Annie: I illustrate my own point...

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the KFC Double Down and how, though it's pretty bad for you, it's not nearly as bad as its reputation might suggest.

I talked about how some foods (especially in restaurants) are worse than you might ever expect, and that you should be careful about ordering, because you can never be too sure.

Tonight, Husband took me to the local Joey restaurant for dinner, since Child is at Grandma's.

I examined and deconstructed the menu carefully, deciding and then re-deciding on various menu items. I had it down to the "Chinatown Lettuce Wraps with Shrimp" and the "Ahi Tuna Tacos" -- and, in the end, decided to go for the lettuce wraps, figuring food wrapped in lettuce has to be lower in points than food wrapped in a deep-fried shell.

And a later examination of the nutritional info on the Joey website proved I was wrong, though not by much; I could just as well have ordered the tacos, as the points values are pretty close.

Shock and awful revelation

First off, I have to say I have no excuse as to why I didn't look at the nutritional info online before we left. I thought "I'm a veteran at this, I co-write a blog."

Ha, ha.

Can you see what's coming?

My "Chinatown Lettuce Wraps with Shrimp" were TWENTY-ONE FREAKING POINTS.

Yes, you read that right.

Twenty-one. 21. Vingt et un.

Jesus, what would it have cost me if I'd had the "Hi-Rise Burger" -- fifty?

Nope.

Twelve.

Sigh... I have so much yet to learn.  Boo.

PS: Mae: you can stop worrying about my Flex points now.

Annie: Double Down.

(Photo from KFC website)

Haha, panic not! I didn't eat one!

Mainstream media and Twitter alike have been a-twitter with accounts of ordinary Canadians' encounters with KFC's new, sodium-and-fat-laced "sandwich" featuring bacon and cheese between two deep-fried pieces of chicken. College kids are making trips to KFC and positioning the meal as a test of strength and endurance. It's a lot of hype, all centered around how bad this thing is for you.

But how bad is it, really? It depends on what you count.

KFC Canada's nutritional information site gives the following stats for the Double Down:

Calories: 540
Total Fat (g): 30
Fibre: 0

... which puts it at 13 points -- or the same as a Big Mac.  So, bad, for sure, but not suicide in a paper wrapper. At least, not immediate suicide.

Not to defend the Double Down, but it did get me thinking. Does it deserve the super-bad rap? A recent story in the London Free Press talked about how a single egg yolk has more cholesterol than a KFC Double Down - a fact that surprised me.

So I spent a little time on my beloved Dotti's app (which I posted about here, in case you missed it), and found some restaurant food points values that surprised me... and maybe put the Double Down in a bit of perspective. According to Dotti:

Tim Hortons: wheat carrot muffin - 9

[Really? A wheat carrot muffin is almost 3/4 of the way, points-wise, to a Double-Down? What else could surprise me?]

Things which you'd think were better than a KFC Double Down but are, in fact, worse (according to Dotti's calculations, at least)

Earls:
Roasted chicken quesadilla - 16.5
Hunan Kung Pao with shrimp - 26
Hot chicken caesar salad - 28

Boston Pizza
Ciabatta chicken sandwich with garden greens - 21.5
Pad Thai with chicken - 42

Now, this is just counting calories, fat and fibre to calculate points: KFC's Original Recipe Double Down also contains 1380 mg of sodium. (Hello, blood pressure meds!)

If you want to go the "healthy" route, you can order the Grilled Double Down instead, for only 11 points... but it has even more sodium, at 1430 mg.

Ahem, to be clear.

I'm not suggesting by any means that the KFC Double Down is a reasonable food choice (incidentally, and fortunately for me, I find the idea repulsive. Who'd want a sandwich without the bread, for goodness sakes, haha!).

But I do think it's a good argument for paying very close attention to nutritional guides, ingredient lists, and measurements wherever you can, because clearly the "bad guys" on the menu can be in disguise.

Imagine turning down a 16-point slice of pizza (or two!) in favour of the more dietarily righteous Pad Thai, only to discover later that you'd blown your day's points, the flex bank was empty, and you owed 90 minutes on the bike before you were allowed to go to bed!

Yeesh.

Annie: APP NEWS!!

Yes, those caps and exclamation marks are called for!

A few posts back, Mae talked about an excellent mobile app called iWatchr, which contains a points calculator, a food/points log and a weight tracker (and some other stuff, but these are the things I use). I use it all the time - I'm well known to wander up and down the food aisles in the grocery store, iPhone in hand, calculating whether or not to buy products.  (Someday, there'll be an app that uses the camera to scan product barcodes and list points values!).  I love it.  Weight Watchers doesn't have an app available in Canada yet, so until they do, this is my go-to app. For $0.99 in the iTunes store, I don't think you can go wrong.

At lunchtime, as I stood in the line at Tim Hortons wishing I'd checked Dotti's Weight Loss Zone for the points before going out, I pulled out my iPhone and went to the site using the browser.  And lo and behold, what did I find? There's a brand new Dotti's app!

If you didn't know about Dotti's site (note: link is to the Canadian Restaurant page, but you can connect back to the US restaurant page from there too), let me tell you a bit about it.  Dotti is a woman who lost more than a hundred pounds using Weight Watchers, and who has, together with her online collaborators, collected menus and nutritional information from loads of restaurants. The site is a bit busy, but it is full of great information and resources; you can look up restaurants by name, and it provides nutritional info and points values for their menu items.

She launched it about a month ago, and for this month only, is selling it for $2.99 in the iTunes store (it'll be $9.99 next month). I downloaded it immediately and was really impressed: when I called up Tim Hortons Canada (she offers points lists for both Canadian and US restaurants, even when they're international chains), it was organized by menu item type (donuts, bagels, muffins, sandwiches, beverages, etc.). It's well-organized and and easy to use; she says it contains all the information from her site.

If you are on WW and you tend to eat out, I'd highly recommend picking up the Dotti's app.

Mae: Let's try this again

I remember my first real attempt at dieting. I was about 12 years old and doing Weight Watchers, 80s style. Anyone who subjected themselves to the same misery will remember the endless weeks of tuna, cottage cheese, skim milk and rice cakes. Repeat. Not much has changed in the 23 years since.

Despite being a competitive swimmer for many, many years, I was always a big kid. My weight was was regularly assessed and discussed, primarily, by my grandmother. One day, I received a copy of  YM magazine in the mail, because Grandma decided that this would make a perfect birthday present. She also enrolled me in a self-improvement course for girls, with, I'm not kidding, an "instructor" named Barbie. In addition to educating us poor slobs on how to cross our legs and arrange a proper place setting, Barbie told us what our colours are (and which to avoid, at all costs!), and  how to select three key pieces of clothing that would get one through even the apocalypse in style. I learned (and was regularly told) that pretty girls looked like Sharon from the Young & the Restless. Blech.

Fast-forward to present day and I find myself weighing the most I have ever had. I've experienced ups and downs, and until 2005, was at a weight that I was really comfortable and happy with. However, I've recently crossed a threshold that I swore I never would. You see, I lost a significant amount of weight (nearly 70 pounds) between 2001-2002 on the Winning Points / Weight Watchers system. It was like a part-time job and it was a hell of a lot of work, but it did work. I'll admit that I'm mostly terrified about this project: where am I going to be in a year? Can I really do this again? But there's much more than vanity at stake now: I don't sleep or move the same as I used to, and a day of shopping leaves my feet and knees in a hot mess. Quite frankly, I can't afford to do this. Plus it's way better when you do it with a friend.

So...let's try this again.