Counting Calories and Grapes

Counting Calories and Grapes

By Bobby Neal Winters

We are coming to the New Year and the time of resolutions.  Many of you will resolve to lose weight.  This gives me a legitimate opportunity to share.

A few weeks ago I shared that I had started a diet.  As one of my former colleagues said, “Again.”  I also shared that I didn’t have any illusions, and I don’t.

But it has been, and continues to be, a learning experience for me, and, because it is my purpose in life, I will share what I’ve learned so far.

This is the Noom program that you may have seen advertised.  It does cost money, but I found the pricing to be fair.  If I were to describe the Noom approach in one word it would be “mindfulness.” As that one word brings up images to me of sitting on the floor in lotus position in loose-fitting clothes and your palms turned upward while you are looking into the distance saying “OOOOOOOMMMMM,” let me expand on it a little.

What mindfulness is is all there in the word itself.  You are mindful of things. To unpack that a bit more, you pay attention to what you are doing.

The Noom program has made me pay attention to what I eat.  It does this by having me log into my phone everything with calories in it that goes into my mouth.  You type in what you are eating; from its database it brings up the item; you then put in how much of it you are eating; and it tells you the number of calories.  I’ve only stumped it once or twice.

I do this within a 2000-calorie a day budget.

In doing this, I’ve learned that most vegetables have hardly any calories at all.  Seriously. There are only 7 calories in a cup of spinach. You could eat 100 cups of spinach a day, but full, and starve to death in the long run.  No, actually, before you starved to death, you would die of methane poisoning--outside in the cold alone because your family would have kicked you out.

By way of contrast, butter and margarine have a ton of calories. Margarine has 34 calories per teaspoon. No, not tablespoon, but teaspoon. 

So, if you eat only raw spinach, you will be full, but you will not not live.  If you eat only margarine, you will live--and get fat--but you will not be full.

So there is a need for a balance.

I’ve heard the words “balanced diet” all of my life, but I’ve not internalized the meaning in this way until now.

In order to log the food, you must measure it.  This gets to be a pain because all of your measuring devices get dirty fast.  However, I’ve learned that a mug is just a bit over a cup, and some of our coffee cups do contain exactly a cup.

I do eat meat, but in measured amounts.  A half cup of ground beef is more than you might think and doesn’t have all that many calories compared to say, butter.  I do eat margarine and butter, but in teaspoon-sized proportions.  And I don’t seem to enjoy my toast less because of less margarine. 

Grapes are good.  They only have about three calories apiece so you can eat twenty of them, and that’s only sixty calories. By way of contrast, a raisin--an allomorph of the grape--has the same number of calories, but is less filling because it has less water in it.

Soup is also, in general, good.  Chicken noodle soup--Campbell’s as I recognize no other kind--has only 120 calories per cup. Have that--and 6 or eight crackers--and that will get you through the afternoon.

By paying attention, measuring my food, keeping track of the calories, and making sure I eat the right stuff to be full, I can make it.  I can even have a Son-of-Baconator every once in a while; but not fries at the same time.

As I read back over this, it kind of sounds like a religion.  Maybe I ought to just sit on the floor in the lotus position and say “OOOOOOMMMMM.”

But I’ve lost more than 25 pounds in less than two months, so “OOOOMMMM.”

Anyway, Happy New Year to you.  As for me, I will be counting calories and grapes for a while.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )