My Dairy Queen Blizzard Fetish

I have to admit something — I love ice cream, and Dairy Queen blizzards are right at the top of the list.  I thought the calories in a Heath Blizzard were pretty nominal.  Sadly enough, I learned today that I’ve been kidding myself about this habit.

I’ll explain.  I came to the conclusion a few years ago that much of the advice people give regarding weight loss is misguided.  I say that because you’re often told that you must give up your sin foods.  You know what I mean — no more ice cream, cake, cookies, chips, or sodas.  People can manage that for a short while, but eventually they fall off the boat and just quit.  So what’s my solution to this problem?  I try to have a little bit of sin food.  Usually its a half-cup of ice cream at home, and since most ice cream has about 250-calories in a half cup serving, that isn’t too bad.  I generally find that the fat content and sugar satisfies my sweet tooth.  I can’t really say I’m getting much dairy nutrition out of it, but at least I’m getting my fix without being too bad.

So back to the DQ blizzards.  I don’t eat them often, but I really like a small Heath Blizzard (with no fudge).  I’ve been telling myself that the lack of fudge would make it about equivalent to a half cup of ice cream at home.  Sadly enough, today I made the mistake of looking it up.  You can actually look this information up on the Dairy Queen calories website, which to their credit, is pretty well designed.  So what I discovered is that the small blizzard, how I like it, contains about 550 calories.  Ouch!  And lately I’ve been having more of these.  Not a lot, but once or twice a week.  I know that if I continue with this trend, I’ll start to add on the pounds.  So I guess that means I’ve got to limit my exposure better than I’ve been doing.

I guess it means better planning on my part.  My ice cream fetish at home has been the Kroger Private Selection Black Raspberry Chocolate Chunk.  A half cup serving has about 190-calories.  That’s far better than what DQ is serving up to me, so I guess I’ll have to save it for home.