Check This Out...What Super Sizing Costs Us

You guys all know I am trying to watch my budget along with the waistline (funny how the two can actually have a lot of connections).

So when I saw an article about what supersizing food sizes really costs us, in terms of money and health, I was fascinated.

Check it out (borrowed from a Yahoo article):

Here’s exactly how expensive it really is whenever you go for the “bargain”:

• 7-Eleven: Gulp to Double Gulp Coca-Cola Classic: 37 cents extra buys 450 more calories.
• Cinnabon: Minibon to Classic Cinnabon: 48 more cents buys 370 more calories.
• Movie theater: Small to medium unbuttered popcorn: 71 additional cents buys you 500 more calories.
• Convenience store: Regular to “The Big One” Snickers: 33 more cents packs on 230 more calories.
• McDonald’s: Quarter Pounder with Cheese to Medium Quarter Pounder with Cheese Extra Value Meal: An additional $1.41 gets you 660 more calories.
• Subway: 6-inch to 12-inch Tuna Sub: $1.53 more buys 420 more calories.
• Wendy’s: Classic Double with Cheese to Classic Double with Cheese Old Fashioned Combo Meal: $1.57 extra buys you 600 more calories.
• Baskin Robbins: Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, Kids’ Scoop, to Double Scoop: For another $1.62, you’ve added 390 calories.

The bottom line on all this? For just a hair more than 8 bucks, you’ve bought yourself an additional 3,620 calories. If you ate each of these once a week, and you were to switch to the smaller size each time—again, still all your favorite foods, just in a more reasonable size—you’d save about $417 a year. It’s not going to buy you a new car, but it could put you on a plane to the Bahamas. But far more important than that is what it will mean to your waistline, because in saving that $417, you’ll also save 188,240 calories in a year—enough to shave a whopping 54 pounds of flab off your body! (Hey, take the 400 bucks and buy some new pants!)

How is that for an eye-opener?

So I'm working to get back into my normal pattern, which will help me calm down and not feel so panicked about what I've been eating. Thanks for the encouragement, Josie! I do indeed need my Vigilance Cape. Sometimes I forget that I have it.

And South Beach Steve, thanks for your sweet comment. That clammy hand you feel hanging on tight to your coattails is me!

I did a calorie calculation of all that I ate last week and came to the conclusion that I had not ingested an apocalyptic amount of food.

Sometimes I just freak out when things are not what I'm used to -- I think I've gotten kind of dependent on only eating certain foods. When things vary, I invariably feel panicked and scared that I'm going to sabotage myself and just go off the deep end.

We food addicts have a real vulnerability factor to deal with, don't we? I guess it's a bit like the alcoholic who is afraid to have even one drink, lest it lead to another, and another, and well.... a full-blown binge. Ugh. I can so relate to that fear.