What I Learned from a McDonald's McGriddle

I've eaten a lot of McDonald's breakfast sandwiches in the last fifteen years. I'd hate to know the amount of calories and fat that my body had to process.

I even continued to indulge for many months into my year long quest to save myself from myself. I had a coffee habit from Tim Horton's and, more recently, McDonald's. I often included a breakfast sandwich with my morning coffee.

By coming up with a cup of coffee that works for me at home (a Keurig) at Christmas this year, I stopped going to those places and eating their high fat, high calorie breakfasts. Finally.

So I've been on the wagon in that regard for over three months. But I had my first breakfast sandwich a couple of days ago due to an unusual time management issue. I'm happy to say that I learned a lot from the experience.

Consistently, I have three slices of toast for breakfast made from Smart Bread. It includes fibre but hides it. It seems like white bread when you're eating it but it is more filling. I put lots of fat and sugar on my toast, but at least it has fibre.

I know how long I can last on that toast before getting hungry. The breakfast sandwich has about the same number of calories as my all-toast breakfast but I got hungry sooner. Much sooner. I could feel my blood sugar rise and fall quite rapidly. I also craved more fat, it seemed, after I got hungry again.

This confirms my belief that bad eating breeds more bad eating. That's also why I go in cycles with my diet. If I'm consistent and keep crap out, I crave it much, much less. If I eat something bad, I seem to hunger for more bad things in a physical--not emotional--way.

Thank you, greasy breakfast sandwich. You've taught me well.

I Find that a Lot of People Are Nuts

And now a post that some people will find offensive. Good! (Please come back and read my blog again in a few days after you calm down.)

Dieting Pet Peeve: People who go on fad diets.

I know people who are very smart people in every other aspect of their life who think it's a good idea to go on a fad diet and have the expectation it will change their life. From what I've read, success happens very seldom. Sure, you probably could find people who have been on Atkins diets, for example, for many years and are sticking to it. But are the majority of people who tried it still doing it after a year or two?

A dietary change is something you have to stick to your whole life. I'm guessing that those few Aitkin's success people found something that restricts their calories and is something that they can live with forever. I'm  no expert on the solution for me and I won't be until I find something that works for me for five years or even ten years before I declare success.

When I lost 125 pounds in the 90s I started by using Slim Fast dark chocolate shakes. But then I started reading a little bit and educating myself. I'm a person who puts his trust in science, even if science is imperfect and evolves. People thought, because I was using Slim Fast that I was on a fad diet. I wasn't. I ate the same crap I always did, just less.

I had a chocolate Slim Fast double shake in the mornings. One shake didn't do anything for me, it didn't shut down the hunger so I combined my breakfast and lunch shakes together. I essentially starved all day. I could have replaced the shakes with a couple bowls of high fibre cereal and a multivitim and had the same result.  In fact, I started doing that after I tired of the same shake every day. But I still enjoyed getting my chocolate fix so I always returned to shakes.

Nowadays I eat higher fibre toast or cereal to start my day and try not to let myself get too hungry. You slow down when you're hungry and burn less calories. My goal is to strive for five smaller meals throughout the day and not go overboard on the portion sizes.

If you start a fad diet, ask yourself if you can do this every day until you die. If you can't then the diet won't be successful.

In spite of this blog, friends still ask me if I'm allowed to eat this or that. The people at my clinic, my doctor included, aren't asking me to stop eating anything, even pizza. They're just asking me to eat less of the bad things and include more good things like fruits and vegetables. From what I can see, that's the current scientific thinking on how to approach the diet of overweight people. That thinking may change one day but I think we're starting to get somewhere with our understanding of how the overweight body and mind works.

I also roll my eyes when people do cleansing routines. Until science says it's a good idea, why do people do it? I "cleansed" my colon for two colonscopies and I was no different afterwards. Plus, there were no fifty pound chunks of undigested red meat coming out or found in my exam.

If you're not smart about things, you don't stand a chance on improving your health. You're doctor probably knows best, not the person you work or your odd cousin Harold who swears by something unproven by science.

Science: It's something to believe in!

Review: New High Fibre Kraft Dinner

Like many fat people, my diet growing up consisted of tasty, easy to prepare processed foods. When they invented Kraft Dinner, it immediately found it's way into my regular meals. It was easy to prepare and tasted great. What kid doesn't like mac and cheese?

Like other overweight kids, I could eat a whole box by myself. And I did. I ate hundreds of boxes of it in my lifetime. Even during my first weight loss/fitness transformation I ate it every other night as my supper meal. I'd prepare it with half fat margarine and skim milk. Instead of normal ketchup, I used spicy ketchup so I'd use less of it and give some pizazz to my one meal of the day.

It may be hard to believe, but when you're starving yourself to lose weight, KD can seem like a surprisingly nice reward at the end of the day. (I know better now not to starve myself too much, but to eat a larger number of small meals.)

We still eat Kraft Dinner in my family. With two young kids, it's an easy way out when having to come up with lunch on weekends or even a supper meal when we're desperate for time or ideas. Recently they've released Smart Kraft Dinner, made with vegetable (cauliflower) flour. The package is only 3/4 the weight of other KDs and makes smaller portions. I didn't mind the taste and my family has adopted it.

But yesterday I found this near the floor of my Walmart KD section: "High Fibre Smart Kraft Dinner." It's 200 grams (unprepared) like normal KD (other Smart KD is 150 grams.) It's got a whopping 5 grams of fibre per serving. That means, if a fatboy like me were to eat a whole box, he'd be getting 20 grams of fibre with his 760 calories!

I'm happy to report that it tastes no different than normal KD. The only thing different is a more pale colour due to their wise omission of artificial colours and preservatives--which I think is great.

The extra fibre seems to come from oat hull fibre and chicory root.

My wife suspects it costs more and I regret not checking the price before I bought it (I assumed it was priced the same as other Kraft Dinner, and it may be.) But I would gladly pay a little more for this product.

UPDATE: It costs the same as other Kraft Dinner varieties.