May first. It's time to start a new diet. I was thinking that many of you may not understand my emotional need to have food "structure" in my life. I think it started in third grade when my mom started me on protein shakes because I was starting to get too chubby. I was a fat kid and I don't think I'm exaggerating. I'd like to blame it all on Hostess Raspberry Zingers, but I'm pretty sure Hostess would win that law suit. I have come to find that my brain does not tell me that I am full until well after I am and instead of eating slower, I gobble. To make matters worse, I eat when I'm bored, upset or in need of emotion attention and I eat too fast.
The summer before 9th grade I discovered, the now famous, "watermelon and snicker diet." In 1979 the cool pants to wear had cute butt pocket designs, but I needed to get into a size 14 in order to buy a pair to wear in high school. I spent about a month limiting my food intake to endless amounts of watermelon and unlimited snicker candy bars that I had to walk to purchase from a gas station a couple of blocks away. Sure I lost weight, but to this day, I don't really like watermelon or snickers anymore-- just maxed out. And so I learned that all I needed to do to lose weight was limit my food choice intake to a couple of favorite foods and the pounds would fall off. In 1988, I was engaged to be married and working at that gas station a couple of blocks away from my house. I got a free meal when I worked. I ate as much cabbage as I wanted when I wasn't working and my free meal which consisted of a gas station hot dog, bottomless glass of diet coke, a bag of chips and a candy bar. Aside from my carmel colored teeth, I looked great on my wedding day! When I was young, it didn't matter as much what I picked to eat as long I made up arbitrary rules to limit myself and I could lose a few pounds (oh, it doesn't come off so easily anymore). It has kept me from obesity, but it never got me thin.
My mom just recently became a vegan in order to get her diabetes in check. It's worked. I considered joining her, but the thought of bread without butter, cereal with no milk, well, it seemed too painful. I might as well give up the bread and cereal. I started thinking about the Paleolithic Diet or "caveman diet" and decided to look into it. Last night and this morning I did my research and I am going to give it a try for 30 days... My first hunter-gatherer session was at Costco collecting fruit, vegetables, nuts and meat into a cart (boy, is that stuff expensive). It's an all casein-free and gluten-free diet. No potatoes, no grains, no legumes, no dairy. It's a lot like Adkins only without cheese--what I'll miss the most. I'm not giving up coffee in the morning (cave-women figured out how to make hot coffee, I'm sure) and with a little research I figured out that I could add cream to my coffee since it was casein-free. I know it's still technically dairy, but I make up my own rules and coffee is the one vice I will need to get me through the next 30 days! I can only eat fruits, nuts and vegies all day and then meat for dinner. Some caveman diets are big on everything being raw, others are about going long periods of time without eating and then feasting. Right now I need a my coffee in the morning and some food throughout the day. There's too much going on in my life to deal with hunger. I'll save some of that for another time.
