lazypadawan | Entries tagged with the fit fan

Worse than visits to the park or the fair is the dreaded con weekend. Sure, cons are fun. That's why we go. But we tend to take lousy care of ourselves during those 3-5 day extravaganzas. There's too little sleep and too much bad food. Not only can you come home with a few extra pounds on your frame, you can come home sick as a dog. That's what happened to me when I went to Celebration IV.

Here's what you can do to take better care of yourself at any con, whether it's a local jaunt or a cross-country trip:

1. Don't neglect your hygiene

I hate to say it but sometimes in fannish zeal to not miss a single moment of a show, people don't bother bathing or brushing their teeth. Basic grooming only takes a few minutes; make the time. Not only will you feel better, your fellow con-goers will thank you.

2. Bring your vitamins

One thing you can do to help boost your immunity and give yourself more energy is to take at least a multivitamin every day. I also take Vitamin C every day. You migth also want to consider taking Airborne, a vitamin supplement that boosts immunity, before, during, and after the con.

3. Bring hand sanitizer

Even though you may wash your hands after trip to the potty (and I hope you do), you're still picking up icky germs left and right. Use hand sanitizer before you eat and every couple of hours or so.

4. Get plenty of rest

This is the hardest thing for a con-goer to do but shoot for at least 6-7 hours of sleep. You'll feel better during the day and you'll cut back on your risk of getting sick.

5. Eat regularly/eat healthy

This is the second-hardest thing for a con-goer to do, so people skip meals and overcompensate for them by overeating or they stuff themselves on bad-for-you snacks like nachos. Bring healthy snacks like fruit or 100-calorie packs of nuts and plan to fit meals in during the day. I pack my own sandwich from home when I go to Comic Con. If that's not an option for you, refer to my advice on how to survive the parks.

6. Easy on the power drinks

Some of those power drinks are very high in caffeine (I had a bad experience with Rockstar once) and can be high in sugar/calories. If you have to drink those things, pick a sugar free version and don't load up on them. They can mess up your ability to sleep.

7. Take advantage of the exercise

One good thing about cons is that they offer the opportunity for lots of exercise. Take stairs instead of elevators if possible.

It's summer, so parks from Six Flags Great Adventure to Cedar Point to Kings Dominion, are open for another season. (Of course, if you are in California or Florida, the parks are open year-round.)

Fannish types LOVE amusement parks. They don't have to have kids to enjoy them. They don't even have to bring anybody else with them, though it is a lot more fun to exchange quotes of your favorite movie lines while on a roller coaster with other like-minded people.

But parks (and I'll throw in zoos as well) offer hidden dangers and I don't mean a ride gone off the rails. The problem is the food. The only place with worse grub is the fair. Most of what they dole out is meant to satisfy the salt-and-sugar-loving palates of children. Plus there are snacks galore, hardly any of which are healthy and low in calories.

So what are you to do? My quick and dirty advice is this: bring your own food from home. Last year, when I went to Sea World with some relatives, I brought an apple with me to eat as a snack. When I went to Legoland recently, I brought a sandwich I made at home, lower calorie chips, and a lower calorie granola bar. Not only will it save a lot of excessive calories, fat, sodium, and sugar, it will save you a crapload of money (park food is pricey), and chances are it will taste a lot better than anything most parks serve. Many parks will let you bring a picnic so long as you're not bringing in alcohol or glass bottles. Check with them in advance to see if they allow it.

Some parks don't want you to bring in anything. You can tailgate it instead, chowing down your lunch before going in and discreetly smuggling in a healthy snack for later.

Now let's say you're one of those people who has to enter the gates as the park opens and you don't leave until the sweepers chase you out after the fireworks show. Let's say you can't bring anything because you're visiting from out-of-town. Or for whatever reason, you can't eat before or after visiting the park. You're stuck!

Well, some parks have tried to offer less-bad fare to health-conscious visitors. But as with restaurant food, not everything that seems healthy is. According to "Eat This, Not That," most wraps are far worse than the trinity of pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers. Here's what to look for:

1. Grilled chicken or any other grilled meat. If they offer skewers, go with that. If they have grilled chicken sandwiches, order one of those. Fortunately most park food service places don't put anything on the food because they don't have time. Go over to the condiment stand and avoid the mayo.

2. Veggie or cheese pizza. Look for thin crust pizzas and blot off the grease off the top.

3. Hamburgers. Most of the burgers you find at parks have 1/4 lb patties like McDonalds; you'll rarely find a huge Five Guys style burger. Again, most of them are served naked, so get ketchup and mustard from the condiment stand. Hold the mayonnaise.

4. Hot dogs. As long as they're regular-sized, not a big fat Polish sausage or something, they're not the worst things you can eat at the park. Ketchup, mustard, onions, and a little bit of relish do little harm.

5. Salads. Salads are fine as long as they are not covered with croutons, fried "noodles," or smothered with creamy dressings. Order a low fat dressing on the side.

Stay away from the french fries, fried chicken, or fried anything else. I'd also advise steering clear of bbq ribs, creamy cole slaws, or pastas.

When I went to Disney's Hollywood Studios during Celebration V, I ate a turkey sandwich on whole wheat. It was a little smaller than a Subway footlong and it came with baby carrots. I saved the baby carrots (consumed on the trip home) and ate the sandwich without any condiments.

As for snacks, parks have peanuts, popcorn, cotton candy, ice cream, giant pretzels, and all kinds of other goodies. If you really have to have a snack and you didn't bring anything with you, I would advise avoiding the cotton candy (I was shocked to see how many calories it has). Plain pretzels aren't so bad if you eat one in place of a meal or you share it. Don't dunk it in sauce. Popcorn is usually a healthy snack, but like at the movies, the stuff you buy at the park is full of salt and butter. Peanuts, particular the shelled ones, are healthy per se but they are also high in calories; limit what you eat and share.

Any ice cream bar or sandwich not called "Skinny Cow" should be avoided. But a single scoop of ice cream, free of whipped cream, "fudge," or any other crud dumped on it, is fine just as a treat.

Remember too that drinks other than water or diet sodas have calories. Lemonade, juices, flavored iced teas, etc. can run over 100 calories per serving. Drink a big vat of it and you're downing a lot of empty, sugary calories.

Now if there's something you JUST have to have, come hell or high water, eat light the rest of the day to factor in the extra calories.

The good news is that you get to do an awful lot of walking at the park. Pushing a stroller adds to the workout. Eat healthy and you'll get the most out of the exercise.

Last weekend, while going out to eat, I noticed how much unnecessary stuff gets dumped on restaurant food.

It’s been a habit of mine now to ask for any sauces or dressings on the side if they’re able to accommodate that. Why? Most sauces and dressings add a ton of calories, fat, sugar, and sodium to whatever you order, even salads. In fact if you take a gander at the salads at TGI Friday’s, they’re all over 1200 calories and it’s in part thanks to the dressing.

If the flavor of the food can be enhanced by something, I just dribble it on myself or dip it in the little container. But I’m finding more and more often that the sauce/dressing is totally superfluous. It unnecessarily masks the food, which usually tastes just fine without the gunk.

We’ve been brought up to loathe how things taste naturally and to drown them, especially “healthy” foods, in sauce. As a co-worker told me once, “I like a little salad with my dressing.” But if you want to be healthier, you need to learn how to balance out sauces and dressings with whatever you’re eating. Restaurant food is generally cooked with salt, butter, olive oil, and vegetable oil; it doesn’t need any more “favors.” At home, you can do some low-calorie tricks to make food tastier without drowning it.

When you go out:

1. Pay attention to the menu description. If it’s barbecued, mesquite-grilled, sautéed in butter or olive oil, cooked with sea salt, blackened, etc., that’s where the flavor is going to come in. It won’t need very much more than that.

2. Ask for any sauces or dressings on the side. Use judiciously and or as a dip.

3. If you’re ordering a salad, ask for what’s the lowest calorie/fat dressing and order it. Still get it on the side. Lightly drizzle the dressing or use it as a dip. Watch out for “vinaigrettes.” Sometimes they’re very fatty because they use regular oil. Or, order without a dressing and ask for olive oil instead. Drizzle no more than two tablespoons over the salad.

4. Request low fat sour cream if you must, and order it on the side. Use very judiciously, no more than a spoonful.

At home:

1. Flavor your food with a little rice vinegar, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon salt, and sea salt or kosher salt. That way you won’t have to go nuts with anything else.

2. If you have to have your ranch or blue cheese, buy a low fat version and don’t use any more than a tablespoon (pay close attention to the caloric info on the label). Otherwise, I like the commercial spray-on dressings. Or just put olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or rice vinegar as your dressing. Add a spoonful of crumbled blue cheese, feta, goat cheese, etc.. Tastes yummy.

3. Prepare sauces yourself if you can. Chances are you can come up with something far lower in the bad stuff than some commercial enterprise.

4. Use low fat sour cream instead of the real stuff. Better yet, use regular unflavored Greek yogurt. It tastes just like sour cream and you can use it for all kinds of recipes.

Sauces that are always good (provided it’s low in sodium):

A) Hot sauce
Tabasco, sriracha, chipotle, etc. sauces have no little to no calories. Usually it’s the chili along with water and maybe some tomato. It adds flavor and I’ve found that heat actually decreases appetite.

B) Salsa
As long as it’s just chopped up tomatoes, cilantro (coriander), onions, and peppers, it’s harmless. Beware of “creamy” salsas. I love the smoked chipotle salsa from Chevy’s but I also think it’s pretty salty.

I’ve decided to launch a series of posts on what you, the humble fan, can do to be healthier.

Now around here, I dish out the cold, hard truth. In almost 20 years of socializing with fannish types, I’ve noticed that way too many of us do not take care of ourselves. Geez, I didn’t take too good care of myself for a long time. Since graduating from college years ago, I steadily packed on the lbs. I rarely weighed myself. When I “graduated” to a size 14-16 sometime during the 1990s, I thought they were just making clothes smaller. Occasionally, I would try to lose weight and sometimes I’d succeed dropping 10 pounds or something. But then I’d go right back to the same old bad habits. About 6 years ago, I was 175 pounds. Three years ago, I was 192 pounds. I was horrified. How did I get to be so fat?

You see, I wasn’t one of those people who sat around eating boxes of doughnuts or had Big Macs at every meal. I seldom drink regular soda. I don’t eat dessert all of the time. Compared to what some of my friends were eating, I looked like a health nut. What was I doing wrong?

Okay, I wasn’t all that active either. But I would do daily walks. I even used treadmills from time to time. What was the problem? I wondered if it was my fate to be fat, one of those things that happens to you as you approach middle age.

Then I figured out I had two problems: portion size and my not-too-healthy-after-all diet. Dinner for me used to consist of a heaping plate of whatever, along with bread and salad. No wonder I’d developed a “growing boy” appetite where I would get really hungry at meals. The other problem was I was eating high-calorie, high-salt, high-sugar, high-fat crap all of the time without realizing it. I don’t blame fandom exclusively, but during the 2000s, when there were a lot of food tie-ins with the prequels and Clone Wars, I ate all kinds of things that did not do wonders for the waistline. Or in my case the caboose. And when I was out and about with friends, we’d inevitably go to some fast food joint or some variation of Applebee’s, Chili’s, Outback, or Ruby Tuesday’s. Going to see the movies, I’d eat popcorn, nachos, or those big movie box sizes of Junior Mints.

If I went to fannish parties or club meetings, there would inevitably be piles of the fattiest, saltiest, sweetest food you could find. Fans LOVE that stuff. When I went to a party once, I brought a big box of Popeye’s fried chicken...I was the most popular girl in the room. Conventions? More junk food, chain restaurant food, and evil snacks.

A few months after I started losing weight, I came across the website Eat This, Not That and the corresponding book. I couldn’t believe what I’d been putting into me all of these years. The average person needs 2000 calories a day to stay the same weight. Depending on your age, your sex, your height, and the amount of activity, that number could be higher…or lower. It’s very easy to go over that amount if you’re not careful and I was shocked to see that some things I had been eating were about 1000 calories in one fell swoop.

So what I am going to do is share secrets that will help you avoid back problems, knee problems, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes by leading a better lifestyle. And it’s really not all that hard. You don’t have to join a gym or make your life too crazy. Trust me.