I decided I really like free things so I signed up for a bunch of restaurant and store fan clubs (in light of my upcoming birthday). Well, the goodies started rolling in so yesterday we went to a restaurant where I had a coupon as well as a free piece of cake. It was an Italian restaurant so I wanted to do a little homework before I left.
I looked on the menu to find things I thought would be tasty and then I tried to calculate first the nutrition and then how much of the dish I could eat while not going over budget Point-wise. Turns out (and I saved up a little) you can have half of the fettucine alfredo without any meat and with added vegetables, a side salad sans cheese and croutons and with a tiny little droplet of dressing (okay, not THAT tiny, but not as much as you would really want), a couple Mediterranean olives and a small roll-sized nibble of bread (without olive oil), and 1/8th of the piece of the free chocolate cake.
As I calculated these numbers I was shocked and horrified by the number of calories in all of these things: Fettucine alfredo, 780 Calories, Olive oil, 120 calories per tablespoon (I thought it was supposed to be healthy), Bread--I couldn't find but I saved 3 points for it ~120-150 calories., and...Chocolate cake, 1580 calories. I almost fell off my chair when I read that! That is 39 Points!!!! (My allotment is 26/day). In case you're thinking that I don't get many calories on this lifestyle plan, I want to let you know that Points are calculated based on calories as well as fat (102g in the cake!!!) and fiber. A little piece of chocolate can be 1.5 points (even if about 50 calories). I have these highly fibery wraps that I use for lunch--they have about 100 calories and 9 grams of fiber (they're okay, but it's a little like eating cardboard) and they are only 1 Point! So technically, if I ate only those wraps, I could have 2600 calories each day (though I doubt my intestines would react positively). On the other hand, if I just ate that special chocolate cake, I could have about 2/3rds of it in a day. And it wasn't as big as I thought it would be.
The most annoying thing about eating out is although everybody should have their nutrition posted, there are certain menu items mysteriously missing. For example: the peasant bread from dinner last night. And: The Mile-High Cake at Champps (which I was going to use as a size and nutritional comparison to my cake.
Clearly, restaurants are in this to make money by making the biggest, richest, most delicious dishes ever. But it's not doing anyone any favors to make it so difficult to find out how unhealthy these goodies really are. Even if I couldn't eat my whole piece of chocolate cake, I appreciated knowing that I could have a little bit of it without destroying my goals.
Also, I got a sweet eye-makeup set from Sephora for my birthday! Free things don't only come in the 1580 calorie variety!!
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