off quickly. With one pound per week, your body adjusts along the way.

I lose 1 pound per week by dieting for only 15 minutes per day. Here’s what I mean. 15 minutes is my estimate of the cumulative time each day in which you decide what you are going to eat then or what you will pack to eat later.

I believe that you can get as full on a bacon cheeseburger and fries as you can on a chicken breast sandwich with vegetables. You just have to have the willpower to order the latter and not the former when the waitress comes over. When you stick your head in the pantry for cereal in the morning, do you grab the Lucky Charms or the Special K (both in our pantry right now)? Have the willpower to get a salad at lunch in the cafeteria – just pay and get out there. Once you do that, you’ll eat until you are full.

15 minutes per day is all it takes. Make the right decisions in the 15 minutes you choose what to eat. You won’t eat something you don’t like, but if you make the decision to grab an apple instead of a candy bar, you’re doing well, and that decision only takes about 30 seconds of those 15 minutes. This also creates a mindset that you really aren’t dieting all the time. You are only dieting when the decision what to eat has to be made.

That’s my dieting theory. Really quite simple. Easy weight loss goals achieved through 15 minutes of decisions each day. Good luck.

Next week, I’ll talk about the tool I use to track things.

——————–

In the first week of my diet, I was undone by a) a Cardinals baseball game (bratwurst and beer), b) a charity Trivia night (bring your own crap), and c) an outing for Father’s Day (wings, pizza, chili). I lost 0.4 pounds, although I was down as much as 2.5 earlier in the week. I exercised five times last week, but not once over the weekend. I need to exercise six days per week. That would be better, as would better decisions and better planning for such challenging days in my 15 minutes per day.

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Losing It in Public

June 14, 2010 Leave a comment

I am blessed with an amazing ability. I can eat the smallest amount of unhealthy food and have it instantly appear as fat somewhere on my body that is very noticeable. (How’s that for imagery to start a blog!) I have a co-worker who is, unfortunately, the exact opposite. She can eat an entire plate of french fries with mayonnaise and drink a bottle of wine and not feel the slightest pinch on her clothes. That just kills me.

For the record, I’m 5’6″ and, as of this morning, 194.6 pounds on the bathroom scale. Not great. My BMI is 31.4, which is “obese,” according to the people who say it is. If I get down to 185 lbs. then I’ll have a BMI under 30 and simply be “overweight.” To get to a “normal” weight, I would have to drop to 154 pounds — which just isn’t going to happen. I haven’t weighed that much since ninth grade. So – according to the powers that be — I’m likely to be at least “overweight” until I die.

Everyone finds their own motivation to lose weight. In early 2009, I lost 20 pounds by pledging to lose one pound each week and agreeing to donate $75 to a charity for each week I was behind pace. I ended up losing those 20 pounds and only contributing $75 in total. (For those of you interested, I used a site called Stickk that can help you do this in automated fashion. It’s really a great idea.)

The Look from Bob and Jillian: Not for Me

But during that diet, I realized that the $$ didn’t make the difference. I realized that the best way for me to lose weight is via the Biggest Loser method. No – not with Jillian or Bob kicking my ass. By the Biggest Loser method, I mean losing weight in public. I think a lot of people want to diet in secret. They want to do their thing and then hope that people notice. Doing that, however, is also protection against failing. If no one knows, then they can’t fail.

The $ motivation last year helped, but what really helped was telling people. On January 1, I sent an email to my closest coworkers and relatives telling them I was going on this diet and about the pledge to charity I had made. About three weeks later, I stood on a stage in front of 200 co-workers and spoke about it as well. By then, I had to succeed. Too many people knew. No way I was going to embarrass myself.

I’m not the first one to figure this out, nor am I the last. For example, I found this list of 50 “Inspiring Weight Loss Blogs.” All of the big diets have their own communities, from Weight Watchers to NutriSystem, and some other web sites have popped up like Project Weight Loss. These communities preach support, information and tools, but for me it’s as simple as embarrassment. If I don’t succeed, everyone will know.

It’s now time to go on another diet to see, somehow, if I can reach the coveted “overweight” designation. I want to go from 194.6 this morning to 175. I’m going to lose the weight the same way I always do, but eating fewer calories and exercising more. My diets are nothing fancy, but the kicker of everything is losing weight publicly.

So, going forward, I’ll report here on progress. I’ll see what I can add to this area with a once-a-week post. I hope you’ll watch and comment, so I can maintain the motivation.

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