Dieting Do's & Don't's

• Don’t keep anything in the house that would undermine your diet. A good rule of thumb is, if it looks, tastes, feels, or smells good, feed it to the peacocks.
• Do keep peeled, sliced cucumbers in a Tupperware bowl in your fridge. You will not be able to make yourself eat them (without sour cream), but they will give the appearance of healthy eating habits.
• Don’t, under any circumstances, bite your partner.
• Do imagine that you are so spiritually rarified, you no longer need food.
• Don’t attempt to become so spiritually rarified, you no longer need food.
• Do imagine yourself chained in a medieval dungeon. This helps you to be grateful for the morsel of dried toast you had ten hours ago for breakfast. And, the image of yourself as an emaciated feudal prisoner (in a new Land’s End swimsuit two sizes smaller than last year’s), will keep you going.
• Do remember that it could be worse: You could be a breatharian. You could be on the cabbage soup diet. You could have those three middle school girls following you around (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knjf3ABPc0E).
• Don’t raise and lower the footrest of your La-Z-Girl ten times and call it “exercise.”
• Do perfect a low, resonant, guttural growl. This is an effective way to quickly signal extreme displeasure if your partner eats anything in your presence that is slathered with frosting, gravy, butter, or syrup.
• Do rig up a plywood Victorian bed partition if you have a tendency to dream of food or to eat in your sleep.
• Don’t record 37 hours of the Food Network to watch when the diet ends.
• Do buy all of your clothes two sizes too big, then whine constantly to coworkers about how you’re “falling out of these old things” and can't figure out why.
• Don’t imagine various implements of torture when your friend says she “forgot to eat today.”
• Do remember (seriously now) that you are gol dern lucky to have every bite of food you put in your mouth, unlike the 925 million people in the world who are hungry and would feed a family of five with your boiled egg and celery (http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm).

Kismet?

Maybe it's the 27 calories a day I'm living on right now, but I think I got a peek at the Divine Order of the Universe yesterday. It started in the early afternoon, when I almost burned down the farm. But it wasn’t my fault, and here’s why…

I flicked a lit match, thinking, “Wow, that’s close to the woodpile…what’re the chances?” and walked away. A short time later, I walked outside and heard crackling. As in, lovely burning-wood-in-a-fireplace crackling. Smoke was billowing up from the north pasture, along the [wooden] fenceline, where the cut wood is stacked. Half the woodpile was smoldering, and the bottom half of one fencepost (an 8x8) was gone, with tiny flames peeking from the center of the rotted-out top half. When I was done laughing hysterically at my own stupidity, I ran. For the house to get one garden hose. For the garden to get another. For the hydrant by the barn to hook both hoses together. For the woodpile, dragging 100-million pounds of spliced garden hose behind me. It took almost an hour of frantic running (because we didn’t want to be late for our trip to town), but I did my best Smoky Bear and put the fire out.

We made it to town in time to visit two old friends we hadn’t seen for ages, who just happened to be converging in one place. Jack had come from Chamberlain to play music at our local nursing home. He’s a human iPod, with a repertoire of 1100 songs, and a virtuoso at playing the piano by ear. He plays probably 3 times a month at nursing homes around Chamberlain, bless his chord-pickin’ heart. He had come all the way to Vermillion to play because another friend, Ed, lives in the nursing home for now. Ed had a major hemorrhagic stroke a couple years ago as the result of a fall, and is crawling his way back from complete left-side paralysis. Ed’s a wonderful musician himself, with one of the sweetest, clearest voices I know. He hasn’t recovered his ability to sing or play his guitar yet (left-side paralysis includes vocal cords), but he has an incredibly positive belief that it’s just a matter of time.

Then, because we were in town and pushing my new diet's four-hour limit between meals, I decided to take my sanctioned once-a-week “meal off." On a whim (literally...we were headed for the Hell-Mart parking lot and veered off at the last moment), Ray and I decided to try the new Asian buffet for the first time. Soon after we loaded our plates and sat back down in our booth, over walks Tim, a friend from the Old Verm days, with whom Ray and I played in a band called Second Wind.  For the past few decades, Tim's been living in Kansas, in a town where, coincidentally, my younger brother lives. And Tim told us a funny story about a guy he ended up working with in Kansas who, coincidentally, had once lived in Verm and was a regular fan of Second Wind.

And, if Tim hadn’t come over to our booth to catch up and reminisce, I would have gone back to pile up my plate again and again, and I would have eventually made it…dear lord no…to the dessert bar, and I wouldn’t have “made weight” this week.

Soooooo, if I hadn’t flicked that match, I wouldn’t have been running my fool head off and wouldn’t have gotten in my daily 20-30 minutes of exOrcise. And if we hadn’t gotten the fire out in time and made it to town, I wouldn’t have seen Jack and Ed for the first time in ages. And if we hadn’t gone to town to see Jack and Ed, we wouldn’t have decided to try out the new Asian restaurant. And if we hadn’t tried the restaurant, we wouldn’t have run into Tim and his wife, Penni for the first time in eons. And if we hadn’t run into Tim & Penni, I wouldn’t have made weight this week.

Believe anything you want. As for me, I believe the Universe carefully choreographed our day yesterday—a beautiful, perfectly timed dance, reminding me how grateful I am for good friends, salty food swimming in ginger sauce, and fine music. And the bottom line is clear, folks: 

(1) The Universe, not me, almost burned down the farm.

(2) The dieting brain can rationalize anything.

The Skinny on Skinnies

I have a hard time with skinny people. And by “skinny people,” I mean ANYONE who doesn’t struggle with their weight. But I’m mostly talking about people who always look good because of some anomalous combination of lovely, perfect-weight genes. Men who live on chitlins and deep-fried cheeseballs but look like J.C. Penney models. Women who’d look stunning in a burlap potato sack tied at the waist with a length of baling wire.

For one thing, skinny people all secretly believe (some say it right out loud) that we could ALL be that lovely if we just had more willpower. It’s eeeeeasy! If “we” (not them) would just eat less and exercise more and be more disciplined and not be so lazy and get off our fat asses and quit stuffing our fat faces, we’d not only maintain a more sensible weight, we’d be better human beings—more deserving of our fat little splotch in the universe. Often, they make these comments while sucking down a butterscotch malt and brushing French fry crumbs off their perfectly skinny little form-hugging shirts. Sometimes they’re tall and leggy—I have an even harder time with these folks.

I know a guy, for example (who shall remain nameless but to whom I am married) who “struggles” with the terrible yo-yo of gaining or losing the 5 pounds he’s put on since high school. Whaa. On the other hand, I have in my closet every size pants ever made for women. One can tell where I’m at in my weight roller-coaster by the relative elasticity of my pants. And yes, I have a muumuu.

For another thing, skinny people like to hang out with fluffy people because it makes them look even skinnier. They use us like hideous beached-whale backdrops, to make themselves seem even more glowing, healthy, beautiful. You KNOW it’s true, Skinny People.

So lemme clue you in, Skinny People. For some of us, losing weight isn’t that simple. We’re big-boned. We’re densely packed. We’re genetic “keepers.” We have that “store & survive” gene (quite common in the upper Midwest, where, like bears, we sometimes must live off our fat stores during winter). For us, losing weight means deprivation, sacrifice, and Herculean effort.

For example, to lose ONE pound, I need to eat no more than a teaspoon of tabouli and a celery stalk per day, and I need to, with my bad knees and weak ankles, run oh, about 25 miles a day and/or spend 10 hours sweating with Richard Simmons or Jane Fonda. Do you know how hard it is to grade a paper or do your laundry while you’re sweatin’ to the oldies? Then, to keep the weight off, I would have to live for the rest of my natural life on an indulgent 6 Triscuits, 2 celery stalks, and ¼ cup of tabouli daily. On holidays, I could splurge by adding two Greek olives and a 1/3 glass of wine.

As you may have guessed by now, I’m on yet another diet and feeling a wee bit crabby about it. This one is called “Game On” and is designed like a team sport. Our team is called the Victorious Secrets, and we’re totally gonna kick the Fab Fems’ butts. But I am so hungry right now, I could eat…a skinny person (lightly sautéed in olive oil, with a side of garlic mashed potatoes, and a pint of the darkest beer I can find). I have hope, though, that THIS diet will be more successful than the 29 others I’ve tried. Because while my survival gene drives me toward bags of Doritos, entire blueberry cheesecakes, and enough pasta with pesto to choke a horse, I’ve also got an insidious and fairly strong competition gene.

So three more weeks to go, then we’ll see which gene is dominant. In the meantime, Skinny People, you might wanna steer clear…