Super-Size or Not to Super-Size your Meals?

This again is another article I found and it blew me away, so I wanted to pass it along:Super-Size or Not to Super-Size your Meals?
Nutritionists say the food industry is dishing out portions that are so big it’s almost impossible not to eat more calories than is in your daily allowance. Restaurants are giving customers what they want, more for their money. If a plate is put in front of you, the psychology behind it says you will eat it all because you paid for it. Just remember you’re not actually buying more food, you’re buying more calories, and in turn a unhealthy body!!!  That’s a real problem.
What does super-sizing your fast food meal really cost you in the end?
7-Eleven: Gulp to Double Gulp Coca-Cola Classic: 37 cents extra buys 450 more calories.
Cinnabon: Minibon to Classic Cinnabon: 48 more cents buys 370 more calories.
Movie theater: Small to medium unbuttered popcorn: 71 additional cents buys you 500 more calories.
Convenience store: Regular to “The Big One” Snickers: 33 more cents packs on 230 more calories.
McDonald’s: Quarter Pounder with Cheese to Medium Quarter Pounder with Cheese Extra Value Meal: An additional $1.41 gets you 660 more calories.
Subway: 6-inch to 12-inch Tuna Sub: $1.53 more buys 420 more calories.
Wendy’s: Classic Double with Cheese to Classic Double with Cheese Old Fashioned Combo Meal: $1.57 extra buys you 600 more calories.
Baskin Robbins: Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, Kids’ Scoop, to Double Scoop: For another $1.62, you’ve added 390 calories.
Do you realize for $8.00 more you’ve bought yourself an additional 3,620 calories. WOW! In other words by switching to a smaller size when ordering, not only will you save on calories you’ll save money too, and most importantly your life!!!
Side note, with the holidays fast approaching and I will have less free time, I am going to start to post my blogs every other week from now on, at least till the first of the year!   :)

Tips to help you around Halloween time:

My best advice is stay away from the candy aisles I use to love Halloween time just for all the wonderful yummy candy that was out at this time of year, every time I went to the store I would go down the candy aisle and pick up several bags of Halloween candy (no not to pass out to Halloweeniers it was for me to eat, hello now I see why I got so fat!!  LOL

Here are a couple different articles I found to be helpful, (I didn’t not write them I just thought they were good so I am passing them along to you all)

 12 tips on How to handle Halloween:

1. Buy the bare minimum of candy you think you'll need for trick-or-treaters.
2. Don't open the bags until the night of Oct 31st.
3. Buy candy you're not crazy about.
4. Offer trick-or-treaters small toys, stickers, pencils, erasers instead of candy.
5. Give out Healthier Treats - for example granola bars, sugar-free gum, and individually packaged portions of raisins.
6. Don't Ask Your Kids to Hide the Candy. Set a good example for your kids, model moderation, not deprivation.
7. Don't Get Too Hungry. It's much harder to resist candy when you're hungry.
8. Sip a Warm Beverage - Keep your hands and mouth busy while you hand out treats on Halloween night by sipping hot tea, decaf coffee, apple cider, or light hot cocoa.
9. Plan the Perfect Halloween Night Dinner - choosing a dinner that is high in fiber, and includes some lean protein and a bit of fat, so it will take some time to digest.
10. Avoid Boredom - People often end up munching mindlessly when they're bored. So keep busy Halloween night by making plans with family, friends, or neighbors.
11. Give away the leftovers the day after Halloween.
12. Make the Candy You Do Eat Last Longer, put a handful of your favorite candy bars in your freezer so that when you do enjoy a piece or two, it will last longer and you'll have the chance to truly savor the flavor. It takes twice as long to eat a frozen candy bar as one at room temperature.

Make wise choices. We've already established that you will probably not avoid all contact with candy this holiday, so know exactly what you are choosing when you reach into that jack-o'-lantern. One mini candy bar has around 80 calories in it, between 3 and 5 grams of fat, and is so small that just one would not satisfy 99 percent of the population. Some wiser choices, for around 50 calories, include:
Two Hershey's Kisses®
Two Dum-Dum® lollipops
Three Mini Tootsie Rolls®
One Nerds® mini box
Ten pieces of candy corn
Two small Laffy Taffys®
Two Jolly Ranchers®
One Junior Mints® mini box
One Mike-n-Ike® mini box
One small York® Peppermint Patty
We realize that the difference between 50 to 80 calories seems rather negligible, but as most of us might indulge in more than one serving over the holiday, those calories can really add up.
Some of the more popular Halloween candy has too many calories to be included in any healthy diet:
Twizzlers 1 treat size pkg.= 45 calories
Almond Joy 1 snack size bar = 90 calories
Milk Duds 1 treat size box = 40 calories
Butterfinger 1 snack size bar = 100 calories
Milky Way 1 snack size bar = 90 calories
SweetTarts 1 treat size pkg. = 50 calories
1 Tootsie Pop 1 pop = 60 calories
1 Tootsie Roll 1 small roll = 13 calories
Have a safe and low calorie Halloween

Some of the many excuses I have used over the years :

Some of the many excuses I have used over the years have been:

~~“this extra weight is my baby weight from giving birth to my kids“ (but when your kids are 14 and 20yrs old ya just cant justify it as being “baby weight” any more)

~~“oh I have water retention from my period, that’s why my pants don’t fit anymore”  (well NOT all month long, hello) 

~~“It’s the style of pants, they are just cut differently then they use to be, that’s why they are tighter on me now” 

~~ “I will never be a thin person because I am just big boned, it‘s the way I was made”

~~”It’s not my fault, no matter what I seem to eat I gain weight, weather it is a carrot stick or a piece of chocolate cake, nothing works for me”

~~” I must have a low metabolism, or a thyroid issue because I can just look at a piece of pie and gain 5 lbs”

~~“I like myself they way I am, I don’t need to loose weight, I am happy with who I am”

~~ “It’s in my family genes to have weight problems, so therefore it’s not my fault, and there is nothing I can do about it”

These were all just ways of fooling myself over the years and trying to make myself feel better about what I was doing to myself.  What I have found out now is the old saying is so true and all these excuses were and are just crap "Nothing taste as good as being healthier feels"  Roy and I both can attest to this statement!!!

Well I think I have finally gotten there, 17 months later!!! It's about ficking time!! LOL

I think I am at the place with my new healthy eating were I am comfortable enough with my addiction  to food that I can eat on  occasion some foods that don't fit into my daily healthy eating. A couple weeks ago we had my use to be favorite Krispy Kreme doughs (which by the way are 200 calories, 12g fat, 10g sugar, actually not as bad as I thought they would be)  a couple weekends ago, and I know I am fine to not fall off the wagon so to speak and go into a crazy binge.  I say my use to be favorite because they use to be my fav but since I haven’t had them in so long my taste buds have changed now.  The doughnuts were good   but not as wonderful as I had thought they would have been, and when in the past I could down 3 of them in one sitting, I could only make it through a half of one and had to put it down for a bit before I finished it, it was so sweet and rich.  This makes me happy because I know now I don’t need to Jones for them because they really were not as great as I had thought they were going to be, therefore it wont be something I wish I could eat often again.  We have also gone out to Red Robbin a burger place and I got a blue cheese burger with fries, again before if I ate something like that when I was “dieting” in the past I would have thought that would have thrown me off into the mind set of “well I screwed up so I mine as well eat what ever I want all weekend long” and then the way that use to go in the past is the weekend would turn into Monday, Tuesday, and hell by Wednesday, the week is half over by then so I mine as well restart the “diet” next Monday.  
It felt good going out to eat and having the doughnuts knowing I was in the right place in my life to NOT let it throw me off balance this time.  I feel like this shows me I am and can continue to do this forever!!!  Again this is another reason when I say I am not on a diet but I have changed my eating habits forever, because as said above if I was just dieting, I would fall into the mind set of “oh well I screwed up again I will restart a different day” and in the mean time would feel like I need to gorge myself with everything I could get my hands on.  When you actually go into the weight loss thing with the mind set of your plan is you want to change your eating habits forever  opposed to just going on a diet to just loose some weight, you just think differently about food in general.  You will learn over time you can eat some of the items that made you unhealthy and fat to begin with on OCCASION and be fine with it.  For me I feel my food addition was so great that’s why it took me 17 months to be at this place, that I felt safe enough to have a bit of these foods again.  You all know I have said many times before what worked for me was to completely stay away from these “trigger” foods till I knew I could handle them  without them throwing me into a life of hell all over again by spiraling out of control.  Again this shows me how strong I am.  It also showed me some of those foods I use to drool for really are not as good as I remembered they were, because my tastes have changed so much over the last 17months.   It's a good day!!!