The sandwich above is something I would have ordered a few weeks ago. Now though, I cringe at the thought. I’ll get to exactly why later on – but for now you should know that I finally started a nutritional monitoring program.

I joined WeightWatchers Online: “For Men”. Yep. Sure did. Yes, I know that one should be able to just make healthy choices and count calories etc… but for me, I need the hand holding. So far, I really like it. It’s almost a fun game, logging everything I eat and seeing how many points I have eaten / have left. The biggest surprise is that I’m not more hungry than I was before, in fact I feel less compelled to eat now that I’ve been on the program for a while. Without getting into the specifics on the “Points” system, it’s sufficient to tell you that my allowance for each day is 37, with an extra 35 weekly points to use throughout the week, or on a splurge if I would rather. To date, I’ve never even come close to using half of those “flex” points.

The burning question? I’m down just over 4lbs in 2 weeks. Not a monumental amount, no. But pretty good considering I haven’t started adding in the exercise portion yet. Also, just eating the way you do on the program just makes you feel better overall. I’m really enjoying it. I’ve read that sharing the fact that you are on a program (I don’t call this a “diet” because it’s not – I can have anything) increases your odds of staying on track, thus this blog post, which will be auto-imported to Facebook as well.

So. Back to the picture of the Quiznos sub above… One of the most surprising things you learn on WW is the crazy amount of calories and fat in foods we eat all the time. Tonight, some friends are taking us out to Quiznos, then I’m going to help them install a hard drive. I have already planned to have small Honey Bourbon Chicken Sub on wheat with some baked Lays and a Diet Pepsi. That meal will be 11 points. Not bad out of 37 for the day huh? Even if I have the regular size (which is quite large), I’d still be well within today’s points. The image above is the Philly Cheesesteak Sub, which I have ordered in the past. JUST the sandwich, no chips, no drink, in a large size is….are you ready for this??

97 Points….97. Holy *#%& no wonder I have extra poundage!

(that’s 1530 calories, 91g of fat)

One of my favorite beers, the Chinese import Tsingtao is kicking off an aggressive marketing campaign to try to increase it’s (admittedly tiny) percent of the lager market share here in the US.  Watch carefully and you might start to see Tsingtao move from the Chinese restaurant down the street to the middle shelf of the local supermarket! More at:  http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2008/gb20080219_508792.htm