Day 26: WWJE, or First Day On My Own

By the end of my first day without the diet center, I texted how it sucks being on a diet to my "low-carb-my-way" brother.  You just can’t look forward to meals like before because they’ll never be the same.  You’ll never experience the bliss of a mind-numbing food coma, eat ice cream, or give yourself an instant carb high with Sun Chips. 

My brother’s response was that all the deprivation is worth the long-term result and that when the going gets tough, he uses the WWJE method he learned from his gardener, Migel,—“What Would Jesus Eat?”  According to the gardener, “Jesus ate no carbs and neither should you!”

“What????” I texted back.  “Jesus drank wine (carbs) and broke loafs of bread (mucho carbs).”  I certainly can’t picture Jesus biting into a bunless burger or munching on tofu.   

“O.K.” my brother texted back.  “So Jesus ate carbs.  He was skinny to begin with, so it was O.K.”

Ah, to be skinny to begin with!

Day 25: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Their parting gift to me was a bottle of appetite suppressants.  While I appreciated that, I would have also wanted something non-perishable.   The glued-together plastic broccoli or beans that served as a visual of what one carb and one protein portion looked like would have been fine.  That is something I could have kept in the kitchen as a constant reminder and a source of inspiration.  Better yet, if they made those broccoli or beans magnetic they could have also held up the numerous pieces of paper that end up on our refrigerator door. 

At the last session, I was also initiated into one of the center’s secrets—their maintenance program. Six months on their maintenance program cost the same as one month on their regular program.  Consumer beware!  Always ask for alternative, less expensive options when you sign up for something that’s anything but.  I paid $360 to lose 4.2 pounds—so that’s about $86 per pound lost. 

I realize that many people lose much more than that during the first month and thus lower their dollar-per-pound ratio.  I’m not looking for a crash diet.  I’m not doing this to look good for a wedding or a reunion.  I’m in it for a slow-to-moderate sustained weight loss. 

All in all it was a brief and sweet good-by.  No pressure to stay a member or “you’re nothing without us” implication.  Instead there was a hope that I’ll come back for the maintenance program.  I’m determined to do a month solo first.

I left the center lighter on my feet, the appetite suppressants in my purse giggling with my every step.

Days 23-24: Cutting The Umbilical Cord

Tomorrow is my last appointment with the country-club diet center.  It’s not really at a country club.  Just the price of it is.  After a month of supervised food and carb deprivation, I’m planning to continue on my own.  This means no more weekly 15-minute consults with nutritionists and no more weigh-ins on the machine that can tell me my body fat limb-by-limb.

But before I cut the umbilical cord, I must give the center credit.  I had a really hard time staying on a diet for more than a day in the last few years.  With the center’s help, my diet’s lasted almost 4 weeks and hopefully will continue to last. 

While I couldn’t have started on the road well-travelled without the center’s support, I’ve also realized that the diet and weight-loss process is really about me and not the 15-minute weekly conversations with nutritionists. 

Of course, if I gain the weight back or stop shedding pounds, I will go back to the womb.  In the meantime, I will attempt to motivate myself with the money I’ll be saving on the diet center membership. 

Day 22: The Day After

Want to know what happened the day after I dreamed of éclairs, cream puffs, and flower-barfing babies?  Saturday night my husband and I tried to grab a quick healthy dinner at a specialty coffee house before running off to a movie.  It’s the “order-at-the-register-we’ll-bring-the-food-to-you” type of place. Starving and true to the diet, I ordered a chopped salad with chicken. Unfortunately, that particular night dinner wasn’t coming quickly.  The employees of the coffee shop were having problems loading my husband’s reward card with additional cash as well as figuring out how many reward points he’s earned.  My husband spent most of the dinner standing at the register as three different employees tried and failed to do anything with his card.

I was sitting at the table by myself when the food arrived.  I had to go find my husband and tell him that if he continues to wait for logic and justice at the cash register, his dinner will get cold. My husband let whoever was in charge know exactly how unhappy he was about the situation.  And what did the manager do to lessen our pain?  He promised us something extra on the house.  The something extra turned out to be only their best dessert—the tres leches.  After we finished dinner, the waiter placed a see-through cup with a magnificent-looking whipped-cream-on-top-of-a-dipped-twice-in-something-decadent-sponge cake on the table in-between my husband and I.  To add insult to injury, he gave us not one but two spoons.

I felt like I was on the set of “What Would You Do?"--the show that hires actors to create really sticky situations for the unsuspecting public to see how the unsuspecting public reacts.  Luckily, there weren’t any cameras around shooting a documentary of a woman on a low-carb, low-sugar diet being tempted with the best dessert a place had to offer.  What did I do?  Well, I ate half of the insanely delicious three-layered dessert and enjoyed every layer.

 

That night, I decided to never again tempt myself with images of dessert as I was falling asleep.  No, I must cross those images out with a red X and visualize cauliflower.  Maybe then, my husband will be able to pay for my salad quickly and I will not succumb to an incredible dessert.

Since this blog is somewhat confessional, I must admit I had a few handfuls of my husband’s pop corn at the movie theater (another no-no because of the starch-a.k.a carbs—in corn.)  Something tells me I’ll be dreading getting on the scale Thursday.

Days 21-22: Sweet Dreams

Friday night as I was drifting off to sleep, my fatigued, carb-deprived brain started to flash images of eclairs and cream puffs.  Never mind the full-fat eclairs at bakeries and coffee shops--at this point I'd settle for the Weight Watchers brand they no longer manufacture.

Go ahead and partake, I told myself.  It's only in your mind and has no calories.  Then I worried that I had underestimated the power of the mind--what if my imaginary eclair consumption was so convincing to my brain that it started sending out signals to my body to accumulate calories and fat from the mythical eclair?  Don't be silly, I told myself and drifted off to sleep.

As a woman of vivid imagination, I get the weirdest dreams.  That night, I dreamed that I was surrounded, pestered actually, by fairies who wanted my help in being born as children.  You knew that a baby was previously a fairy if she opened her mouth and had red and white rose petals cascade out of it in slow motion.  Now there's an idea for Anne Geddes! 

What do babies who gracefully vomit fresh rose petals have to do with my diet?  I have no idea.  I'm not about to eat flowers, although I should probably eat more things that grow--like broccoli or cauliflower (ah, there's something that sounds like a flower.)  Maybe the dream was telling me to visualize vegetables as I fall asleep instead of eclairs.

Days 17-20: Yes!

Yes, Virginia, I can lose weight!  So far 4 pounds, in three weeks on the diet. During my weekly appointment with a nutritionist yesterday I vowed to submit myself to the same deprivation and hunger as last week--the week that resulted in me shedding 2.4 pounds.  I don't think this drop will be easily detected in the "before" and "after" pictures.  It's the kind of weight loss only my mother would notice (thanks, Mom!)

Today I'll proudly say that when the kids drag me inside a kiddie pool, I'll displace less water, leaving more for all the children and mothers.  Ah, to do something for the rest of the humanity and the planet!

My midsummer plight continues!

Days 15-16: Low or High Carbs?

The low-carb diet honeymoon is over.  "This is a hard diet," I whined Saturday.  "It's so hard to give up carbs!!!" 

A sympathetic friend told me about a carb-based vegetarian diet, Engine 2, that did wonders for one of her relatives.  For those of you who, like me, have never heard of Engine 2 before and think that perhaps "engine" refers to a fast metabolism and "2" to an alternative way to lose weight--you think too much!  The diet was started by Engine 2 firemen somewhere in Texas.  Apparently the guys were able to lose weight and get healthy by cutting out beef and other meats from their diets. 

That's great for Engine 2 men!  They are to be commanded!  But I am not a 6 foot 2 fireman who easily extinguishes carbs.  I'm a 5 foot 2 woman who wears her carbs and avoids flames as much as possible.  The Engine 2 diet reminded me of my quasi-hippy vegetarian days in Southern California.  Years ago, I strictly followed a vegetarian diet but, alas, did not shed a pound.  Whereas I lost 1.6 pounds in two weeks on the low-carb diet.  Low-carb it is! 

P.S. Had a bunless burger for dinner last night.  Not bad!