Weight loss shortcut? Not likely

Losing weight can seem like a daunting task. There’s an industry built around helping people who want to lose weight. There are fad diets (Atkins, Paleo, cabbage soup, Weight Watchers, Southwest, Dash, TLC, Mayo Clinic… the list goes on and on). Then there are the trendy workouts (Zumba, Balle Barre Prancercise, yoga, trampoline cardio, indoor surfing aqua cycling and pole dancing…).

Way back, when I started to diet (yes I was chubby!) there weren’t as many options. We basically tried — key word tried — to watch what we ate. We had to guess the caloric count in most foods, as there were no rules governing the labeling on packages. 

Entenmann’s rich chocolate frosted doughnuts, for instance: How many calories could there be in there? I figured about 150. Wrong! 290. Popcorn, that was healthy, right? 35 calories a cup? Yes, if it was air popped and tasted like styrofoam packing peanuts. The ones popped with oil were much more.

We didn’t have light ice cream, we had ice milk. Seriously, what was that? It actually tasted like ice milk — they weren’t fooling anyone. So Carvel it was. How may calories could a cone of vanilla Carvel have? You don’t want to know. 

We thought we wanted to know, but now when the information is in huge letters shouting the caloric content at us, right above the ice cream machines, it’s frightening. 

And if you think Carvel is scary, then Haagen Dazs is truly terrifying. Good news is, the wafer cones are 15 calories each. Eat up my friends!

My husband Jerry told me that when he was a young man he fell in love with Entenmann’s French butter coffee cake and Haagen Dazs ice cream. He had it every night for dinner. 

His first wife was a night nurse, so this was an easy quick dinner. Cake and two pints of ice cream. It all tasted light, how bad could it be? Only problem was his clothes were shrinking. 

Not wanting to make his wife feel bad about her laundry abilities, he never said anything. His wife not wanting Jerry to feel bad about his weight gain never said anything. Classic joke was, his wife was pregnant but Jerry was showing.