Listen. You can't make this stuff up. According to an Australian news source, McDonald's is slapping a healthy heart logo on its products, even the famed-for-its-fat Big Mac. How could you happen, you ask? Well, it's all about money, apparently. McDonald's pays the Australian Heart Foundation $330,000 annually. I guess this is considered a donation of sorts. In return, McDonald's gets to use the heart foundation's healthy heart logo.

What has shocked and angered consumer advocates and medical professionals is that McDonald's is using the logo and other heart-related imagery (like sesame seeds arranged in a heart shape atop a burger bun) on advertisements for its entire product line, not just for the healthier offerings on the menu. (And, yes, there are a few: milk, juice, yogurt, salads and the like.) Critics say the company is deliberately manipulating consumer perceptions of its foods, implying that eating at McDonald's is heart-healthy. Dr. Rosanna Capolingua, president of the Australian Medical Association, says the advertisements are a "tragedy" and amount to subliminal advertising. The Australian Heart Foundation, she says, should step in and alter the terms of its contract with the fast-food giant.

Ironically, this whole episode is likely to hurt the Australian Heart Foundation more than it hurts McDonald's, cheapening its image through association.

When it comes to losing weight, so much of it is mental. It requires the conscious decision to begin exercising and eating right. It requires a mental commitment to following through on reaching your goals. And, above all, it requires using your cognitive ability to make educated choices. Still, we are human, which means that we make errors in judgment from time to time. As a result, we sometimes think we are doing something healthy, only to later learn that it wasn't nearly as healthy as we thought.

I find that people tend to make this mistake most often when it comes to their food-calorie estimates and their exercise-calorie burning approximations. Allow me to explain; in many cases, people think that a certain food has, say, 500 calories. But, in reality, that food actually has twice as many calories. The same misstep happens quite frequently with exercise. Someone will think that the half an hour of moderate jogging they spent on the treadmill burns a certain amount of calories, only to be rather disappointed when they see that it burs far less than they expected.

To help you gauge where your own accuracy lies with this sort of thing, I've compiled a short list of foods (source: University of Pittsburgh study) that demonstrate the average miscalculation people have in estimating the impact each has.

1) Hamburger and Fries: Estimated Calories: 777. Actual Calories: 1,240

2) Fettuccine Alfredo: Estimated Calories: 704. Actual Calories: 1,500

3) Chicken Fajitas: Estimated Calories: 704. Actual Calories: 1,600

It seems that especially when eating a restaurant, people tend to underestimate their caloric intake by half of what their meal actually contains.

What's a good way to combat this? My suggestion is to visit www.fitday.com to find out exactly how many calories, carbs, grams of fat and sodium, etc. are in some of what you consider to be your healthier meals. You may be surprised to find that a change in your diet is what has been hindering your progress.