Who Thinks These things Up?

When I see or hear and ad that advertises, “Save calories doing this”or, “Burn fat now” I pause my entire being as fast as the next desperate person searching for a quick solution that plagues most of us:  get the fat off the easy way.  Sure enough, after further investigation, happiness eludes me once more. It is back to the sneakers, the gym and the never-ending arguments I have with food.    

It is pretty enticing to read that if I eat a fatty burger, complete with bun, cheese and all the condiments my heart desires, but remember to eat a low-fat frozen yogurt afterwards, whether there is room in my stomach or not, I will burn off 85 calories of fat that day.  The article says is all I need is 1,735 milligrams of calcium, and the fat starts burning.  Forget the sneakers and eat more!

Now I am no mathematician, but I have been drinking skim milk for over 20 years.  I wolfed down every fresh batch of Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, to die-for chocolate cakes, homemade pies and pizza with fat-free skim milk boasting at least 1,735 milligrams of calcium.  It is hard to believe that I was saving 85 calories a day from that milk, when I was consuming around 6,000 calories eating all the junk I was eating, and piling on weight with record speed.    Is there anyone out there that believes that if you eat like a pig all you have to do is remember to drink calcium afterwards and you will be doing yourself a favor on the scale?

The same situation exists with salads.  I love garbanzo beans, black olives, and avocados.  The self-imposed rule I made to help me with those calorie-high extras was, “ONE!  Pick one, and don’t eat it again for a couple of weeks.”  Here I sit reading that if I had only eaten avocados in ALL of my salads, I would have burned another 90 calories that day.  Now how come my body is having so many problems understanding this math?

The only calorie-conscious math that makes any sense to me at all was when I recently heard Carrie Lazarus on her Family Health Cast admit that after menopause a woman needs 500 calories less than she used to eat, just to maintain her weight. I flung myself in a chair and kept screaming at myself, “I knew it; I knew nothing was working up to speed anymore.”  Now that math is so much easier for my psyche to believe. 

The old adage, “If it seems too good to be true, it is” hits me over the head with a thud when I start to fall for all the diet propaganda floating around us.  I walk the grocery stores aisles and I cannot believe I am seeing whole-wheat Doritos or whole-grain Chips Ahoy for a choice to “eat healthy.”  Stopping at Dunkin Donuts in the morning for a latte and a whole-wheat donut is not doing a thing for my hips, even if I am choosing a whole grain, and chasing it with calcium.  

One day while driving to work I was listening to how many calories I saved not drinking soda, not eating French fries, skipping pancakes, saying “no” to all the candy I see in a day, and getting at least 7 hours of sleep (we have all been informed that the lack of sleep causes a weight gain); I came up with a negative balance from my 1200 calorie total.  If I am saving all of those calories in a day, why isn’t this showing up on the scale?