Growing up in the 80’s all our mothers were on diet.
ALL THE TIME.
I can’t remember a time when the old duck wasn’t
trying the latest fad. From Fibre Trims to Slim Slabs, and the weekly weigh-ins
at Weight Watchers, the cycle never ceased - nor did the weight gain!
What I remember most about Weight-Watchers was how the
whole family suddenly had to be on diet too.
Let me explain the idea behind Weight-Watchers.
Food is grouped into various categories like starches,
fats, fruit, protein and vegetables. Each food is given a mass equal to 1 unit,
hence every food has to be weighed so that it is 1 unit.
A plump 75kg woman would be allowed a daily
unit-allowance similar to this:
5 units starch, 2 units protein, 3 units fruit, 2
units fat, and unlimited amounts of specific “free” vegetables with popcorn
being one of them!
Suffice to say the 2 fat units where used up in your
morning coffee creamer, and the protein unit was a Lilliputian-sized chicken
breast. Don’t even get me started on the fact that 1 starch unit was a
Provita. No wonder my growth
was stunted and I sprung my first pubic hair at 17.
I am now a healthy 35 year-old man with a BMI of
30+. Okay, that’s obese. I blame popcorn. I was of the
understanding that popcorn was a “free” vegetable.
As the title of this book suggests, don’t believe
everything you think. I some how
doubt that the Weight-Watchers founders actually listed popcorn as a “free”. My
skeletal siblings and I made it up as a survival strategy during the
diet-years. We convinced
ourselves, and mom, that it was “free” so as to avoid malnourishment! As time passed by this delusion
became etched as fact and is now the reason for my roundness.
Throughout my early 20’s I would eat popcorn guilt
free. 1 large box a day. “It’s only air,” I would tell myself,
“I saw it in the weight-watchers book as a free.”
The facts of popcorn’s calorie content are:
1 cup of air-popped popcorn (8grams) is 31 calories. A large box of popcorn is 15 cups or
496 calories. *
This means I was eating 3472 calories too much every
week for 10 years.
Assuming I was living a sedentary lifestyle, the
“free” 3472 calories extra per week for 10 years equates to 241 kg of weight
gain! ** Thank goodness I exercised and didn’t live a sedentary lifestyle. But it does explain my current BMI of
+30!
I
still thank popcorn for saving me from starvation in the 80’s
though!
* www.caloriecount.com
** 3400
calories = 1 pound of fat / 7480
calories = 1 kilogram of fat
