Greg's Weight Loss Blog

As you could see on my last weekly update my weekend calories were much higher than the weekday calories. On Sunday I have reached an all time high of 2,233 calories, a number I have not seen since November 11th, 2009. In November it was Olive Garden, an Italian restaurant, for dinner and leftover from Pei Wei, a Chinese/Thai joint, for lunch that did me in. This time it was crêpes that caused the trouble.

Saturday’s overeating was mild, and the main culprit was the impulse banana I had at the finish of my 10K race. I just couldn’t say no to this delicious sugar and potassium filled snack after running for 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Considering that I had just burned 887 calories with the running the banana was justified. I had a mild lunch with eggs, whole wheat toast and some mixed vegetables that clocked in at 585 calories so I thought I was in the clear and I managed to offset the banana. And had we not gone out to Carino’s Italian Grill for dinner I would have been just fine. But dinner ended up being 846 calories in itself which is a light fare when you consider that I just went to an Italian restaurant where my favorite dish, Chicken Milano, clocks in at a respectable 1,418 calories, 824 of which comes from fat. Considering my entire meal consisted as much calories as there is fat calories in my once loved meal I think I did awesome. Oh, and I didn’t count the 2 loaves of bread that I used to devour before salad or soup would even hit the table. This time I had no bread.

Sunday’s eating was a completely different story. I didn’t have a banana at a race, we didn’t go to Carino’s for dinner. But we did go to the zoo with the kids and when we go to the zoo it also means we’ll have lunch at Panera Bread. Panera Bread is conveniently located right across from the zoo so we stop in every time on our way home. My wife loves sandwich café places like Panera Bread, Corner Bakery or La Madeline. I went for my usual order which ends up at 540 calories usually. Unfortunately this time I couldn’t stop myself and ate the baguette piece that came with my meal as well and added another 180 calories to my meal. So now instead of my usual 540 I ended up at 720 calories for lunch.

After the 180 excess calorie lunch I still felt I was under control and had I stuck with the plan of eating light for dinner with some lean meat or fish and some steamed veggies I would have been perfectly fine. But this is where the crêpes come in the picture. My family loves crêpes. But we’re not the “let’s go to the mall and stuf our faces full of crêpes” kind of people. We’re more the “Daddy, I’d like crêpes, can you make some please?” kind of people. So my son was pretty persistent with the crêpe request and who can blame him? It’s not like I make crêpes every weekend or even every month. It’s more like a twice a year deal where I succumb to making crêpes.

Making crêpes is not really that big of a deal. But for some reason it always seems too time consuming and we abandon the idea before we’d even make the batter. But once you get down to it it’s really not much worse than making any other meal. The toughest part is the part where you have to flip the crêpe from one side to the other and this is where you can really screw it up and you can end up with a lump of flour paste instead of a nice flat crêpe. My wife, as great and awesome of a cook she is, simply will not make crêpes because of this very fear of screwing up the flip and producing rejects. So crêpe making in my family is a man’s job.

In my home country we actually have a signature dish that is made with crêpes and it’s not a dessert. It’s actually a meat filled crêpe. My son obviously prefers the Nutella filled variety over the meat filled one but I actually love crêpes both sweet and savory. Since they take the same crêpe I made a large batch of crêpes while my wife made the meat filling, 85/15 turkey instead of veal, and we also made a sweet filling from farmer’s cheese mixed with granulated sugar and lemon zest for sweet crêpes.

I would usually eat 4 or 5 of the meat filled crêpes and I’d probably have another 2 of the sweet ones as dessert but this time I had two of the meat filled ones (610 calories) and one of the cheese filled dessert ones (264 calories). I also ate a good amount of steamed veggies to go with it and fill me up. So the crêpes did me in when you combined it with some heavy lunch from Panera Bread. I just couldn’t resist the thin crust over the minced meat and the creamy sweet filling for dessert.

But to prove that all this can be done in a moderated fashion I had leftovers of the crêpes today. Two meat filled ones with steamed broccoli and cauliflower as sides for lunch and one with the cheese filling for dessert after my shrimp with rice and veggies dinner. And today I only had 1,803 calories even though I had the same three crêpes as yesterday. The difference was the low cal dinner of shrimp with moderate portion of rice and the lighter breakfast of yogurt and nuts instead of the eggs and toast. So I think I got the crêpe craving out of my system for at least another 4 months. As for my son, he had one of the meat filled ones yesterday for dinner and one of the cheese filled ones today and yesterday for dessert. I’m just glad he liked the meat filled one too.