Day 15

“A serving size on ice cream is like a half a cup. Is that like a joke some guy put on there? "Hey, come here: look what I put for the serving size. Did you see? I just did it as a joke but they're going out like that." You ever know anybody to eat a half a cup of ice cream? "Hey, you wanna go grab something to eat?" "Ah, no. I had a half a cup of ice cream. Ya, a whole half a cup. I just kept eating and eating and eating. I must've had two spoonfuls.” Brian Regan

This quote couldn't be more fitting for me tonight. I decided to take the funny route for a sec and give you a break from the disturbing facts about meat and animal cruelty. But for real, serving sizes...let's talk about that for a minute. They're ridiculously huge, all the time. No one needs a pound of pasta, a triple cheese burger, a 96 oz Big Gulp or a 32oz rib-eye. There are lots of photos out there of what serving sizes looked like in the 50's, 60's, 70's and then now. Our servings today are 2x, sometimes 3x the amount of calories they were when our parents were growing up. We're made to feel that we're getting "more for our money" at restaurants. Sometimes meals from a restaurant feed me over and over to the point that I throw away the leftovers because I'm tired of eating them. We are all overdosing on food because it's so easily put in front of us, and let's face it, sometimes it's really hard to stop reaching for more.

Tonight I decided to indulge in some TCBY. You don't find actual TCBY stores in our area anymore so I took advantage during this lovely trip to New York. Maybe you are familiar with the DIY frozen yogurt places that are popping up all over the place---the first time I visited one was in Hermosa Beach in 2008. I remember telling my friend Debbie "these will be everywhere before we know it." Well, they're everywhere now, even TCBY has changed it's format.

One thing that has always bothered me about these places is they claim to be the "healthier" option, yet they give you a cup like this.

I don't even know how many ounces that is, my guess is at least 16. And that wasn't even the large cup, it was the small one. The did not have anything smaller. Now imagine walking into one of these places with a little kid. He's excited to experiment with this DIY thing. Do you think he's going to give himself 4-5 oz. (the standard kids size cup at Maggie Moo's)? Um, no. He's going to fill that baby up and then ask for M&Ms on top---and he's going to try to eat it all, because it's there. 

The lady behind me had her cup filled to the brim, and I thought to myself "I wouldn't even want to eat all of that. I'd lose interest." And that's the thing---The Law of Diminishing Returns applies to food. We think we need and want so much more than we really do, and we get to the point where we are mindlessly eating portions of this size because we don't want to waste the food, it's already there, it tastes good, and so on. Eventually, we're not even enjoying it anymore, but we're still eating it. They must laugh at me when I fill it just so the yogurt covers the bottom of the cup, and guess what---it's enough! 

I guess the point to all of this rambling is that we really need to start paying attention to not only what we're eating, but how much. If you eat meat, think about the recommended portion size (the USDA says 3 ounces). When is the last time you had a meal with just 3 ounces of chicken or beef? I'd bet my life there isn't a restaurant in America that serves a chicken dish with only 3 ounces of chicken. Same goes for almost everything else we eat. Too much of even the best foods can still be too much, and obviously too much of the crappy foods is even worse.

Serving Sizes-1950 vs. Today...and we wonder why we have obesity problems?

I woke up this morning with a killer sore throat; that's a total bummer when you have a 3 day trip planned to New York in which you'll be constantly talking. I left the house around 7:30am with a large travel mug full of green tea (it didn't help.) I made it into the Big Apple (first time driving into the city, oh boy!) around 9:30 so I had time to grab a NY bagel and OJ before my first meeting.

The meeting was in a building close to The Original Soup Man (NO SOUP FOR YOU) so I thought maybe I'd be hungry enough after the meeting to grab some soup for lunch. I am obsessed with soup these days. Unfortunately the only meatless soup they had was broccoli cheese. Although I love broccoli cheese, I like making it myself because it's sooooo fattening at restaurants. So I skipped the Soup Man this time around.

After driving from NYC to the White Plains area, I ended up at Panera for lunch. I got my usual pick 2, except my Caesar salad was sans chicken. With all of the traveling, Panera has become one of my "go to" lunch spots. You always know what you're getting, their soups are awesome and they have free WiFi. Chipotle is my other one, but their chicken is so good I think going there right now would be too much of a tease. They even make you feel (a little) better about eating their chicken because they try to buy local and organic and all of their chicken is cage-free. So, Panera it is until I can trust myself at Chipotle.

It was a beautiful day to tour the state of New York. After my meeting in White Plains I made my way to Long Island. I drove through Syosset which was a trip down memory lane and very emotional for me. I thought about being a little girl visiting Grandma & Grandpa McTague and Mom-Mom & Pop-Pop Dayton. I passed Christiano's (the storefront has been redone and it's character was sort of stripped away), the bagel place we used to get bagels from whenever we came from New Jersey, and so many other places that reminded me of how excited Kelly & I would be every time we came to visit.

This might sound sad, but something I get really excited about when I travel is choosing where I'm going to eat. I just couldn't decide what I wanted tonight so I got in the car and drove around for a little while. When I passed by the TCBY I seriously considered having just that for dinner. Then I recalled my mom saying earlier today "I've been reading your blog and it's really great, but you need to eat! You barely eat anything." Ummmm, not true. I definitely eat, I've just been trying to curb my 'eating because I love food and not because I'm actually hungery' habit. Nevertheless, I figured TCBY for dinner was probably not the best idea. I found a cute Italian place and had a bowl of minestrone soup and a slice of pizza. I know, there's been a lot of pizza. I've been kinda craving it constantly, and I let myself go with it because I've been so proud of the "no meat" thing. But, moving into week 3(!!!!), I'm really going to try to start making better overall choices. Eating meatless crap is still eating crap. I know that...

2 weeks today without meat. I'm still saying it's not as hard as I thought it would be. I think that's pretty good!