I've found another major restaurant chain that's pretending to be helpful while not revealing a thing about the real nutritional values of their meals. Beware of Outback Steak House! This one is killing me because I love their steaks! But when I went searching for nutritional information all I found was smoke and mirrors. There is an entire web page of supposed nutritional information. But it is actually comprised of suggested menus. If you need to be gluten free, we suggest the following; if you have allergies, we suggest the following; if you need weight loss, low sodium, heart healthy foods or high protein/low carb choices, we suggest the following menus. The only one that even comes close is the diabetic menu, which actually gives food exchanges. But there is nary the mention of calories, grams of protein, grams of fat or any other key nutritional information anywhere on the site. Regardless of whether you follow their recommended menus or not, you still have no idea how many calories you are wolfing down at meal. So we can add Outback Steakhouse to the boycott list!
As for me, I'll share with you what I feel was my first huge mistake. I was a fat child and a fat teen. But when I was in high school, I competed for a college scholarship...and I won. The problem was that I had to pass a physical and I had to fall within a certain weight range. I weighed a hefty 185. The maximum weight for my height in the scholarship physical was 143. Now I have always been a procrastinator, so about five weeks before the scheduled physical, I decided that I had to lose the 42 extra pounds. I felt the most expedient way to accomplish this task was to just stop eating. This isn't as painful as it sounds. After about three days, the stomach stops producing the acids and enzymes it needs to digest food. However, since the acids and enzymes are what actually cause hunger pains, when they stop, hunger stops. After that, it's a piece of cake...very, very, dangerous cake. I was lucky. It was in the days of presweetened Kool Aid and I was downing 4-6 quarts of zero-calorie drink per day. I actually ingested nothing but that Kool Aid for 33 days. This venture resulted in the following:
I lost 43 pounds, which I promptly gained back (plus a few more) after I passed the physical.
I ruined my metabolism. My body thought I was starving it, and from that point on losing weight was incredibly hard. I ate less and gained faster.
I discovered that certain dyes are not assimilated by the body if no food is present in the stomach. On day 32, I urinated orange (orange Kool Aid) and on the last day, day 33, I was mortified to see that I had urinated purple (grape Kool Aid). After this ill-fated episode, I was unable to eat anything grape flavored for years.
My analysis of this method is "Don't Do It!" This strategy only achieved the objective on a very temporary basis and resulted in rebound weight gains! It screwed up my metabolism on such a huge scale that it is still having a detrimental effect on me four decades later. The lesson here is, you didn't gain the weight overnight...and no method exists that will rid you of if overnight. You have to go about it in a way that maintains your health and well being! And we'll talk a bit about that tomorrow.
M. E.
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