Take Control

Today after a youth soccer game a group of us went to lunch at a popular sports themed restaurant in the Seattle area. They have great (tasting) food up and down their menu. And it was obvious most of it is north of 1000 calories.

I asked for a nutritional menu and sure enough, there were dozens of diet busters, with a few halfway decent options scattered about. There were 15 entree salads on the menu, ranging from 967 calories (Caesar w/o meat) to 1512 (Caesar w/blackened Salmon). There were also 15 hamburgers, ranging from 886 calories (Black Jack Burger) to 1751 (the aptly named "Extreme Husky"). The "winner" on the menu was a shrimp fajita dish, at a whopping 2603 calories! Twenty-six hundred!

Getting the nutritional menu required that I request it specifically. Restaurants have come a long way in making this information available if you take the initiative (thank you), although most won't make it widely available unless required by law. Having taken control of the situation, avoiding a calorie bomb became doable. I chose the BBQ Bacon Cheddar Burger, at a high but not catastrophic 986 calories, with a small side salad and a light vinaigrette in place of fries. Not exactly diet food, but about 600 calories fewer than a typical burger and fries. Consider that I avoided an appetizer or caloric beverage, I easily ducked an extra 1000+ calories.

There's very little in our lives we truly control. At work, you have a boss. Even your boss has a boss. At home, you have influence with your family/housemates, but not control. We cannot control things as important to us as the economy or the election, or as trivial as who refs our home team's football game (thank you, replacements!).

But we can control what we put into our mouths, and how much we move. I'm not advocating a "personal responsibility" platform that absolves our food industry of their pursuit of profits over our health, but their never-ending quest to super-size makes taking control all the more important.

Nothing matters to me more than becoming more healthy. My family is very important to me, but without my health I won't be much good to them. My job is very important to me, but waistline and career prospects are correlated, for better or worse. My recreation is very important to me, but activity at a high weight isn't as much fun. Simply put, nothing matters to me right now more than becoming healthy.

Fortunately, eating less and moving more is the one thing in life we can control.