Subway O Subway

I used to eat lunch at Subway almost every day. I would sit by the picture of the Subway Guy (Jared Fogle) who lost so much weight. I'd stare up at him while I chewed and swallowed, wishing I could drop a few sizes too. I'd hope that looking at him would help me lose weight, and then I'd read through the nutritional information that Subway prints on their handy dandy napkins. Sometimes a prior eater would have left the newspaper out and I'd get to read that too. All the people who worked there knew me after a while, and they could even make my sandwiches in their sleep, perhaps they would even call me by my favorite: Turkey, no cheese, mustard, lettuce, tomato, olives and double cucumber. Either would get the lunch special or a footlong for five dollars, plus the chips and soda or maybe raisins and apples. It cost between $7.50 to $10.00 a day, depending on the other little things I would buy.

After a few months I realized that I wasn't shrinking like the Subway poster boy did, I was starting to experience that tight clothes feeling. My first reaction naturally was denial. It had to be my pants were shrinking. Maybe the dryer went out of whack. I checked and rechecked the settings on the washer and the dryer, and they seemed normal. Then I hopped on the scale. Boom said the scale,"You are now 7 lbs heavier."

I was starting to get a midsection. A chubby midsection. Was I mad at Subway. I was ready to scream. I would have hopped up and down but I was afraid I could possibly break the plastic in the scale. Subway tells us consumers the story about the one man who lost weight eating their food and then only on very close examination is it clear that man has a rare disorder. He may be one of the few individuals who have developed and adult ability to not see potato chips even when they are right in front of you. The subway poster boy became chipblind.

Each Subway store has a minimum of a partial entire wall covered in at least six different flavors of chips, it is a gauntlet of dangerous anti-health food. While the Subway posterboy had only eaten the sandwiches for his meals, I had not. I fell deep into the quicksand of the chipwall and the desserts and the juices and the sodas. Yet he was somehow able to look beyond the wall of chips and only buy the healthy stuff. And being a man also he wouldn't have had the monthly craving for raisins.

Chips are probably Subway's secret cash cow anyways, they must make over 50% in profit on them. They pitch the healthy stuff but we mortals will always buy the chips. Or the cookies. Or the raisins which are marked up at least 50% as well. Subway does not want us to be chipblind! They want to sell us the chips. They pitch Jared to us but in truth they do not want us to be like that man. They want to make a profit. You can't blame them, they are in business. But this is my unconsuming story.

I had to learn the hard way that you can't counterbalance a theoretically healthy sandwich with a certain amount of chips. No matter what else is in a chip, or if they are baked, fried in pure this or that oil, or reduced cholesterol or fat or anything chips are just giant condensed fried fat cells, waiting get eaten. Then they hatch like little baby aliens into a brand new fat invasion of our bodies.

It didn't matter that my subway special was only 350 or fewer calories. You add the chips at 220 calories and a bunch from the fat and the soda or juice for another 200 and my lunch total was around 770 calories and clearly the price I was paying was more than just financial. I had fallen into a chip and soda and juice and raisin induced blind corner, and I could feel the pull of the tailspin, so I did the only thing I could think of. I quit eating all forms of chips no matter whether or not they were corn or potato or vegetable or even animal.

Five months later, as a chip-free woman I am an easy 7 lbs thinner as a result. Instead of the four times a week subway habit costing $35 weekly on average, I have switched to eating my own lunches and reheating frozen food from Trader Joes. My new lunch cost is about $20 weekly instead, plus the energy spent in the microwave to warm it (I'm guessing a quarter). With 52 weeks in a year, I could easily get an annual savings around $750.

My other savings:

Getting to still wear the same old clothes as before - priceless.