(Does this seem funny to anyone else?)
It's time. It's way past time, actually, but that's water under the
bridge. I need to lose some weight and I need to get serious about it.
List of diets I have tried over the years: TOPS, NutriSystem, the -Ose Diet (I made
that one up, but it worked), The Zone Diet.
TOPS was Take Off Pounds Sensibly. My grandmother and her sister went
religiously for something like 30 years. I don't think they ever lost
more than five pounds. It could have been the snacks they brought to
the meetings, but I'm not sure. I didn't lose anything because it
wasn't really my idea and I HATED the social aspect of it.
I lost 20 pounds on NutriSystem,
and never once managed to eat all of the food they mandated I eat in a
day. (Looking back now I find that ludicrous. Bring it on, I can eat
it.) I hated the food, but it did work. It took me a couple of years
to put the weight back on, which I did in Maui, and because I didn't
exercise and had turned 21 and discovered cocktails.
The -Ose Diet was on the heels of the NutriSystem diet. I just didn't
eat anything that ended in -ose -- glucose, sucrose, fructose, lactose,
or maltose. I'm only exaggerating a tiny bit; I scanned labels
religiously and would not eat anything containing any of those things.
I shunned almost all packaged food, fruit, cereals, and any kind of
sugar, and ate only oatmeal, vegetables and meat. It worked great, and
I would have lost more, except that I got chicken pox and was lucky to
be able to eat anything at all for three weeks. Then I moved to Maui,
and we all know what happened then . . .
The Zone Diet was a great idea. It was Chas's
idea, and he bought Dr. Barry Sears's books and read them. I didn't
even crack the covers. "We should do this," said Chas, who had
ballooned up to 180 from his perfect 172. Jeez, you'd think he was the
Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, the way he panicked.
I didn't lose any weight on The Zone Diet, but we ate very healthy
meals, and we were working out a lot, so I was getting leaner and
stronger and more muscular. I had just exchanged walking for jogging,
when I started being easily exhausted by my short little run . . . and
figured out that I was pregnant. So much for the Zone Diet, although
we retained our very healthy eating habits.
For a while.
So here it is eight years later, and I have become the Stay-Puft
Marshmallow Man. Woman. Whatever, close enough. I haven't worked out
in ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha oh that's a good one
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha years. Most pizza dough is
in better shape than I am.
So it's time to pick a new diet plan. My criteria:
- one I can live with
- one that works
- one that isn't dangerous -- The Cactus Diet, The Licorice Diet, The Innards Diet -- but yet still interesting and challenging enough to blog about occasionally
Hmmmmmmm. You know, The Cactus Diet has some good points -- no, wait, I've got it:
Foolery's Corn Diet
This is not to say that I will eat nothing but corn, although there would be an undeniable visual aspect to that . . . no, I will shun corn. Sounds easy, right?
Wrong.
Go read a food label. Any label, it hardly matters. I'll wait.
(whistling . . . whistling . . . )
Okay, did you find corn on the label? I thought so. Modified corn
starch? Corn oil? Corn syrup? Corn sweetener? It's in EVERYTHING.
Unless you buy European packaged foods, in which case there is NO corn
added, because they don't grow or process corn in Europe. Here in the U.S. the ultra-powerful
Archer Daniels Midland company processes corn, though, and as a result
the cheap and (until recently) plentiful corn has been put into
EVERYTHING Americans eat, and some things we don't. But enough of that.
Avoiding corn means no soda, no candy, no processed sweets of any kind,
UNLESS I have a jones that bad that I resort to making it myself, which
is okay once in a while. This diet was the only way I could possibly
justify keeping wine in the mix. I'll just cut out all that corn
whiskey I was drinking.
So how did I cheat already? Well. I was going to start today, but
since we were all home together at breakfast and no one was rushing off
anywhere I made homemade Pancakes The Hard Way,
but discovered that Chas had used all of the real maple syrup last week
without telling me. Yes, I used the Aunt Jemima, so sue me.
Oh, I forgot the most important criterion for any diet:
- one that makes my friend Gubby tell me I'm crazy
And if you think Gubby hasn't already told me that the Foolery Corn Diet is crazy, it's YOU who are crazy.
Recent Comments