!!!!!!! (or Why One Should Avoid Being a Smug Dummy)

I just had lunch at the Korean place across the street from my office. It seemed like pretty modest fair, and while I left feeling full, I didn’t think I had consumed a huge amount of calories. In fact, I was feeling rather smug when I wandered back into my office, and so I thought I’d revel in my smugness by confirming that I’d had a skinny-fying lunch by tallying up the cold hard numbers.

Here are the facts;
Miso soup (about a cup) – 40 cal
California roll (6 pieces) – 210 cal
Various nigiri sushi (6 pieces) – 360 cal
Total – 610

!!!!!

It’s not that I feel I consumed too much or feel guilty. I think that given that I’ve only had a small brekkie and snack today (I’m not really a breakfast person so I don’t sweat it if I only have, like, an egg and a latte), that it’s not an unreasonable amount at all. It’s just that I had no idea that the tally was so high. In fact, if I had been asked, I would have estimated about half that total amount, and I’m usually pretty good at estimating my caloric intake.

Here are my take-away lessons;

1. It’s always beneficial to check nutritional info, even when I think I know it.
2. Even websites can only provide estimates; there’s a very wide discrepancy when it comes to prepared foods (as one would assume), so it could be very easy to fool oneself (cali roll came in as low as 25 cal/piece, which has to be ridiculous).
3. If I can, I should check the nutritional info before I go out. In this case, I wouldn’t have gotten the combo with the cali roll, or maybe only eaten half of it because I don’t really like it all that much. But the combos were pre-made (for lunchtime rush), and because I thought I was so low overall, I kept picking until the entire roll was eaten. Or I would have gotten the vege Bibimbap (which I love and is only about 400 calories).
4. It’s useful to tally up one’s calories even after the fact, as it provide the information to make better choices for the rest of the day.
   

This last one is a key one for me. I’m a snacker. Usually, my lunches sum to about 300 calories, but then I nibble away for the rest of the day (apples, nuts, dry cereal etc.) and wind up eating a reasonable amount of food (I do not think having only 300 calories at lunch is sufficient to fuel one’s entire day, unless breakfast was enormous). However, today I will limit that as I’ve obviously had a considerably larger lunch than usual.

Ahhhhh… smugness restored.