Low Carb, High Fat, Zero Patience
I just booked a trip to visit old friends for a week in San Francisco. And you know what that means, don’t you, fellow mommies? Of course – crash diet time!!!
Remember that silly rhyme we used to repeat in junior high, “I must, I must, I must increase my bust”? Now it seems like any occasion that calls for seeing and being seen by any group outside of our everyday lives (by which I mean the ones who are utterly unsurprised to see us show up for school pickup in stained sweats or wandering the A&P aisles in ratty headbands and unpolished toes jammed into flip flops) triggers an updated personal improvement motto: “I must, I must, I must decrease my butt!”
I admit that by general standards, I am not considered terribly overweight. But I have got a little extra luggage in the hip and thigh departments and I had a horribly rude awakening this summer when I found myself waving hello to people at the pool and noticed my sagging triceps waving back at me. I’m well aware that the solution to these problems is that awful ‘e’ word but where I may be overabundant in the fat cell endowment, I am woefully under-supplied with motivation molecules. I don’t hate exercising, once I’m actually doing it, but I can’t seem to stick to a routine with any consistency.
Thus, the harebrained schemes to drop 5 or 10 lbs. by eating less! dropping carbs! banning sugar! starting a cleanse! There’s that first week of virtuous adherence (and all the smug superiority it allows), enhanced by manic bouts of working out (and all the embarrassing, debilitating muscle pain that brings). In a five-day span last week, I let not a corner of bread nor a strand of spaghetti pass my lips, while I lifted free weights, hit the elliptical machine, took a yoga class, and tried spinning. All of which left me unable to walk down a flight of stairs without gasping in pain as my thighs screamed in protest, and led to a weekend relapse of pastry and Chinese food bingeing that might have made David Hasselhoff’s hamburger scarfing look tame if it had been captured on video.
Having had a wonderfully successful and positive experience of losing weight with Weight Watchers some years ago (30 lbs!), I really do know better. I know perfectly well that lifestyle changes, not quick fixes, are the real key. But the temptation to chase some instant reward, without the real commitment to change, is sometimes hard to avoid. Especially when you have a date to see 37 friends who last saw you looking rather svelte and with much less grey hair before you moved to New Jersey and, what, starting eating pasta with the Sopranos every night??
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