It's not Common Sense, it's Uncommon Sense

One of the reasons I LOVE Weight Watchers is that it teaches you to eat right. When you participate in the Points Plan, you get a certain number of points based on your current weight. That number is adjusted lower as you lose, in two-point increments. Since you have to know how many Points everything is you start to pay attention to things like calories and fat and serving sizes. So, when someone on the Weight Watchers plan learns that a scone from Starbucks is 450 calories they are not in the least shocked or surprised to find this out. And when they go to Outback and order the Cheese Fries (minus the bacon bits) they know they are eating enough calories for the day even though it's a half order and they are sharing it. (The whole thing including bacon bits is 73.5 Points Value with the average amount of Points someone gets in a day being somewhere between about 24-28 Points)

Here is a quick tip for those of you on Weight Watchers...there is a website, Dotti's Weight Loss Zone, that has a HUGE list of restaurants and their foods and how many Points Value a lot of the foods on the menu are.

How does it NOT make plain old common sense that if you are eating a muffin or a donut or ordering a GIANT plate of battered and deep-fat-fried food that you are, in turn, eating a lot of calories? You say you ordered the salad? What kind of dressing did it have? Was the chicken grilled or fried? What's that? You had the ranch dressing and it was fried chicken? And you are honestly surprised at the 1300 calorie "sticker"?

When they have "vitamin water" that has 50 calories per 8 ounce serving (with your standard frosty beverage being 24 ounces that's 150 calories, for WATER) are you really surprised to find that the morning muffin you have been enjoying is 630 calories? I know you didn't think that giant omelet, hash browns, and sausage was under 1,000 calories, did you? How can you go out to eat in this day and age filled with ginormous portions and honestly be shocked at the caloric content?

Hopefully you can understand that when I read an article on MSNBC called New Yorkers try to swallow calorie sticker shock, I had yet another "shake your head" moment. That's when I came to the conclusion that "Common Sense" should really be called "Uncommon Sense" since so many people don't possess it.