Calories: Count on 'em!

     I was browsing in the bakery section of the grocery store recently (oh, all right, I was ogling the key lime pies, but everyone in the world doesn't have to know it) when I overheard two women at the counter ask for low-carb bagels.  When the clerk informed them that the bagels were sold out, the women shrieked.  I'm not kidding you, they actually shrieked.  The poor clerk dashed into the back to search for more bagels, and thankfully, she was able to produce several packages.  The two shoppers breathed audible sighs of relief and headed off happily with their treasures.  Well, I couldn't help myself.  I sauntered over and picked up one of the remaining packages of coveted goodies and checked out the nutrition label.  Guess what?  Those bagels had more calories and fat than the full-carb (yet slightly smaller) bagels I usually eat. 

     Is there a lesson here?  You bet there is.  Let's take a quick trip back to the '80s.  Do you recall the first time you saw a fat-free Entenmann's Cherry Cheese-Filled Coffee Cake?  Don't try to tell me you didn't snatch that bad boy up and run home and eat the whole thing because that's exactly what I did.  In fact, I plowed through three of them the first week and gained ten pounds that year.  I said to everyone I knew, "If you don't eat fat, you won't be fat."  And I'm pretty sure I said it once WHILE I WAS SHOPPING FOR LARGER JEANS.  Now, I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure that if they take the fat out, they're going to replace it with something to add flavor, probably salt or sugar, and there will very likely be little or no reduction in the number of calories.

     I don't care what diet works for you or how many grams of this or points of that you're allowed to have, losing weight is still a matter of calories.  If you burn more calories than you eat, you'll lose weight.  If you eat more calories than you burn, you'll gain.  And it doesn't matter whether those extra calories come in the form of carbs, protein, or fat -- the excess will be stored in your body.  It's that simple.  We all have friends who have lost oodles of weight on the Atkins Diet or another similarly restrictive program, and those friends may have sworn that the weight just fell off of them and they never felt better -- and I'm sure it was all true -- but they were also simply taking in fewer calories.

     I remember those fat-free Entenmann's coffee cakes fondly, but I like to think we're all a little wiser now.  Read your labels and check your calorie counts.  Before you moan about not being able to lose those pesky pounds, determine what you're really putting in your mouth.  Write it down, in fact.  Get yourself a calorie counts book and a calculator and figure it out.  Chances are you're eating more than you think.  Give it some thought -- before you spread fat-free cream cheese on that second low-carb bagel!