Diet Musings

It's been a couple days and let me tell you, this diet kicks all sorts of ass.  The daily dips in weight seem to be tapering off, but I still feel like I'm making progress.  I felt a great deal of pride when I was walking through the mall having to constantly pull up my shorts. 
These are the shorts I bought because they fit nice and snug when size 34 started cutting into my gut.  Needing to buy a belt is a small price to pay: a progress-tax I will willing fork over.

I still have very minimal cravings.  Today, someone brought in cookies and chocolate covered pretzels.  It has kept me out of the kitchen.  I settled for a 12oz can of diet coke (diet friendly up to 16oz).  But for the most part, I've been pretty resilient, and up until I had to explain it to someone, i didn't know why. Here is my attempt at an explanation:

"Any successful diet markets itself to make you think you are eating like you used to eat: Atkins makes a pound cake; Jenny Craig makes small portioned pizzas; Weight Watchers lets you have X amount of this guilt or that guilt.  This is the key to failure.  If you are eating and looking at food that reminds you of the food you can't eat, you are going to crave and cave right into that food.  However, if you are eating like you have never eaten before, you are going to want to explore your options in that arena, exclusively."

I find my regular, weekly meals more flavorful than my cheat meals. Saturday was my cheat day.  My Turkey Sandwich with Cheese on French Bread was bland.  My Baked Ziti was terrible.  I mean, I waited all week for this crap?  These used to be mainstays in my diet.  By Sunday Morning I was craving 3 Bean Chili and a big side of steamed veggies.

When I'm not on my cheat day, my basic rule of thumb, has become: "If there is a question about a certain food, the answer is no."

My biggest daily "NO!" is Popcorn as it is too addictive and not very filling for its calorie content.  I do eat one domino craving occasionally, pistachios.  Ashley did me a great service by individually packaging two-handful servings.  I used to go through pounds of these salty morsels daily.  The servings keep with the good news in the waistline as well as in the bathroom (have you ever eaten too many nuts?  Not fun!).

Finally, I know that if i do well all week, I can completely throw caution to the wind on Saturdays.  While you're pretending to cook healthy with olive oil and half-fat substitutes, I'll be using Bavarian Goat Lard to fry my french fries, using a pound of whole milk mozzarella to cover my Croissant Pizza.  So far every other diet I've been on seems like a half-measure.  Well, no more half-measures.  I full-on diet, I full-on binge. See you at the scales.