How to lose weight

Now that Mr Charm is being rehabbed and I don't have to cook for him, it's an ideal time to tackle that weight loss diet.

Here's how a proper, healthy, but low calorie diet plan works.
1. Plan meals.

2. Buy healthy food, like veggies. Spend time selecting the most luscious, freshest produce.
3. Spend hours assembling, dicing, chopping and stirring really yummy meals.
4. Eat yummy meal.
4. Clean up mess in kitchen.

But this is what I usually do:
1. Go to frozen food department, fill basket and get out of there in 10 minutes
2. Microwave something.
3. Eat not so yummy but admittedly convenient meal.
4. Throw out box.

The war against pudge

 

When I was 16 and graduated from high school, I was a bit of a pudge. See above.

 

A couple of years later, I went on my own version of a low carb diet. Results above.

I don't think I ate another carb for ten years. Then one day I had an ice cream cone. It was all over.

Much, much, much later--many pounds later-- I sent for Nutrisystem. Actually, I did it yesterday. The march toward sylphdom has begun.

The food sounds absolutely vile, by the way.

Six ounces of chicken breast

It's official--I'm too fat! The cardiologist seemed a bit put out--people with cardiac issues are supposed to stay slim, optimally. And here I am creeping up on the weight of a truck driver--at 5'1".

So--I go to the library and thumb through diet books, looking for something barely palatable I can manage to get by on for four to six weeks, or possibly indefinitely. Since I really have no idea what I eat or how much, or what I should eat or how much, I bring home a bunch of diet books.

All of the diets are based on different theories: high carb, low carb, high protein, and so on. But they do have some things in common. First, eat breakfast. They recommend oatmeal, and I can live with that, although my idea of a nice breakfast involves French toast or pancakes, or possibly a runny egg and buttered toast.

For lunch, the diet books recommend half a turkey sandwich and half an apple or six grapes. I can do that. Not with enthusiasm, but with grumbling acceptance. Although I might have seven grapes or two-thirds of an apple.

It's dinner that gets me. Dinner on a diet always includes six ounces of chicken breast, grilled, accompanied by maybe one half cup of plain brown rice and a veggie or two. Or in the case of the high protein diets, the chicken breast and veggies without the rice.

I can't face the chicken breast. By the time I was 18 I had eaten a lifetime supply of chicken. We invariably had chicken every Friday night and all day Saturday, and I am sick of it in all its forms. Then, when my cholesterol proved to be high, I ate chicken about seven times a week--with mango salsa, with chutney, with hot sauce, with cold sauce, and it always tasted just like chicken. No matter what you do with six ounces of chicken breast--and the books have plenty of suggestions--it always tastes like chicken breast. The idea of buying, cooking, serving and eating grilled chicken breast five out of seven dinners a week is a total turnoff.

I will eat chicken soup, but only with matzoh balls floating around in it.

I guess I'll have to opt for the vegetarian diet. Or I could exercise for three hours a day. Yes, that's much better.