Losing it for Louisiana

It's a new year and like many people, I've made a weight loss resolution.  My goal is to lose 2 pounds per week for 8 weeks in preparation for my second marathon in New Orleans.  I started on 01.02.2012 at 133.4 pounds, my record high.


I started using the livestrong.com program "MyPlate".  It's a free service that helps you track your caloric input and output.  Step 1, set a goal.  Setting this goal is an important step, for me it meant giving meaning and a purpose to the plan of losing weight.  It's that first conscious step to making a change in my life.  It was a time to consider whether to gain weight, lose weight or maintain my current weight.  By providing your age, height, weight, your weight goal and your activity level, they are able to calculate your BMR, using the Harris Benedict Formula, and project the amount of calories to be consumed to achieve your goals.  I've found both the website and the free iPhone app have intuitive and very easy to use user interfaces to input my food, activities, and water.  As you input values, it updates your calories left for the day to keep you in check with your daily goal.


What I think is great about this service is that it really makes me think about what I'm consuming.  I've found that this has been a blessing and a curse.  A blessing because it's causing an awareness of what I'm consuming, but a curse due to the frustrations of the nutritional labeling system.  For example the nutritional label from a can of soup.

At first glance, I would think that this can of soup would contain 120 calories; however, there are 2 servings per container.  How many people do you know that opens a can of soup and only eats half the can?  I doubt many people do.  I've found this across many brands, so it must a regulation of the FDA for nutritional labeling.


One evening, in the spirit of saving resources and time, I decided to go to a Schnucks store that was behind my bank instead of driving 1.5 miles to a Trader Joe's.  I went into the store with the intention of getting a salad for dinner that was under 300 calories.  Within the Schnucks store they have a whole "cafe" area dedicated to in-store prepared foods.  I thought, this will be great, they've already portioned them out I just need to read the nutritional labels and be on my way.  To my surprise and frustration I discovered that none of their salads had a food label on them.  I looked at other side dishes that were prepared, again no label.


I considered leaving and going to Trader Joe's without saying anything; however, I decided to ask someone behind the cafe counter about the issue.  The lady was very polite and said, "Yes, they should all be labeled."  I explained that none of them were labeled with the nutritional facts, they only had the listed ingredients.  I told her that it was very frustrating that they didn't provide this information.  I left the store without purchasing anything and purchased my nutrition-labeled salad from Trader Joe's.


As they say, if it's not one thing it's another.  Lesson learned, go with what you know and pay attention to the serving size.  I think the FDA made great strides in modifying the food pyramid, and I would love to see an improvement in the nutrition facts as well.  For example, I would think a viable soup solution would be to either a) generate the nutritional label based on entire can's contents if it has less than 3 cups of contents b) produce smaller cans to fit the 1 cup serving size without increasing the price of each can.  I think in a perfect grocery store, each item sold would be an individual serving with multiple servings in a case.