Thin Post : If You Give a Fat Man a Cookie…

Chances are he’s going to want another one!

He might even want three, if he thinks that he’s been eating fairly healthy and doesn’t realize just how ridiculously fattening said cookies actually are … or so I’ve heard…

So tonight I had a revelation with regards to chocolate chip cookies. You see, I’ve been eating at Subway a lot recently as an aversion to instead eating at the handful of other local fast food joints that are a whole lot worse for me in the calorie department. I feel pretty comfortable with what I usually get there now as a regular lunch:

  • 6” Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki on Wheat (381 calories, 4.5g fat)
  • BBQ Baked Lays single serving bag of chips (120 calories, 3g fat)
  • Total: 501 calories, 7.5g fat

Even if I eat late and span both lunch and dinner with a foot-long sub, it’s still under 900 calories for the whole thing, which I think works for me.

Unfortunately, what doesn’t work for me is when I feel like I’m doing good so I decide to reward myself with the treat of a cookie, or three! And as much as I hate to admit it, for a couple weeks I have been indulging on three because I was caving in to the marketing ploy of “1 for 79 cents, 3 for $1.50!” The thing is, until today I had never done the math to realize that each of those cookies is actually 210 CALORIES AND 10 GRAMS OF FAT!

EACH!!!

So in essence, munching on $1.50’s worth of cookies after lunch is actually adding more calories than I ate in the entire meal, and they’re not even that good of cookies! I mean, they’re delicious when they’re nice and warm and fresh out of the oven, but we all know that when you’re dieting, it’s not good enough to just be delicious – a food needs to be both delicious and worth the calories that you’d have to burn to work it off! Eating three of those things is literally the equivalent of eating three Hershey’s chocolate bars in one sitting, which anyone in their right mind would deem crazy … and yet because the deal is three for $1.50, somehow it’s mentally ok to go to town because really, they’re just tiny, chocolate chip cookies, right?!

Another comparison, as long as we’re talking about cookies, I thought it would be interesting to compare today’s lesson to a few other snacking options:

  • Subway Chocolate Chip Cookie (210 calories, 10g fat)
  • Oreo Cookies (1 serving = 3 cookies) (160 calories, 7g fat)
  • Otis Spunkmeyer Chocolate Chip Cookie (170 calories, 8g fat)
  • Panera Bread Chocolate Chip Cookie (440 calories, 23g fat)

One of the delis nearby sells Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, which are usually bigger and better than Subway’s, and they’re less calories to boot! Or even grabbing a bag of Oreos at the store and having a couple with lunch would be ok. And I’ll admit – yes, the Panera cookies are ridiculously fattening and I don’t really eat them anymore, but anyone who’s ever gawked at their bakery case also knows that they’re HUGE … doesn’t justify it for the guy who still has 40 lbs to lose, I know … maybe I’m more or less just reminiscing at this point because I used to get these all the time…

*ahem*

Anyways, I guess ultimately the lesson here wasn’t necessarily that I need to avoid Subway cookies in general, but so much like anything else, moderation is key and I shouldn’t be looking to their sales board for any hints as to what is actually reasonable for me to eat on their menu. A single cookie here and there, albeit still almost half again the calories of the meal, should be ok; a handful of Oreos instead would be better, but only once I build up the self control to actually have a package in the house without plowing through an entire row of cookies at a time!

But 630 calories of cookies after a 501 calorie meal?! Oops.

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