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

Competitive Eater "Badlands" Booker is never embarrassed about Eating big! Love the helmet, he's gonna need it for that burger!

A friend of mine related a rather embarrassing but revealing story about eating habits the other day.

She was telling us about a barbecue she has just attended, the host was a large woman (around 300 pounds), we’ll call her “Tracey”

Anyway, Tracey wouldn’t eat much at dinner and weighed all of her food, and avoided salad dressing and seemed to have a very strict almost obsessive diet.

This would make anyone wonder how she could be pushing a 300 pound bodyweight if this is really how she eats.

No big deal so far. So here is where the embarrassing part comes in.

Just after the barbecue ended and everyone left my friend realized she had forgot her purse and went back to pick it up. When she walked into the backyard she found Tracey 4/5th’s of the way through an entire apple pie!

Now that is an awkward moment to say the least!

So, the moral of the story is this. If you feel like you need to hide the way you eat from other people, you probably need to make a change.

Secondly, there is no hiding your eating habits from anyone anyway. Did Tracey really think everyone around her believed that she was as strict of a dieters as she was playing up during the barbecue?

People aren’t that dumb, you can’t pull a fast one on everyone around you like that.

The saddest part is that Tracey obviously doesn’t believe anyone will support her or is embarrassed to ask for support with her eating issues.

In reality most people will support you if you ask for it.

Hiding it from everyone is never going to workout and just makes it an even worse and depressing experience when you do in fact eat.

Eating shouldn’t be something you’re ashamed of, it should be something that is fun, social, and celebrated with friends and family.

This is probably the single greatest benefit of Eat Stop Eat. You never have to give up any of the social events that go hand and hand with eating (and you can still lose weight!)

Anyway, I hope people like Tracey can be comfortable eating in front of other people one day soon. It really just doesn’t have to be that way.

John