The Journey: Even more Eat This, Not That

The fine folks over at Eat This, Not That have released their list of the worst foods in America for 2012. Here are some of the highlights...

Does TGIF stand for Thank God It's Fattening? It might if you order up their Loaded Mashed Potatoes. It's only a side dish but packs an astounding 930 calories. Yeah, that's about 1/2 your calories for the entire day. (article link)

Speaking of half your calories for the day, you'll get that if you order the Veggie Sandwich at Quiznos. That's right... 1090 calories in a veggie sandwich. It sounds like it should be healthy, but it's not. Oh, and it also slams you with a day's worth of fat. (article link)

They say it's good to start each day with eating breakfast. But if it's the Burger King BK Ultimate Breakfast Platter, you'll need to follow it up with a 12 mile run to burn off the 1,310 calories. Hmm... I'm pretty sure it would take me the whole rest of the day to even run 12 miles. (article link)

No one expects chili cheese fries to be healthy. But the Texas Cheese Fries with Chili & Ranch from Chili's seems like it's design to kill you. It packs in 2,120 calories. That's 106% of your daily calories and a week's worth of sodium. (article link)






Still hungry? In the next blog post I'll have a few more dishes to fill you up....

The Journey: The Blog

When I lost my momentum on The Journey, I also floundered in putting up regular blog posts.
At it's height I had about thirty people who would read each post. Now that I'm blogging again, it's fallen to about half that.
So, in addition to getting serious about getting to the gym regularly, I'm also serious about doing my blog posts on Tuesdays & Saturdays. I can't guarantee they'll be interesting or entertaining, but I'll try.

The Journey: A Tale of Two Meals

I love KFC. You know, K-Fry. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yard bird. The Colonel's Cluckers.

Seriously. It's good stuff. You know in the Bible when the children of Israel came up out of Egypt & were travelin' through the desert? We all know that God fed them with manna. But here's what you may not know. If you do a proper exegesis on the original Hebrew word there from the original text, you'll see that the manna was actually KFC biscuits.  Really. And when God sent quail... Yep, it was actually KFC chicken. Original recipe. And when Moses struck the rock & water flowed out. That was actually KFC gravy.

Now, as I've said; I'm not doing any special diet while on the Journey. I have cut out sugar soda and try to limit the amount of junk food I eat. And I know fast food isn't the best for you. But life gets busy, and sometimes fast food is the only choice. So the key is to make smart choices in your fast food feasting.

For the purpose of today's example, we'll assume that you are on the road. I will admit that I've eaten chicken off the bone while driving. In a stick shift. Looking back the only way it could've been less safe is if I had been drunk. Or on the cell phone. Or on a drunk cell phone... But I digress. So, since we are looking to be responsible behind the wheel, we will keep to the boneless stuff.

Our first option is KFC's Crispy Chicken Strips. Those come with the Potato Wedges & a wonderfully fluffy biscuit. This option will deliver 860 calories, almost 1/2 of your daily allotment of 2,000 calories. Option two is the KFC Original Recipe Boneless Breast Fillet. We'll pair that with the Potatoes & Gravy and stick to the biscuit. What's our calorie count here? A mere 500 calories, for a savings of 360 calories. Michelle Obama probably still disapproves of it, but at least we are trying.

Now, I will grant you that eating mashed potatoes & gravy on the road isn't exactly convenient, but it's doable. You will need to use your cup holder. And you'll want to take small bites.

So you don't have to give up hittin' the drive through when you are yearnin' for some tasty vittles. You just have to visit the joint's website and do a little research ahead of time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I hear Fourth Meal calling my name...

The Journey: Not giving up...

It Tuesday. According to my self-imposed blogging schedule, it's time for a post on The Journey. Or maybe I should call it The Good Intentions To Be On A Journey But In Reality I'm Sitting On Bench Eating A Twinkie.
 Well, not really eating a Twinkie. I'm not a huge Twinkie fan. Oh sure, I'll have one if it's offered to me, but I haven't bought one of those yellow sponge cakes filled with cream in a long time. I'll tell you what I am craving though... An Orange Hostess Cupcake. Most of you have no idea what that is. You are probably familiar with Hostess's Chocolate Cupcake. Well, they also make an orange flavored one. It's so good. But they don't have them everywhere. I've found them in Oregon, Arizona & Hawaii. They don't normally carry them in Alaska, but last year Walmart had them for Halloween. I haven't had a chance to check and see if they have them this year...

Okay... Today's post was not suppose to be about orange deliciousness. That was just a distraction. This post is actually the 3rd one in a row that is on schedule after almost two months with no posts. And I probably wouldn't be posting now if I hadn't gotten an email from Tom. Tom is a great guy. He has an excellent blog and is a published author. I highly recommend giving his blog, Wilderness Blues, a read. Tom noticed that I hadn't blogged in a while, so he sent me an email, just checking up on me.

So, an update on the Journey... I made it to the gym a couple of times early last week. My weight has crept back up. At my lowest I was at 315. I'm now at 330. If I had lost what I've gained over the last 6 months, I'd almost be below 300 pounds for the first time in years. And if I had kept the momentum I had I'd be at about 270 pounds.

Looking at the numbers can be pretty depressing. But, as the blog title suggests... I'm not giving up. Not yet.

Oh, and I've checked at Walmart. The orange cupcakes are back. There's no way that this is going to go well...

The Journey: More Eat This, Not That

I mentioned in my last post I'm a big fan of the Eat This, Not That people. So I thought I'd share some more stuff from them.

Every one talks about how healthy green tea is, but not if there's a bunch of sugar in it. The SoBe Green Tea pictured below, for example, packs as much sugar as in 4 slices of Sarah Lee Cherry Pie. (article link)

 Are you running late, so you're just going to have a muffin for breakfast? If you grab a Otis Spunkmeyer Banana Nut Muffin you are looking at 460 calories and 32 grams of sugar. That's the same sugar as a 3 1/2  Rice Krispies Treats. You are better off grabbing a Vitalicious Apple Berry Muffin which will only be 100 calories. (article link)

Are you looking for something easy for dinner, so you grab a Marie Callender's Creamy Parmesan Chicken Pot Pie to throw in the oven? You are looking at 1,060 calories, over half of what you should get in a day. Plus you get sodium equivalent of 8 small bags of potato chips and the fat equivalent of 23 strips of bacon. Instead you can grab a Marie Callender's Oven Baked Chicken and only consume 360 calories. (article link)

Are you thirsty and looking for something healthy? Snapple Agave Melon Antioxidant Water sounds like it's a good choice. Except that it has 33 g sugars which is like eating 3 bowls of Honey Comb cereal. Your better choice is Dasani Plus Orange Tangerine Vitamin Enhanced Water. (article link)

Salads are healthy, right? Maybe some spinach, a little chicken? IHOP's Chicken and Spinach Salad contains a staggering 1,600 calories!! You could snarf down six pancake short stacks and still take in less fat. (article link)

Okay... One final comparison. Headed out to Chili's with your friends? You want something with some spicy so you order the Big Mouth Bites with Jalapeño Ranch. Those four little sliders will deliver 1,540 calories. And that's without the french fries. That's more calories than two Burger King Whoppers.

Bottom line: before you consume, take a look at the details behind what you are eating.

The Journey: Eat This...

I've become a big fan of the Eat This, Not That people. I haven't read any of their books, but I follow them on Twitter and have read quite a few of their articles from there.

I like that they go beyond the obvious in their analysis. Any idiot knows that having green tea is more healthy for you than a soda. But they go much deeper into it...

For example... Let's say you've got a hankerin' for a bowl of cereal. You look in the cupboard... You've got a box of Frosty Sugar Sweetness, a box of Cheerios, or a box of Quaker Natural Low Fat Granola with Raisins. Which one is better for you? Obvious the sugary stuff isn't. And Cheerios doesn't sound nearly as healthy as the Quaker stuff. I mean it's got raisins. And it's low fat. And it's got granola. It's like it was designed by Richard Simmons!! Surely the Quaker cereal is the way to go!

WRONG!! The healthy soundimg Quaker Natural Low Fat Granola with Raisins has 315 calories in one cup. For comparison, a Snickers candy bar only has 275 calories. Yeah, you'd be better off enjoying the candy bar for breakfast.

Oh, and the Cheerios... Only 100 calories for one cup. For reference, here's the link to the article...

And speaking of granola bars... Have you ever thought about what holds them together? That's right, it's sugar. How is that healthy? Okay... what about dried fruit? I mean, it's fruit. How can you go wrong with fruit?!? Well, often times the makers add a bunch of sugar to it in the process. And bran muffins? Made with sugar & refined flour and can have over 400 calories. Lot's of things that we have been told are "healthy" aren't necessarily so. You can read more here...

I've probably depressed you by now, so I'll end it here. But in future posts I'll highlight more fun stuff from the great folks at Eat This, Not That.

The Journey: An Update

It's been over a month since my last post... And almost two months since the I've been to the gym or stepped on a scale. I'm still not drinking soda, and I'm still being somewhat careful about what I eat.

Well, I did go to the gym on Friday. I was only there for about 40 minutes, and did that time on the elliptical machine. I've got a spot in my neck where a nerve gets pinched and it was killing me, so it was a short work out.

And I'm headed to the gym after I finish typing this post for a couple of hours. I've still got at least 120 pounds to lose. I don't watch what eat closely enough to do it just through diet. So I've got to exercise.  Before going to Hawaii back in late April I was going about 5 days a week. In July I went three days a week for 3 weeks.

Work has been busy and I've been working some overtime. But it's not so much overtime that I don't have time for a good work out.

I'm not at a point where I'm ready to declare The Journey a failure. It's only a failure when I give up. And I haven't given up. Not yet...  I've got some ideas for some good posts in the future, so now I just need to get consistent again on blogging.

The Journey takes quite a bit of focus and the past couple of months my focus has been on other issues. But now that those have cleared up, it's time to get back on track.