The last few years, my dining habits have changed. Some of this is no doubt due to my big weight loss in 2006 following Gastric Bypass Surgery. Some of it, I suspect, is for other reasons, one of which is that some of the things I used to eat are simply not as good as they used to be. Whatever the reason, I have lost all of my interest in dessert-type foods or in anything sweet (including fruit and fruit juice) and also in most fast food.
As a native Angeleno, I'm supposed to think In-N-Out makes the best burger anywhere but I don't. If you do, fine. No point in us arguing. I just didn't like the last few I had so I decided to give up going to them. I have gushed extensively about the Five Guys chain in large part because it's just about the only fast food out there nowaday that appeals to me at all.
When I commenced gushing here, the nearest Five Guys to my home was more than two thousand miles away so there wasn't much chance of binge eating there. Now, they're popping up all over California. A Five Guys opens today not far from where I live. In fact, though I wasn't present for this monumental event, it was supposed to have opened about twenty minutes ago. I'll probably give them a week or so to practice on others before I venture by.
It's across the street from a market I patronize and one block from where I get the scripts copied for The Garfield Show. My friends assume I'm doing cartwheels to have one kinda in my neighborhood. Not really. In a way, that makes them too available.
The smaller Five Guys burger, which is more than enough for me and sometimes goes unfinished, represents 480 calories. Add in my usual toppings and we're at around 520.
Their regular order of fries — and there's no point in going to Five Guys if you don't eat the fries — is 620. Now, it's voluminous enough for about 93 people but I never eat an entire order. I don't think I even eat half an order. Since I don't like potato skin on my fries and sometimes have digestive problems with it, I toss those out. (Actually, last time I offered them to a couple at the next table who were splitting a small burger and appeared to not be able to afford one apiece or fries. I made two people very happy.)
If one eats just the internal fries — the skinless ones — I figure it's a third to a half of a full order. But then again, I don't know how Five Guys can calculate the size of an order since the employee just dumps fries into the paper bag with your burger. For the sake of discussion, let's say I'm getting 380 calories there. Add in zero more from my usual bottle of water and my Five Guys meal is running 900 calories, half of them from fat. This is all apart from the free peanuts I consume on the premises.
Even if that's my only substantive meal of my day, that's too much…so the new Five Guys in my area is way too close. That is, if I drive. If I walk there, we're looking at around three miles round-trip and the exercise will cancel out some (not all) of those calories. So then it will not be way too close. Only too close.
Before, I only got near one about every six or eight weeks. Now, I'll often be in the vicinity of that Five Guys, plus there are others about to open in areas where I often wander — one in Westwood Village, another out in Studio City near Coldwater and Ventura. At the rate they're expanding, I expect to find one in my garage by Christmas. I have pretty good will power about this kind of thing…but boy, they sure aren't making it easy.