Do you have friends who offer advice through passive-aggressive methods? They can’t come out and tell you you’re getting fat or you drink too much. No, they just forward you a link to a website that will tell you you’re fat and you drink too much.
It’s a British site, so I’m going to cut everything by half. (I’m a child of the ’80s; we only had to endure the metric system until third grade.) Basically, you enter in what you drank last night, and this site computes how many calories it adds up to and converts it into a food equivalent. So not only do you get a terrifying number, you get a menu of what you could have eaten to reach that same number. And that number is nowhere near the calorie count that pops up on a treadmill or elliptical machine after an hour. This could explain a lot.
I’ll be the guinea pig here. (I heard that.) Let’s take Friday night. But first, a disclaimer: Friday was not typical. I started out with dinner and drinks at the Monkey Wrench, hopped over to the Palace for an ABBA tribute band, and then bounced back to the Wrench for a long night of dancing. Oh, and there may have been a nightcap at the Barret Bar. I’m not proud of how much I consumed, nor am I proud of my actions, my dance moves or my inability to remember much after midnight. It happens. Don’t judge.
So let’s see: 2 gin & tonics at dinner; 2 glasses of red wine at the show; 1 gin & tonic and 3 beers back at the Wrench; 1 beer at Barret Bar. The website claims that’s 1,340 calories (whatever) and is the equivalent of consuming a slice of pizza, a hamburger, a hot dog, a doughnut, two helpings of onion bhaji (?) and three jaffa cakes.
Depress yourself at www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alcohol/2008/calories.shtml.
Check out my daily reason to drink at barbelle.leoweekly.com
