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Portion Control

Delving deeper into the recurring theme of the Disaster Known as Young Adult Life   and the consequences of excessive food intake, I stumbled upon some not-so-startling revelations.

Everybody knows that America is getting bigger every day. And no, we’re not talking about increasing territory… we’re talking about how each person is just taking up more and more of the existing land we currently have…

Does anyone remember that incident a few months back when a ferry capsized in the Hudson (or was it the East?) River with many elderly people on board? One of the points I remember from that article was that the maximum capacity of the boat had been determined by an average weight of 140 lbs back in the day… nowadays, apparently, the average American weighs 20 lbs. more than they did (was it 20?) years ago. Let’s just say the capacity of the boat was 50 people… that means, when that rating was determined, the maximum weight capacity of the boat was implied to be 7000 lbs. At today’s average rates, that’s 6.25 people less that the boat could have safely transported than was thought.

Anyway, before I get too side-tracked, the fact that I’ve started to descend down the precariously slippery slope towards obesity (According to BMI indices, I am just one point shy of being obese and am considered definitely overweight. =P) has made me seriously think about what I must do to counteract these effects! (Other than the most obvious… exercise! =D)

And the great culprit to the expanding waistlines of most of America… is the Double Cheeseburger with Bacon, Super-Size fries and a Diet Coke.

Obviously, the diet coke is going to offset the ill effects of the massive double cheeseburger with bacon and the unhealthily large dose of french fries! =)

But seriously, in the past twenty years (just shy of my lifetime) , portion sizes in America have exploded out of control. With the increasing reliance of restaurants and take-out, compounded by people’s misguided beliefs that “more” equates to “better”, serving sizes have ballooned out of control!

All-you-can-eat-buffets, super-size everything. It’s craziness! Somewhere in the past twenty years, the concept of quality must’ve been replaced with quantity.

Here’s a simple chart depicting how some every day items have increased in the past twenty years (data courtesy of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ) :

Is that nuts or what?! Things have gotten bigger anywhere from 70 to a ridicumalous 678%!!!

I guess we don’t realize it because we’re so accustomed to seeing everything so big . And bigger is associated with better.

But here’s why I think I’m throwing the eat-everything-on-my-plate philosophy out the window and resorting to only eating about 1/4 to 1/2 of the food that I’ll find placed before me on a day-to-day basis.

I don’t want to look like this in a few years!

Otherwise, I might get so hungry that I might have to eat you ! =P

Yes. Everything in moderation. Including such things we don’t tend to think too much about like portion sizes at meals! =)

After Work Antics!

Today was a fun filled day (or rather, yesterday was!).

Not only did I see Cars   (which I thought was really good and made me look forward to getting back to LA in 8 days to go for a cruise along the Pacific Coast Highway! =P), but I also got to spend time with some friends feeling and acting our real ages (actually a lot less… haha! =P).

We started off by having dinner at Peanut Butter & Co.  which was a bit random. I had  The Elvis (”A grilled peanut Butter sandwich, stuffed with bananas and honey. Try it with bacon for that extra indulgence. Long live the King!”) and a glass of skim milk for dinner. It was whack.

Then we wandered around trying to get in touch with my MIA roommate. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to hang out . Between my traveling and his crazy work, I probably see him on average once every 1-2 weeks! I almost didn’t see him for over a month straight! But no such luck.  Nuts!

We then somehow wandered into the floating Apple cube store on Fifth Ave. I must say, though I’ve never owned a Mac and haven’t really used one, I’m a huge fan of their recent round of commercials starring “Mac” and “PC” and had a blast playing with the cool gadgets. I think I’m going to get a Mac next time around because they’re so sleek and sophisticated! =P

Anyway, I think most people thought we were nuts as we amused ourselves for over an hour till almost midnight using the Photo Booth software. =P

Along with the pictures above, here’re some of the better ones from the evening (we e-mailed nearly 30 pictures to ourselves from the countless ones we took!):

Four-in-one?

Mmm… “I like to eat small children”… “Wait, I’m not a small children!” (Ok, we’re weird! =P)

Boo! =)

I think that peanut butter sandwich for dinner was making us all hungry… =P

Some more weirdness.

Yay! A cool pencil effect portrait of our silly group. =)

And finally… what I’ll be like today at work… not quite there. =)

What a wacky weird evening. I felt like a kid in a candy store or something. Wait. That’s not good. No candy for me! But regardless, running around (even though my legs have felt like jelly all week and nearly buckled under me countless times since the recent Return to Bear Mountain ) and just having a good time with friends. Thank God for friendship , eh? =)