Food Rage

         I had a bit of a breakdown in Boots yesterday. It was about crisps and how their makers are slowly choking the life out of the populace.

            To explain; I downloaded the myfitnesspal app for my phone under recommendation from my cousin. We started out okay – I was overjoyed to discover that the ham salad sandwiches I make at home are about 30% less calorific than those sold in most sandwich sections at retailers. However, we quickly had a falling out; I was informed I could only have 1670 calories a day. This, I’m sure, was in part due to my slightly critical description of my lifestyle [‘mostly sedentary’] and the rather ambitious goal I set myself of losing two pounds a week – weight, not money. Two of my sandwiches come to 464 calories, over a quarter of my daily intake. I consoled myself in the knowledge that one was breakfast and the other most of lunch and I could still afford a comfortable dinner.

            And then I went to Boots. Normally, I get a packet of crisps and a drink with a sandwich – possible two sandwiches previously but I stopped that from the get go of this program. It can’t be a fizzy drink/soda either, as stated before, so I had moved on to some sort of Lucozade product. Here’s a tip; a 500ml bottle of Lucozade has more calories than Chad’s Ham Salad Wonder Sandwich. A lot more. Coke doesn’t, but as I’m sworn off that I grumpily grabbed a Ribena something – which is only 16 calories light than the Wonder Sandwich – and moved to the crisp section. This is where it all went wrong.

            A 50g packet of Walkers Deep Ridged Flame Grilled Steak crisps have a calories-to-weight ratio of approximately 7kcal:1g [328 calories/pack]. I couldn’t believe it – the flavouring dust on them must be pretty much stodge! The Sensations were close to as terrifyingly deadly to a mostly sedentary office worker and after tearing down the display and threatening the manager with one of the crisp racks I was arrested for harassment, violent behaviour and attempted GBH.

            That didn’t happen. Instead I sulked about it and finally found a pack of bacon flavoured Shapers Wafers which held only 99 calories and got a wrap out of depression as well.

            I didn’t eat the wrap, instead lunching slowly enough to try and trick my stomach into thinking it was full – going on the basis that it apparently takes 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it’s started getting full, which is pretty slow for an electrical signal but I guess with all the crap in my system it might have to circumnavigate a couple of unexpected/barely conductive obstacles.

            And then myfitnesspal put some effort into making it up to me for starving me to death and causing near hysterics in Boots. After fiddling around with the other half of the diary system – the ‘exercise’ bit – I’ve found it is ridiculously easy to exercise. For example, my leisurely walk home from work burns 286 calories while the tiny jog I hoped to institute as a daily measure burns another 154 calories and that’s before any gym work! So I’m slightly more cheerful about the dieting/exercise idea as it appears I can break into slowly and still get some gains out of it. I can just about fit one packet of crisps into my daily menu if I wanted to, but I think I’ll skip it; if I get used to not having them hopefully I’ll never crave their calorie-injected, deep-fried and humanity destroying snackiness again.