November 12
It is easy to overspend way above and beyond your means and not realize it. I can’t tell you how many people I have worked with who are totally baffled by their weight. They only overindulge one measly day per week, but weigh much more than they want or think their eating should be earning them. They are “good” the other six days, so they think that that should be enough. But, depending on how indulgent they are…it just may not be. When they can see the actual math, it gives them the tools they need to at least understand how they are ending up at the weight they are and to direct their weight to where they want it to be. Sometimes it is just this simple, and not all kinds of complicated medical, hormonal or metabolic issues.
Case in point: I had a client who binged one day per month on a two liter bottle of soda, a large bag of potato chips and a 1/4 pound bag of peanut M&M’s. Other than that, she was pretty OK with her diet for the weight she wants to be. When you take a look at that math though, that once a month unreconciled binge completely accounted for the extra weight she wears all 365 days. When she saw this on paper, she changed to diet soda, bought a 2 oz. bag of her favorite chips and an individual king size package of M&M’s and was able to calorically pay this off each month, no sweat. Still not a great habit, clearly, but manageable.
I have a Thanksgiving handout in my office that I show clients all the time. They see it and agree that it isn’t especially over the top, that it seems pretty typical – for Thanksgiving, at least. They are universally shocked when I reveal that it is an 8,200 calorie day. For me to fit that into my week at my weight, even if I do 45 minutes of cardio per day all week, it still really does mean that I need to eat 587 calories per day to reconcile it completely within the same week – and that doesn’t even account for all the years that I ate more or less that way for four days and couldn’t even bend my fingers by Monday. I don’t think the average person really “gets” how much difference one day can make in their ultimate weight. But that works both ways. One really good skinny day can balance off a lot of extra calories too. The point is to be an educated consumer and know what to expect.
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