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A weird thing keeps happening to me and my friend (who also happens to pay attention to calories in vs out) at some of the local coffee shops that we frequent. I routinely get served MORE food than I order.

Love these things, about 60-80 calories each! Effin' awesome

As many of you know my only rule for weight loss is calories in vs calories out, and the way I lost all of my weight was to stick to this one rule (37 pounds lost so far).

Half of this rule requires me to have at least an educated guess at my calories in. So when I order a coffee with a milk and sugar I have a pretty good idea how many calories are in that coffee. And I like to have something sweet with coffee so I order 3-4 timbits to go with it (which are about 60-80 calories each). And this is where it gets weird.

Even though I’ll only order 3-4 timbits, the person at the counter will give me 4-5 and sometimes even 6. This doesn’t sound like a big deal and they probably think they’re doing me a favor, but in reality their effing up my weight loss progress (because I can’t resist eating them all…which is why I only order 3-4 in the first place)

Each one of these little balls of heaven are between 60-80 calories so I pay close attention to how many I have with a morning coffee so I know how many more calories I can consume at lunch/dinner or whenever I eat again.

Every time the server gives me an extra 2-3 timbits I end up eating an extra 100-150 calories I wasn’t planning on.

This brings up an interesting thought experiment about what is socially acceptable when it comes to eating and food.

So far you and I and most people would agree that it’s perfectly fine to serve someone MORE food than they’ve ordered or paid for (getting stuff for free is almost never a bad thing)…But imagine if someone did the reverse.

Picture this:

You walk up to the counter and place the following order: “I’ll have a large coffee with 2 creams and 2 sugars, and 5 timbits”

and the server looks at you and says: “how bout I give you a small coffee with no cream and a sweetener and 1 timbit”

This obviously would be completely unacceptable (even tho it might actually help you lose weight)

Ironically we live in a society where it is perfectly acceptable to help overfeed people who are overweight or trying to lose weight (and thus make their weight gain worse and crippling their chance to ever lose weight), but it would be completely unacceptable to deny serving food to people who clearly could afford to drop a few pounds.

Messed up.

John

The Claim: Certain foods cause you to burn more calories digesting them than others

Answer: FACT

Protein actually has a slightly higher thermic effect than carbs or fat. In other words it takes a bit more energy to digest and metabolize protein. But this effect is minimal and will never help you actually lose body fat.

The thermic effect of protein might add up to at most 10% of the food eaten. In other words, it would be eating 1000 calories in order to burn 100. This is a pointless road to travel if your goal is fat loss.

Just eat less total calories to burn fat, and don’t bother concerning yourself with the composition of those calories.

John

As you may or may not know I don’t believe there is such thing as a good food or a bad food…As far as I’m concerned there is just food.

Is this a good or bad food?

When I make this sort of statement the common reaction I get is something like this: “surely it’s not healthy to eat candy all day long compared to fruits and veggies and lean protein.”

This is a false premise for the following reason; Eating any single food all day isn’t good for you (and it’s not the claim I am making).

For example you couldn’t exist eating only tomatoes all day any better than you could eating potato chips all day. But I’d bet 100 out of 100 people would suggest tomatoes are a ‘good’ food and potato chips are a ‘bad’ food. This isn’t an argument about the goodness of a food, it’s an argument about lack of variety.

The point here is that you will never encounter a situation when you are forced to choose one food alone to eat for an entire day or longer. This is an interesting thought experiment, but it will never happen in real life…or at least you pray it will never happen.

The other reason I say there is no good or bad foods is because of volume or quantity.

If a potato chip or candy is a ‘bad’ food, does that mean even 1 chip is bad? Or one piece of candy?

As with any food the devil is in the dose, not the food itself.

The following two statements are scientifically correct and demonstrate why it’s impossible to label something as good or bad without considering quantity, and variety of other foods.

a) 1 bag of potato chips isn’t going to cause any measurable health problems, however it would be impossible to survive eating potato chips alone.

b) 1 tomato isn’t going to cause any measurable health problems, however it would be impossible to survive eating tomatoes alone.

In both cases you cannot survive. You will need a variety of other foods to survive…so which is the good food and which is the bad food? The answer of course is neither, because neither a potato chip or a tomato has enough nutrients for a human being to survive.

The point is that you and I require a certain minimum variety of food and nutrients in order to survive and avoid deficiency.

At the end the day food is just the sum of its parts (macro and micro nutrients). Overloading your diet with any one nutrient is going to cause problems. Conversely striving to eat a variety of food is probably the best option for ensuring that you get all of your required nutrients.

Hence my position: There are no good or bad foods…there is just food.

John

Today is one of the biggest eating days in north america. It’s the super bowl celebration Eat-a-Thon.

I’m going to one our favorite local sports bars with some buddies where we will indulge on all you can eat chicken wings, pizza, nacho’s, beer, and all other forms of sports bar/pub food.

Tomorrow and Tuesday will be a lower calorie days to keep me right where I need to be.

Nothing special, just accounting for today’s overage with a couple days of lower calorie eating.

The key thing is to pay attention to the degree which we can all overeat in one day vs undereat.

Obviously the lowest amount of calories I can eat in one day is zero. Since my 24hr BMR is about 1900 calories, that means it will take me a full day of fasting to compensate for overeating by 1900 calories.

I’m guessing I’ll eat about 3500 calories today, so that’ll put me about 1600 above what I needed for the day. So tomorrow and Tuesday I’ll shoot for an 800 calorie deficit both days and by Wednesday I’ll be back to even.

John

Food is one thing all people have in common…let me re-phrase that…EATING food is one thing we all have in common…and the similarities seem to end right there.

What Are You Eating Over There?

It’s very hard to find two people who eat exactly the same diet. These are all the factors that make up your diet:

1. # of Meal per day (meals, snacks…feedings whatever)

2. Beverages

3. Alcohol or not

4. Cooking style and habits

5. Food selection (limitless combinations of food)

6. Time of each feeding

7. Location (country, city, region)

8. Social events

9. The company you choose to eat with

10. How Much Food You Eat

As you can see there are many factors that go into your daily eating pattern and it’s impossible for a nutrition ‘expert’ to tell you how to structure all of this.

One of the major shortcomings in most popular diets is a set of unrealistic rules that usually ask you to control all of these variables (and probably more that I haven’t listed)

It is simply impossible for most people to change all of these things, and you shouldn’t have to. It is entirely possible for you to lose weight and reach your body shaping goals without radically changing this entire list, except for item #10.

In fact, #10 is the only one you’ll ever have to pay attention to for weight loss. And for muscle building you don’t have to pay attention to any of them.

This is why I find it odd that people are so curious as to what other people are eating. I’ve had many people ask me what I eat. And the answer is pretty boring. There just isn’t any magic to food…it’s just food. It tastes great, it’s great to share with friends and family at social events…but after that, there isn’t much it can ‘do’ for you.

Just remember it’s not what everyone else is eating that matters, it only matters what you are eating and if you’re happy with it.

In the spirit of the title of this post I will throw it out there….”What are you eating?” Please answer in the comment section, and be honest.

I’ll start:

Last night I had 12 chicken wings with half bbq/half suicide sauce, after that a friend of mine brought over some home made pizza (awesome) and I had a few slices of that (mini slices)…I had a hot chocolate and italian wedding soup as well (for lunch)…this morning I’ve had a coffee with milk and sugar and 4 sprinkled timebits (so effin’ good)

John

Listening to people talk about food can easily be misunderstood as listening to someone talk about a relationship with a significant other.

Cookie Monster Knows Exactly What He Wants From Food!

People use many of the same words when they describe how they deal with food and with people.

We talk about struggling with ‘balance’ and indulgence, and becoming anti social and letting other people influence us too much.

We talk about the emotional attachment becoming too much and dependency building to the point where we depend on the food (or the other person) for our source of happiness and fulfillment.

We expect food and a special diet or way of eating to do too much and are constantly let down when it doesn’t produce. This is no different than placing too much expectation on a relationship or another person close to you who simply cannot be your sole source of support and happiness.

I think part of the problem we have with food is a lack of self reliance and other forms of support.

If you listen to someone who is struggling with weight they will talk about food as if they are in an abusive relationship.

They’ll talk about struggling on a daily basis to do ‘what is right’ and feel guilty and terrible about themselves for each time they ‘cheat’ or make the ‘wrong choice’.

This is simply way to much pressure to put yourself under, and this is partly the fault of clever diet/nutrition/food/fitness marketers using scaremongering and marketing speak to create a culture of fear and ‘risk’ associated with the ‘wrong’ foods and the ‘wrong way to eat’

In short, you might be caught in an abusive relationship with food. Where it’s almost impossible for you to do anything right.

Are carbs good or bad? Is fat good or bad? What kind of fat? How much protein do you really need? What about Glycemic Index? Meal timing? Is breakfast really that important? Are you a terrible person for talking someone else into eating a few french fries with you on a night out? Are they a terrible person for getting you to eat some ice cream when you were trying to be ‘good’?

Can you imagine if this were the pressures that a relationship placed on you? It would be miserable and impossible.

To be faced with dozens of rules on a daily basis that defined if you were a ‘good person’ or not.

I think we all need to step back from food and see it for what it is. FOOD. Let’s stop giving food power over us that it doesn’t deserve.

Eat what you like, and try to eat a bit less of it if you want to lose weight.

Describe your relationship with food in the comment section (if you like)

I’ll start:

I freakin’ love food. All kinds of food. I haven’t yet met a food that I don’t get along with famously. I would be totally upset if I couldn’t appreciate and eat all the foods I love. Every now and then we party really hard while watching the game (chicken wings, pizza, beer, burgers and such on the weekends at the pub), but we get back to normal the next day and I never regret the parties. I also super appreciate it during holiday and family dinners (we party pretty hard at these events too)

I don’t miss it when it’s gone for a short while (fasting), and I appreciate it when its around in all of it’s tasty forms.

John