I had already written a post for today because I thought I had a date tonight. Change of plans...I got dumped instead. So...much like my relationship, that blog post got shoved into the scrap heap and I decided to start fresh. Here we go.
My father and brother recently celebrated birthdays but if I were them I would celebrate every day because they're both in the best shape of their lives. How did they do it? Exercise? Yeah. Diet? Yeah. Metabolism so fast it makes Allyson Felix look like...me? Yep, they are genetically blessed with that too. In terms of inheriting traits, Patrick got my dad's teeth and metabolism and I got my mom's chronic anxiety. Fair trade?
But the main change they both made that helped them lose weight...for my brother it was the freshman 15 that was actually more like 7, for my father it was - nothing, he hasn't gained weight since before I was born when I guess I started hogging all the resources...was paying more attention to what they were eating. This was bad news for me because I am not a naturally observant person and I'm willing to bet that most people would agree that if I have some extra attention to spare I should really lend it to the driving sphere of my daily life, not my diet.
My dad and brother downloaded apps on their phones to track what they ate and they learned to make better choices and eat smaller portions. I said that seemed really difficult to have to log everything you eat and they assured me that it didn't take long and you can find most packaged foods easily. And I'll admit...I almost believed them. Until last night, when I witnessed the unthinkable. My father POURED HIS SKIM MILK INTO A MEASURING CUP.
I was almost too ashamed to type that. I looked at my mother, incredulously. Could she believe this was happening? My father was measuring skim milk! And not because we didn't have any clean glasses but because he actually needed to know the volume of the milk he would be drinking. Y'all. I cannot stress this enough. It was SKIM. MILK. That's essentially diet water because it's water mixed with some of the nutritional value of milk. All of the good parts of milk with none of the bad. I'm no scientist but it's got to be negative calories like celery or grapefruit.
Needless to say, that method just isn't going to work for me for a variety of reasons. First of all - for one week a month I am just going to eat everything in sight, even if it's not edible (Hello Starburst wrappers! I only have 24 hours in a day and I refuse to spend 20 minutes unwrapping a teaspoon of caloric content.) Second of all, I don't own that many measuring cups. And imagine if I ate something homemade like a casserole or dessert! That would involve some John Nash level mathematics. (1/3 cup vegetable oil in this cake, split into 12 pieces so divide by 12, add the icing and sprinkles. Can't we just count it as a vegetable?) Also, here's something a lot of people don't realize...I drive right past 2 different McDonald's every single day. That means for about 40 minutes of commute time every day I can smell french fries from my car. I'm only human.
I've tried different diets in the past. My favorite was the sleep past breakfast diet. The less bread diet lasted one meal. I'm also more than willing to try the chocolate diet I saw on MTV's True Life. Just yesterday I heard of a new one. It's called self-control and I don't think it's for me.
I'll keep searching for a diet that I can commit too without neglecting my long-term relationship with bread and Butterfinger cups. I refuse to believe that a society capable of flight, space travel and elevators doesn't have the scientific wherewithal to make asparagus taste more like garlic bread and less like sadness.
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