Are these my calories?
Asked by
janbb (
63197
)
February 29th, 2016
Bank error in my favor! Trying to lose a few post-vacation pounds, i only bought two small cookies in the bakery. When I got home, I discovered that the counter person had actually given me four cookies and charged me for two. Here’s the question: If I eat the bonus two, should the calories be mine or hers?
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38 Answers
They are “free calories” but calories none the less.
Break them in half, freeing the caloric content normally locked into the intact cookie.
What if I crumble them up?
Awe don’t crumble them up. Give them to someone else. As @zenvelo says they are free calories.
Maybe just eat a small amount of them and you could save the rest for tomorrow.
No. Eat them all. This is obviously God’s will.
Have one on me!
Make them your calories! Eat them for breakfast or lunch and skip your usual fare.
Being free they will contain twice the deliciousness.
Well, I had the two that were in my eating plan for the day and will do my best to save the others for tomorrow’s allotment.
By tomorrow, someone else may have come along and taken care of it.
Americans. You people and your lack of appreciation for the beauty of real cookies being readily available.
what ya gotta do see…..take one of those bad boys, turn it upside down…..now ya gotta spoon out about a half cup of rocky road ice cream on it and smoosh it flat…..then ya gotta put the second cookie on top. now you aren’t eating 2 cookies, you are eating one home-made sammich, and home made is good for you.
I’m surprised that @LuckyGuy didn’t advise you to burn them up in a cookie-stove to heat your home – and tell you exactly how warm they could make you. He must be getting old and forgetful.
Put them in the frizzer!!
A calorie is a unit of heat, so if you eat them in the manner that @Guitarded suggests, then the calorie value is completely negated by the ice cream.
Basic physics, that.
Erma was spot on. There are no calories in cookie crumbles. Especially if you crumble them in a bowl and pour water on them.
If you make a sammich, roll the ice cream bit in tiny chocolate chips. May as well go for broke at this point.
If cookies you eat
and they go to your seat
even if they were free
you will soon see
that calories cannot be beat.
Just make sure you eat the cookies standing up, and directly from the bakery bag. If you sit down to eat them, or if you put them on a plate, the calories will count. Also, if nobody sees you eat the cookies, they have zero calories.
Sounds like a good time to observe my favorite rule of dieting: whatever you’re eating, have a salad with it, and it’s a diet meal.
That makes it all ok.
@Jeruba Let’s not forget this one – drink a diet soda with the cookies. Doing so will cancel-out any calories.
I don’t know why no one else has made the observation that these are, by their very nature, fat-free, calorie-free cookies.
You should enjoy the hell out of them, and recommend to the bakery that this could be a huge marketing opportunity for them.
I cannot express how hard I laughed at all this! Thank you!
Obviously, the great and powerful Kuky, the Egyptian goddess of baking, has seen your struggle and has reached down from her exalted butcher block to bless you with extra love. Eat them! Relish them! After, of course, proper libations are poured on the earth in thanks. I think milk is appropriate.
Love all these answers but I feeling your dilemma @janbb – been counting the calories myself since Christmas
Eat them today but take them off your calorie allowance for tomorrow. Or go for a brisk walk for an hour or so to burn them off. Or just remember that you are running on a calorie deficit so eating the cookies will take you up to, but not past the calories you will be burning off today anyway.
Any which way you look at it those cookies are history!
Update: I saved the two bonus cookies for my mid-morning work snack today and lost some weight yesterday sticking with the plan!
@CWOTUS You knew I couldn’t resist the calculation after seeing your post. You b*stard!
Assuming they are large cookies at 200 calories each you have a total of 400 (nutritional) calories or 400 kcal (Metric)
If you are active for one hour and move at the rate of a 4 mph walk, your body will expend approximately the same energy as the cookies and will release the equivalent 0.47 kWhr. into the room. (Let’s call it 0.5 kWhr for easy math.) That is like running a 1500 W electric heater for 20 minutes, or a 60 W bulb for 8 hours.
The saved energy cost is about 10 cents worth of electricity, or 5 cents worth of Natural gas, or 6 cents worth of eating oil.
Damn you! ;-)
But @LuckyGuy, that’s just the gross return, isn’t it? Did your calculations include the energy required to initiate the reaction (ignition) as well as whatever parasitic energy is required to maintain the burn?
It’s good to hear that you’re still on the ball, anyway.
@CWOTUS I just used a net heating value which yields a result close enough for the purpose of this question. While it is possible to perform a more in depth analysis, under contract naturally, I estimate this first order result to be well within 10% of actual.
Note: I ignored heat in the waste stream and the associated loss from toilet flushing.
@LuckyGuy The “waste stream” last night helped a lot with the recorded weight loss this morning! But if I flush each time during the night, will I lose more weight?
@janbb Your house will lose heat with each flush. I estimate the water entering your house is at 50F. Over time it gradually increases to room temperature. Let’s call that 70F. You likely have a low flush, 1.6 gallon per flush, toilet. 20F x 1.6 gallons x 8 pounds per gallon = 256 BTU or 75 Watt hours of heat wasted per flush.
OMG, Cracking up!! I need a cookie.
@LuckyGuy I am concerned with the effects of flushing at night on weight gain or loss; your calculations are not descriptive of that.
OK I’ll work on weight loss now. From my estimate of your height and weight I figure you burn about 90 calories per mile of walking. You can ceck tis with an activity band. I am probably close. A trip to the bathroom and back with a side trip or 2 is about 100 feet. 100 calories per mile. 90 cal/mile x 100 ft/ 5280 ft/mile = 1.7 calories. At 8 calories nominal per gram of fat you would lose 1.7/8 = 0.21 grams per bathroom visit – not including the waste matter left behind.
Guess I’d be better off going to the bathroom downstairs then in the middle of the night.
Well, @janbb, you can pee at my house, but I still think the cookie calories would be neutralized by the ice cream.
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