I like Subway and I think they offer some great options when you need to eat out for convenience. It may be considered fast food, but I don’t put it in the same category as McDonald’s or Burger King. However, you can’t just walk into Subway and order anything off the menu if you want to eat healthy (no matter what Jared wants you to think). Here are some quick facts from the Subway menu to help you make wise decisions the next time you are there. (Official Subway nutrition facts)

17 Tips to Cut Calories at Subway

1. The nutrition values for the sandwiches on the ‘6 grams of fat or less‘ menu do not include cheese or condiments. Be aware of the calories and fat cheese and condiments will add to these values.
2. Ordering double meat on the ‘6 grams of fat or less menu‘ will help you to feel a lot more full without adding lots of extra calories and carbohydrates.
3. It’s true that you can eat relatively healthy at Subway if you are careful, but any time you eat deli meat you are consuming large amounts of sodium- about half of the recommended daily intake from just a 6 inch sandwich.
4. The Veggie Delite is the healthiest choice on the menu (of course it has no meat).
5. My favorite Subway sandwich (a 12 inch Spicy Italian) contains well over 1,000 calories.
6. If you want mayonnaise, order light mayonnaise -light mayonnaise saves you 60 calories and 7 grams of fat per serving.
7. Mustard and vinegar are your best condiment choices, with about 5 calories for 2 tbsp of mustard, and 0 calories per serving of vinegar.
8. Regular mayonnaise and ranch dressing are the worst condiment choices- Ranch has 120 calories, 13 g of fat, 210 mg sodium per serving and mayonnaise has 110 calories, 12 g fat, 80 mg sodium per serving.
9. The lowest calorie cheese is American, with 40 calories per 2 ‘triangles’.
10. The highest calorie cheese is Cheddar, with 60 calories per 2 ‘triangles’.
11. Do you know the serving size of condiments the sandwich artist is putting on your sandwich? Someone getting generous with mayonnaise could cost you a lot of calories.
12. The lowest calorie bread is regular wheat or white at 200 calories per 6 inch serving.
13. The highest calorie breads are Honey Oat and Italian Herb & Cheese at 250 calories per 6 inch serving.
14. The lowest calorie sandwiches from the ‘6 grams of fat or less menu‘ are the 6 inch Veggie Delite at 230 calories and the 6 inch Turkey Breast at 280 calories *does not include cheese or condiments.
15. The highest calorie sandwich from the ‘6 grams of fat or less menu‘ is the 6 inch Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki at 370 calories *does not include cheese or condiments.
16. The lowest calorie sandwich from the regular sandwich menu is the 6 inch Subway Melt at 380 calories *includes cheese, no condiments.
17. The highest calorie sandwich from the regular sandwich menu is the 6 inch Chicken and Bacon Ranch at 580 calories *includes cheese, no condiments.

Last Week: 256

This Week: 254

Loss: -2 pounds

Good news this week! Even though I was stressed out and eating some comfort foods last week, I kept my calories low the rest of the time. I also finally achieved my goal of doing one weightlifting workout. I’m still sore, but I feel so much better now that I’ve done it and I’m eager to continue. I also did more walking last week than I had been doing lately.

Only 4 pounds left for my first weight loss goal and about three weeks to do it. That should be plenty of time, but I don’t want to get complacent either so I am going to aim to beat it by a pound or two.

Last week: 260 pounds

Today: 259 pounds (goodbye 260s!)

I squeaked by another week with the smallest of margins, losing only one pound. A loss is a loss and I’ll take what I can get, but I’m going to see what I can do this week to make sure I come in with a two pound loss next Monday.

The great thing is, I feel more and more motivated every week and knowing that I need to share my results here is really helping me stay on track. Traffic on my site increased nicely last week and I hope that trend will continue. Thanks to everyone who has been visiting the site!

I’m trying to start slow and consistently lose 1-2 pounds a week. Typically when I try to lose weight, I get all fired up and work really hard for a week or so until I burn out. A fast pace just isn’t sustainable for me. I’m doing much better with the slow and steady approach so far.

You can lose weight with simple math. Losing weight isn’t easy, but the concept is. You need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose a pound of body weight. You can use a site like www.calorie-count.com to get an estimate of the calories you burn each day just by being you and being alive. My number is 2,900. Somewhat arbitrarily, before I even looked up that number, I had decided to limit myself to 2,000 calories per day. That will net me about 900 calories per day, which should translate into 1 - 2 pounds lost per week. So far, with the exception of one bad week, that is exactly the pace I have been on.

The first two weeks of cutting my calories were difficult at times. There were days when I felt rather hungry, but I resisted the desire to eat as I knew I had already had my daily allotment of calories. I think surviving the early temptation is the key to success. Now I can get through a 2,000 calorie day and feel just fine, sometimes coming in even a couple of hundred calories lower and not feeling like I’m missing out in any way.

For me, this process is very similar to setting up a budget and controlling my spending. You really have to track the details, at least for a while, to understand where you actually are and what you must do to achieve results. I thought I was eating a lot less than I really was. I suggest spending some time tracking what you eat for about a week so you can determine a baseline, and then start looking for opportunities to cut calories. For example, I found that my coffee habit was costing my a lot of empty calories from the flavored creamer I was using- easily 200 or more per day. I would never have realized that without taking the time to figure out my actual calorie consumption.

Limiting calories is the first step to success, but finding ways to burn calories will speed up the process (and I think it’s safe to say that exercise is good for you anyway). Again, I am going for slow and steady and small changes that I will be able to maintain. I decided to make walking my primary source of exercise for now. You don’t need special equipment for walking and you can basically do it any time and any place. I’m fortunate to already have a treadmill at home so I use that in the mornings. For now, I’m doing 20 minutes at 2.5 miles per hour. Not a stressful pace by any means and not so long that I get bored. From what I can tell, that burns about 70 calories. My next small step is to park farther away from my office at work. That may not sound like much, but it is .21 miles each way and that adds up to an extra 2 miles per week and about 200 extra calories burned. I wanted to do more at work, so using Google Maps Pedometer, I mapped out a short route around my office, about .55 miles and walk that once or twice a day depending on the weather and my workload. That short walk is worth about 45 calories.

I plan to add a weight lifting to routine soon, but I don’t want to rush into that. For now, I have taken to doing yard work as my other primary form of exercise. There is a lot to be done right now and I actually don’t mind doing the work at all because it’s benefiting our home and my waistline at the same time. One hour of pulling weeds is good for about 300 calories.

I suggest tracking the exercise you do along with the calories you consume. I actually found that I have been able to predict my weight loss by looking at the numbers I record. That is a pretty cool feeling and it really makes me feel like I am in control again. I use FitDay to track my numbers. There is a free online version and a paid version that you can download. I’ve only used the free online version so far and it works just fine. Though be warned, it does seem to overstate your base calories burned so you’ll have to look elsewhere for that number.

Setting my weight goals- you can see my weight loss goals on this site in my ‘fat snowball’ (silly name borrowed from the debt snowball term). I am looking at the slow and steady approach here for sure, but seeing that this slow pace should help me reach my goals in only one year is very encouraging. Another year of being fat doesn’t sound like fun, but I sure wish I had taken these actions a year ago and I don’t want to let any more time go by. I set three goals. The first being just a nice round number, not too far from where I started. Sort of a ‘getting started’ goal. It’s a lot easier to take on small chunks of the total than the whole thing. Then I just projected the remaining two goals out from there at a reasonable pace. I know I will reach a point where the weight will be harder to lose, but I also know that I will reach a point of greater activity and stronger commitment so I think I can make it happen.

I’ve had success with weight loss before, losing 50 pounds about five years ago. I kept it off for a while, but I finally got lazy again and let it all come back and more. My approach at that time was to simply overpower my weight by exercising so much that I hardly paid attention to my diet. These days, I don’t have the time for extreme exercise, nor do I have the desire. I’m getting older now and I’m happy to take the turtle’s pace to reach my goals now. I hope I can do it and I hope this plan can be helpful to someone else out there. All of my progress will be updated on this site!

I made small progress this week, but progress is progress!

Last Monday- 261 pounds
Today- 260 pounds

I was actually rather worried that I would not lose any weight this week. I felt like I was a bit lazy last week, but I guess I put in just enough effort to make the least amount of progress possible.

I didn’t walk very much last week and I ate out more than I have in a while. I did about three hours of yard work over the weekend, which I suspect saved me from showing no loss this week. According to FitDay, one hour of pulling weeds burns about 350 calories so a good morning of yard work can add up fast.

I said this last week, but I feel really motivated now to work extra hard and get out of the 260s (for good) this week. Also, I’m trying a bit of an experiment starting today. I found an old bottle of Hydroxycut that I purchased about a year ago (not expired yet) and hardly used. I wouldn’t spend the money on something like this now, but since I have it I decided I will finish off the bottle and see if it helps my results. Even if it has a minimal impact, I’ll take every pound I can get!

It’s been roughly two and a half weeks since I started focusing on losing weight, but I want to kick off a regular weekly report that I will post every Monday.

Previous weight (starting weight): 266

Current weight: 261

That is decent progress for two and a half weeks and since I have yet to put forth very much effort, I will take it. All I have done is focus on tracking calories and adding in some walking to my daily routine. I will post more details about those topics later.

All I have done for the past year and a half or so is gain weight so finally moving in the other direction is a very nice feeling. I also have a lot of hope for the future since I have yet to really go at this with serious intensity. Hopefully knowing that I have to report progress here next Monday will help me to pick up the pace too. 

I started this blog with the desire to improve my finances and hopefully help someone else do the same. Shortly after starting work on improving my financial life I decided to attack my weight problem too. Since making that decision I decided to relaunch the site with a new name and URL. So….welcome to the new Finance and Fat blog!

Now that I have finally decided what to write about, look for more frequent posts on both losing weight and gaining wealth. Also, look for a new site design shortly, hopefully ready to be rolled out today.