My New Diet

Hi!

I'm referring to "diet" in true sense of the noun: what I eat. Like I'd say that my dog has a diet of dog food, I have a diet that includes what I eat. It's not about a temporary restriction to lose weight, but a lifestyle change to be healthy...and stay that way.

Brandi and I bought some "cookies" from a kiosk in the mall associated with Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet. This is part of our restriction, though I could easily see us continuing to buy them as occasional meal replacement and between meal snacks. That is, of course, unless we find a really great recipe for protein bars...

Anyway, the cookies we bought came with his most-recent book, which doesn't appear to be available on Amazon.com. The first part of the book (which is what I've read so far) covers the history of weight loss, a relatively new endeavor. It only seems to go back a century or so, presumably because before that people were primarily concerned with not enough food rather than too much. Decades ago, weight loss was simple: eat fewer calories than you burn and get those calories from protein. In other words, eat meat.

I have never been a fan of Atkins. I never doubted that it works, I doubted that it is a healthy lifestyle. Now, I'm not so sure. I don't believe one can be healthy with zero carbs, but it definitely makes sense to cut back...significantly. It also makes a lot of sense to have smaller meals, which is what the cookie diet expects one to do. There are six cookies in a bag and the idea is to eat one at a time, spread out during the day. It's not "three cookies at breakfast time" and "three cookies at lunch time."

It's also counterproductive to think of eating as something that's done according to the clock. Just as it doesn't make sense to continue eating just because your plate isn't clean, it doesn't make sense to start eating just because the hands on the clock are in a certain position. To be social, of course, it's sometimes necessary to make adjustments. Just be sure and know that's what you're doing and you still listen to your body rather than watch the clock.

I've also toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian. I don't think I could completely cut out meat, because I enjoy it too much, but I've had it in my head that it's a healthier lifestyle. Again, now I'm not so sure. I'm not going to get into details, but the whole "man is meant to eat meat" argument now make a whole lot more sense to me. Animals that are true vegetarians are built differently. Cows, for example, have several stomachs and can fully digest cellulose. We don't and we can't. Millions of years of evolution have made us more effective at acquiring and eating meat, not digesting grass and other plants.

Of course, these days there are other reasons to avoid certain foods. Many are over-processed and contain stuff not ideal for human consumption. This "stuff" is just as likely, however, to be in plants as it is to be in animals. Being conscientious about this sort of thing is not the same thing as being vegetarian, vegan, or what have you. The bottom line is that my new diet is going to be high on variety, lower on volume, and more evenly distributed throughout the day...

Thanks,
Matt