Department budgets for the next fiscal year are due tomorrow by
5:00 P.M. Coworkers Don and Kay have been working diligently all morning to compile their facts and figures. Long overdue for a lunch break, they agree to walk to the corner deli for a quick bite. Kay’s cell phone rings as they walk in the door. She sees that it’s her daughter’s day care center, so she takes the call and gestures for Don to go ahead and order.
Don, who’s thirty-eight, has been trying for the past few weeks to get in shape for a 10K race next month. He’s been running every other day, but he noticed that he’s not as fast as he was the year before, and he attributes the difference to the spare tire that he seems to have acquired around his middle. So Don has decided to watch what he eats and cut back on some of the high-fat foods he loves, like french fries and burgers. He orders a turkey sandwich on whole-wheat breadwith lettuce, tomato, red onion, and mustard (hold the mayo), a bowlof vegetable soup, and a diet soft drink.Finished with her call, Kay, who’s thirty, is starving. She recently returned from maternity leave and is struggling to lose the 40-plus pounds that she gained while pregnant. Stressed out from the call, which brought the news that her baby might be coming down with a cold, she reminds herself not to let her emotions lead her to overeat. So she quickly scans the menu and orders a small chef’s salad with fat- free dressing (hold the croutons), a low-fat blueberry muffin, and a16-ounce bottle of water.After finding a booth away from the crowd, they sit down and begin to eat.He says, “How can you eat all of that fat-free stuff? Doesn’t it taste like air? It never fills me up. A diet soft drink is the only diet food I can stand.”She says, “I love fat-free foods! They have a lot fewer calories, and they satisfy my cravings for sweets. I like diet soft drinks, too, but I didn’t order one because I’ve heard that drinking water makes you lose weight faster.”Two colleagues grabbing a quick lunch together and then getting back to work: although they don’t come out and say it, they are both trying to lose weight. Based on what each of them has ordered, we can con- clude that each appears to be making food choices with weight loss in mind. But whose lunch do you think is the better choice? The answer: it may well depend on your gender. Men tend to go for lunches like Don’s: other than the diet soft drink, when guys are trying to cut calo- ries, they go for traditional foods to help them feel full and they skip the fat-free stuff. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to have a lunch like Kay’s: they’re more likely to prefer salads and rely on fat-free dressings, low-fat bakery products, and other calorie-reduced foods as a means of losing weight. And even though water is a healthfulbeverage, many women mistakenly believe that it is a short cut to weight loss.The truth of the matter is that men and women alike can lose weight only if they consume fewer calories than they burn. That translates into making changes in one’s eating habits. While the majority of women recognize and embrace that fact, guys are apt to resist a bit because men are more likely to believe that they can simply exercise their pounds away.
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