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January 29, 2007

When You Gotta Hava Wawa

"Hello, muffin-less one," said MR to me on the phone last Thursday morning. I had just arrived at my 7:30 am meeting (early, as always) and realized that the megamuffin I thought I had packed for breakfast was not in my bag. Since I have to leave at 6:30 to battle traffic and get to these early meetings, I take my ultra-convenient mega breakfast with me. But this time, though we had packed my salad, almonds and thermos of green tea, the muffin was missing.

We struggled to figure out what I should eat for breakfast. I pointed out that an Egg McMuffin is 300 calories, but MR was not amused. Under previous circumstances, I could have just waited till I got to the office around 9 or 9:30 to eat, but with enough 1200's days in a row, I was close enough to the hunger edge to not want to wait that long for my first meal of the day.

My first thought was to order a McDonald's salad, as there are some quite reasonable ones with grilled chicken, and eat it without the dressing, substituting my almonds for fat. I could always get lunch almonds later. But the McDonald's didn't have the salads at that early hour, so that wasn't going to work.

Then MR suggested that if there was a Wawa nearby (it's an east coast convenience store, for those of you who are confused) I could check and see if they had nutrition information on their new turkey sausage and eggwhite egg McMuffin knock off. I could remove the bread and eat the turkey sausage and eggwhite.

So after my meeting was over I went to the Wawa store conveniently located two doors down. Sure enough, they had the sandwich. Meanwhile, MR was searching online from home, trying to find nutrition information.

I was just about to purchase the sandwich when he called to inform me that it had 410 calories and a whole lot of saturated fat... apparently, it was topped with cheddar cheese, full fat. Way to ruin a great idea! And since the sandwiches were pre-made, it would be difficult to separate out the offending elements.

Now in earlier, more moderate CR, I probably would have purchased the sandwich and eaten it anyway. Afterall, 410 is only 135 calories more than my normal breakfast, and a piece of cheese is not going to kill me. But what I'm finding as I take my calories lower and lower is that consistency is really important. I didn't want to go that far over my normal calories, and I certainly didn't want to blow a lot of calories on high saturated fat cheese or nutrient-less processed bagel material. So I put the sandwich back and proceeded to look through the cases at Wawa, searching for a better option. They have some excellent choices there like nonfat yogurt and cottage cheese, as well as apples, carrots, and celery. But early in the morning I need a strong shot of protein, or at least a Zoned megamuffin. Nonfat yogurt, while a great snack for me in the afternoons, would have left me low-protein for morning, and no doubt set me up for freakish hunger before lunch.

MR and I agonized over the choices over my cell phone. We took a moment to contemplate the utter geekiness of this exchange, and to be glad that we have CR'd partners. Ah, nutrition geek love. So cute, in a goofy sorta way.

I was just about to give up and order a slab of roast turkey from the deli when I noticed a lovely red haired employee named Liesel assembing breakfast sandwiches in the back.

"I am wondering," I asked her, in my nicest voice, "If you happen to have any of the eggwhites patties from the turkey sausage eggwhite sandwich floating around free back there."

Indeed she did.

"Could I buy some from you?"

She looked confused but agreed to sell me two eggwhite patties, and popped them in the microwave.

The cashier only charged me fifty cents! I called MR to tell him the good news. He rejoiced in eggwhite glory with me. Then he pointed out that I had baby scale in the car, so I could actually weigh the patties to figure out how much they were caloriewise.

Now this was getting geekier all the time. And sure, I frequently still eat unmeasured food when I'm out, so had I been unable to measure I would have just eaten the eggwhites and not worried about it. But since I could... and since I might want to grab eggwhite patties at Wawa again... and since inquiring readers might want to know... I got in the car with the eggwhite patties, got out my scale, used the lid to a travel mug as a weighing platform, and weighed them both. 46 g for one, 49 for the second. So I called MR to get the calorie count on that.

Apparently, eggwhites are 25 calories per 50 g, right around a calorie per two grams. So my two eggwhite patties were a total of less than 50 calories!

I ate them, marched right back into the Wawa, and ordered three more.

This is a good example of how estimating just doesn't work. I have eaten a cup of eggwhites, scrambled, almost every morning for breakfast for two and a half years. You'd think that I would have some sense of how much volume that is. But no, I looked at two patties and thought, "That's about right." Had I not weighed them, I would have been 75 calories under my estimation, and quite short on protein (I had consumed my almonds for fat by this time.) It is very hard to look at a food, even a food you are familiar with, and guess how big it is and how many calories it has.

Now, you don't have to carry around a baby scale and weigh out eggwhite patties in the parking lot to do CR. But having these tools available sure does make it easier. And having a megamuffin safely stashed in one's purse makes it much, much easier.

These days, as I take my calories lower, I find that consistency is key. The Friday and Saturday meals out really threw me off, but yesterday I got back to my normal calorie levels (on the lower side to make up for any excesses) and my nutrient packed foods. The averaging works just fine for moderate CR, but I've yet to meet anyone on hardcore CR who can do it without a relatively consistent eating pattern. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I doubt that I'm one of them.

The good news is, any of you east coasters can pop into a Wawa and order a 5 eggwhite patty breakfast, content that you're getting right around 125 calories and a whole whack of protein. Maybe that should be my blog motto, "We weigh the eggwhites so you don't have to!"

Posted by april at January 29, 2007 8:59 AM

Comments

Posted by: carolyn at January 29, 2007 8:58 AM

Posted by: Deborah at January 29, 2007 9:04 AM

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Posted by: Al Nye at January 29, 2007 1:00 PM

Posted by: allswellinhell at January 29, 2007 1:48 PM

Posted by: stirred_apart at January 29, 2007 2:25 PM

Posted by: Rebecca at January 30, 2007 5:10 PM

Posted by: Ali at January 31, 2007 7:34 PM

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