Fast Food....and worst diet imaginable.

I tried to watch supersize me today. I made it 24 minutes and 58 seconds before feeling like I was going to throw up. I had to turn it off. (I can't watch someone eat that much food and throw it up).

My 2200 calorie breakfast, lunch and dinner diet was the amount an ACTIVE 240 pound woman would need to maintain their weight My actual diet of 3,000 to 3,200 calories was enough to help maintain the weight of a VERY ACTIVE 300 pound person.

However,  it made me reminisce about my past eating habits. I thought I was eating okay, I didn't understand what was wrong with my eating habits when I was eating like everyone else.   After reading all of the books on the obesity epidemic, I am beginning to realize that my problem is precisely eating like everyone else in America.  I was gaining weight, just like the other 30 percent of obese americans and I was doing in ways that almost seems mundane.

Back when I was 60 pounds heavier, I used to eat fast food like 5-6 times a week, at least. I would think nothing more than ordering a 460 calorie spicy chicken sandwich and 420 calories worth of beautiful, greasy french fries.  I always order a diet coke to go with my bad diet choices. It is a good way to pretend that the lard shaped hamburger like substance I put in my mouth was really not that bad.  The sandwiches at fast food restaurants are greasy and covered in sauces and yet, I can pretend that every ounce is just "meat and potatoes", like grandma used to fix.

For breakfast, it was a blueberry muffin and a mocha (this is before I realized I was dairy intolerant).  Unbeknownst to me, my two thing breakfast was costing me 800 calories. And the muffins we never good enough at Starbucks to justify the extra calories. I mean, they are tasty, but not like thee warm muffing that came out of the oven on saturday mornings when I was growing up. There was no butter, no wafting smell of blueberries and dough baking gloriously in the oven. Just a sugar coated blueberry muffin with  an overpriced coffee drink.

I would generally have a sandwich and chips for lunch. Each slice of bread is 100 calories and, when you add the mayo, the cheese and the turkey a sandwich is generally between 400-500 calories. The chips, if you are good and get the small bag (which I totally wasn't) run you 140 calories. So, if I didn't have a snack, my three meals were about 2200 calories, give or take.

The problem is the sweets.....mmmmmmm.......sweets :). I ate decently cruddy stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but those were not (and still are not the important meals of the day.) There is dessert one (that wonderful, beautiful 200-400 calorie cookie that went with lunch. It was fatty and sugary and heavenly to the taste buds and it would buy me satiation until around 3 pm

At three I needed to be really satisfied (no, not in that way.), so I ate a snickers bar.  I pretended they were healthy because of the protein in the peanuts. The snickers bar was another 280 calories. After dinner, it was ice cream, a small cookie, a brownie or a chocolate bar. All in the range of 400 calories and all marvelous. Sometimes, I would add a veer or wine to me dinner for another 125-150 calories.

To put the numbers in perspective. I am 5' 8'' and weigh 4 pounds (like I am ever going to reveal my weight, I am in the healthy range for my height, but like most women, I think I need to lose another 10 pounds). My 2200 breakfast, lunch and dinner diet is the amount an ACTIVE 240 pound woman would need to maintain their weight (See Mayo Clinic Calorie Counter)  My weight never got closed to that high, but I had severe back problems (that still haunt me today), high glucose counts and knees that would often buckle when I walked.  My actual diet of 3,000 to 3,200 calories was enough to help maintain the weight of a VERY ACTIVE 300 pound person.

My retroactive eating diary made me think of two things: 1) Weight itself should not be the issue, what we put in our mouths and how we move our bodies should be. Whether I had been thin (with one of those annoying super fast metabolisms) or 300 pounds, my diet SUCKED. There were none of those green things or red things with antioxidants and fiber goodness. I ate more sugar and fat in a day than I should realistically should be eating in a week. Instead of concentrating on why we all are bigger than we used to be; thereby screwing up our body images and self-esteem, maybe we should concentrate on the utter Suckitude of the american diet.  Potatoes and soybean oil are not vegetables. Beer is not liquid bread and the blueberries in the muffin do not count as a serving of fruit.  2) The first realization, made me realize that I am still eating way more fat and sugar than a normal person should ever consume (but, on the plus side, I have added those fruits and vegetables to my plate.).