Day Two

I am on the train from Boston to Franklin, my fingers sticking to the keyboard with each keystroke. I took the Red Line to Park Street and then walked from there to South Station so I could pick up an orange and a grapefruit from the sidewalk vendors in front of CVS. I ate them en route (the fruit, not the vendors) and, despite the earnest use of napkins taken from Au Bon Pain inside the train station, my fingers are still sticky with fructose.

I wrote a great blog entry this morning on the train, but I tried to post it at the exact moment my Sprint card lost signal, and the entire piece -- brilliant, as I recall -- disappeared into cyberspace. I have been trying unsuccessfully to recapture its brilliance, but alas, I have failed. Oh well.

So here's the problem with blogging: it's hard to think of something meaningful to say day in and day out, week after week, month after month... [Wait. This is only my third entry... Not a good sign.]

Well, I've stuck to my 38 points so far. I know, women on Weight Watchers are slamming their laptops closed in anger, since men get so many more points than women. Well, we get more heart attacks, too. And we lose our hair more often. And you know those ads with the stupid-looking guy who walks around smiling and waving at everyone? Well, you get the picture. Don't begrudge us a few extra points.

For those of you unfamiliar with Weight Watchers, Points are sort of like shorthand for calories with both fiber- and fat-content taken into consideration. To get a rough estimate of a food's point content, take the total calories and divide by 50, then round up the nearest whole number or the nearest point-five (e.g. 3 or 3.5). To get a closer approximation, take the total calories, add 4 1/6 calories for each gram of fat, then subtract 10 calories for each gram of fiber up to 4 grams. Then divide by 50 and round up.

Here's an example:

Let's say a bag of chips has 150 calories, 12 grams of fat, and 2 grams of fiber. That's 150 plus 12 times 4 1/6 (or 50) minus 2 times 10 (or 20). That's 180. Divide that by 50, and you get 3.5 or 4.

In The Healthy Elvis Diet, a diet I made up based on healthy versions of Elvis Presley's notoriously unhealthy favorite foods, you can use L's instead of points. Since L is the Roman numeral for 50, just divide a food's total calories by 50 to get the total number of L's. (L's -- El's, get it?)

I'll share more about The Healthy Elvis Diet in later posts.

Okay, enough for now. Eat light and prosper.