The Importance of Posting Nutritional Values

I am sitting at my favorite coffee shop, Peet's, sipping a cappuccino like I used to in the old country and eating a pastry. It's my afternoon treat, has been for years. Only that back in Italy they'd think me weird for drinking cappuccino after lunch, without sugar, and in a 16 ounce cup. There are definitely lots of advantages to living in the United States.
While I could always figure out the calorie content of my drink (which I shouldn't drink, but sue me), things were dicey with the pastries. Peet's in Northern California posts the nutritional information on their web site, but the Souther California region has different pastries and I had no idea what I was eating.
You might jump to the conclusion that I shouldn't be drinking coffee and eating pastries in the first place. Well, feel free to think that way. I have found that depriving myself of things I love doesn't help manage my health at all: it just makes me resent health in general and healthy nutrition in particular. In general, I find that I am able to manage what I eat much better if I don't consider anything off limit, letting my cravings build into frenzy.
But back to the original post. As I got into the store today, I saw they had little flyers with the nutritional information I had been looking for. And there I had the best proof possible of the importance of that info.
Here I'll give you a few pairings, and you tell me which in each has more calories:

Caramel Pecan Brownie vs. Oatmeal Cookie

Peanut Butter Cup Cookie vs. Walnut Brownie

Honey Bran Muffin vs. Cherry Almond Scone

Dried Fruit and Nut Scone vs. Strawberry Muffin

Rustic Apple Tart vs. Rustic Cherry Tart

Seeded Bagel vs. Banana Nut Bread

Cinnamon Roll vs. Bear Claw

Ok, now I am hungry... Or I should say: I have an ugly craving. Well, the pairings have the following calorie counts:

384 vs. 410

[yes, I know, who would have thought a cookie could have more calories than a brownie?]

440 vs. 384

[same story - stay away from regular cookies!]

440 vs. 440

[Who would have thought, the healthy sounding bran muffin is a calorie bomb!]

480 vs. 470

[Yessir!]

590 vs. 510

[Go for apples, add 80 calories - more sugar]

450 vs. 420

[Bagels are bad for your waist line]

490 vs. 400

[Yeah, that cinnamon roll packs quite the punch. The fat free cinnamon roll, by the way, is 410 calories]

There are some interesting surprises in the list. The Vegan cookies, for instance, are almost half the calories of the regular cookies, thanks to lower fat contents. Muffins and scones, in general, have gobs of fat in them: 26 grams in the Chocolate Chunk Walnut Scone, 25 grams in the Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffin. More surprisingly, something healthy-sounding like Apple Cinnamon Muffin is a real hog, at 510 calories and 25 grams of fat. The Multi-grain Scone is another horrible choice at 450 calories and 23 grams of fat.

What's the take-away? If you are eating a pastry just out of pleasure, follow these simple rules:

• stick with the low-fat variants (not reduced-fat, that means close to nothing). A blueberry muffin has half the calories of the apple cinnamon version!
• go for small. None of the things on the menu is going to be any good for you, so the smaller the portion the less damage it will cause.
• breads and cakes are generally better than muffins and scones. The exception is coffee cake, which is so laden with fat, it's scary
• try to avoid places that don't post nutritional information. The differences in quantity and quality of foods in one single establishment is amazing. Things that sound the same can have vastly different nutritional contents, and things that sounds vastly dissimilar can end up being equally bad for you.

Recovery and Weight

Well, tomorrow my accident will be exactly a month old. To mark it, I've been following the snowboarders at the Olympics, and I've enjoyed both the competition and the attention it has gotten. Between Seth Wescott, Shaun White, and the marvelous Hannah Teter, there is a lot to watch and get excited about, and I hope the sport will benefit from this rush.

That's of course despite the fact I am grounded for the time being, at the very least until the end of the season. And that I blame snowboarding for my injury. But that's beyond the point.

Whatever happened, it has had an impact on my body. I have been forced to forego my favorite workouts, including cycling, and for a time I thought I would be forced to accept the end of my physical fitness, doomed to a life of premature obesity. (Wait, there is no such thing as premature obesity - because there is no natural onset of obesity).

But, fortunately decades of healthy habits kicked in, and I started working around my shoulder issues. I got myself a shoulder brace (which the doctors strangely hadn't even talked about, let alone recommended) and checked how far I could go.

The results are encouraging. I have enough stamina to do as much cardio as I want (stair climbing, running, elliptical), and I decided I would build slowly after missing out on two weeks of workout. I cannot do any weights, but I can do passive resistance exercises like ab crunches and the like.

While I will have to slowly work my way up on the weights, trying not to bother the collar bone prematurely, I can safely say that I am back to almost normal on the cardio front. For that, I thank a life time of good habits and a great environment.

Why is Exercise So Important in Weight Management?

I was just talking with a friend of mine who is trying to lose weight and doesn't have the time to work out. She has family, cleans up, feeds kids, drives them around, and has what we call a full-time career on top of that. Not an easy life.

Of course, with all that stress and the temptation that comes with feeding teenagers and with power lunches, she is not losing an ounce. She complained to me and she asked me the simplest question:

Can't I just lose weight by eating less? Why do I have to work out?

Well, I had to think about it for a moment. Eating less is great if you can manage to do that, and despite the benefits of a workout, it shouldn't be mandatory. I mean, I know plenty skinny people that never work out - why shouldn't she be able to, as well?

Well, it's not that easy. You see, working out does very important things to your diet and weight management:

• There is the caloric benefit from the workout itself. You can burn 500 calories an hour quite easily, which is as much as a full lunch. Imagine, after a spinning class, you can eat a second lunch with no downside!
• Your body reacts to a workout with added burning throughout the day. Part of it is that you are building more muscle mass, and your muscle is hungry. Much hungrier than your other body parts!
• The cardiovascular stimulus that comes with a good workout stabilizes your metabolism. You are less likely to feel sluggish, especially in the afternoon, when a lot of us overeat to compensate for lack of energy. I realized how important this effect is when a colleague of mine told me she always fights jet lag by working hour in the early morning - the workout resets her internal clock.
• There is a definite effect coming from the beautiful people in your environment. Being surrounded by fit people that are working out makes you want to be more like them, makes you compare yourself to them, makes you watch out more. It's the reverse effect of posting a picture of yourself when you weighed 100 lbs more on the fridge.
• Your workout will frequently come with social interaction. You might meet new friends, and they come with the built-in advantage of having (at least one) healthy habit. You have something in common with them, which is: trying to be a better, fitter you.
  
• If you go and look at the math of it, you realize just how much the workout allows you to eat more: if you burn 500 calories in a workout, that's a full quarter of your daily intake (for a woman, one fifth for a man). Imagine the food you eat, now imagine a quarter more - that's what an hour of cardio does to you!
• Last but not least - as long as you are working out, you are not eating! That makes a huge difference, especially if you end up working out at precisely the time you would dig into that gallon of Haagen Dazs!!
  

Snowboarding (II)

It seems just fair that after stopping this blog with a post on snowboarding, I'd start it again a year later with another one on the same topic.

This time, though, the reason is less fortunate: I was snowboarding in gorgeous Breckenridge when a silly fall caused a shoulder separation. I've been not only kicked off the mountain for the rest of my time there, I haven't been able to move much except to the grocery store to buy calorie bombs. As a result, it's time to lose weight again.

For those of you that don't know and are interested (the rest skip the paragraph) a shoulder separation is what happens when the collar bone slips out of its resting space on the shoulder blades. It looks ugly, it is supposed to hurt terribly (it didn't in my case, thankfully) and it heals pretty much on its own in 6-12 weeks (I seem to be much faster than that).

It's the usual routine: get as much workout done as time and work allow, and eat more sensibly. So far, I managed to get 4 lbs off in just a week without trying and without calorie counting. But if there is anything good that came out of this, it's definitely this restart.