Can't Spell Diet Without Die

Let me just start off by saying that my idea of a diet is ordering my chicken grilled instead of fried and then rewarding myself on my restraint with a piece of chocolate cake for dessert, whipped cream on the side because no one said this would be easy. So this isn't going to be one of those posts that claims eggplant is actually delicious and homemade sweet potato fries could rival McDonald's. I'm not that girl.

But it has been brought to my attention lately (by my little cousin who said my arms felt like Play-Doh) that perhaps I should consider a diet, or as the kids are calling it these days, "a lifestyle change". Basically instead of spending a week or 2 with SlimFast shakes I need to expand my palate to include vegetables and lean proteins and food without red dye as the top ingredient. I am what most would call a picky eater. If you wouldn't serve it in a kids' meal pre-Michelle Obama, I probably won't eat it. That has to change because it's really unhealthy and I'm running out of room to store all my happy meal toys, the construction of which has seriously declined since the late '90s.

I needed a nonrestrictive way to eat better. First there was Weight Watchers. I have an online membership so instead of going to meetings and being weighed and held accountable for my food choices I log into an app once or twice a week to decide between Doritos and Cheetos. The app is super cool in that it has a bar code scanner so instead of searching food items you can just scan the bar code and it will tell you the points, serving size all that good stuff. This results in me running (okay, walking) around the grocery store scanning items on my phone as people are probably thinking I'm registering for the weirdest shower ever.

My first 8 hours of Weight Watchers were great. Then I woke up. Upon my awakening I discovered that what I thought was a healthy, wholesome breakfast was a whopping 9 POINTS! The problem with Weight Watchers is that there's just so much math. There's all the adding points when you eat ANOTHER cookie, subtracting points when you get a sandwich without honey mustard because you're going to need those 2 points for half a piece of gum later, multiplying when you sit down with a bag of chips and 20 minutes later realize you've had 4 servings. And Brendan moved back to stupid Boston so who is going to do the math for me? (I'm a female. Are we even allowed to do math? I hope the NSA isn't reading this.) Every food has a point value and you get a certain amount of points each day. It's kind of like Blackjack. You want to use all of your points without being too far over or under. And I was never good at Blackjack.

So I tried something else, a Weight Watchers adjacent technique called Simply Filling. It's pretty straightforward. There's a sheet of paper with foods you can eat in different categories. The list even goes so far as to explicitly state foods that are not included. This paper actually lists that french fries do not count as a vegetable. That felt pointed. Beyond the list you get so many points for any foods you eat that are not included. Much to my dismay this paper does not look like when your teacher tells you that you can make a cheat sheet for your test as long as it fits on one paper. It more closely resembles a grocery list written by my meticulously thrifty mother. Bare necessities.

As I looked through the list I thought "I can do this! I eat cereal, I can do lean meats, I've made my peace with whole grains.". But when I took the list to the grocery store I realized it was all a lie. According to the list, you can eat cereals with no more than 1 gram of sugar and no fruits or nuts. According to Walmart, THOSE CEREALS DON'T EXIST. Apparently it's like a national law tantamount to thou shalt not spear a bald eagle. Picture, if you will, a Venn diagram of sorts. In one circle are cereals with less than 1 gram of sugar. In the other circle are cereals with no fruits or nuts. The circles do not intersect. At all.

But I wasn't going to give up yet. Until I looked more closely at the list and discovered a litany of issues. According to Simply Filling, avocados are not a power food. What next? Guacamole doesn't count as a serving of vegetables? You're only allowed to have certain foods once a day AND you're supposed to still adhere to whatever food pyramid recommendations the USDA is handing down. I was trying to escape math and here it is popping up again like a cold sore.

So alas, my search continues. I'll research other options with my laptop and a box of Apple Jacks (10 grams of sugar) and report back.


P.S. Happy late birthday Kelly! I hope you enjoyed a cookie cake with walnuts.