Diet: week 15

Well I lost 3 more pounds. Not bad, but I had hoped for 5. Maybe the goal of 5 pounds a week is not realistic, but I had a roll there for a time with 5 a week. Anyway, my total to date is a loss of 53 pounds. That sounds impressive. I feel better (but I still need to feel better yet). I look better (but I still have a pillow that prevents me from checking my fly without bending down). I look at myself in the mirror and say, "Hey, fatso, I thought you were losing weight. How come you still have that disgusting pillow sticking out front?" When I complained to my primary care physician, she simply said, "That's the last to go." Very encouraging.

We're coming down to the wire soon. At week 17 we begin "transition" to real live food! At first the program calls for 3 shakes and a frozen dinner. Well, maybe that's not "live" food, but I'm sure my gut will be very happy with what it gets. Instead of the frozen dinner I could fix my own plate of tiny proportions in balanced nutrition. I might just do that.

I've been studying cook books and watching the food channel. I discovered that at least one of my class mates is doing the same. When one diets in this dramatic form, I suppose it is natural to have a fixation on food. I am trying to think of recipes that I like that also fit my new lifestyle of dining. When I told my endocrinologist that I refused to eat "cardboard" because I am going to heaven anyway, she was not at all amused. "What do you mean, 'cardboard'?" "If it doesn't taste any better than the carton it came in, I will not eat it." I didn't even evoke a smile.

Trying to be realistic about the future, I want to stick to a healthy diet and not regain all that disgusting lard. So I want to collect delicious, healthy recipes. Fortunately I am omnivorous, and I am wild about spinach and many other veggies. Of course being omnivorous is also very dangerous when I am out of control. Now I have the incentive of the trouble and expense of this industrial strength diet to stay in control. I think some of the cardboard effect of healthy eating is simply in the method of fixing veggies and other healthy food. Anyway, onward and upward!

Last night we discovered that one of our class mates had fallen off the wagon, as it were. She had gained several pounds. When she told us of her experience we thought she ought to be commended for returning to the diet program instead of reprimanded for weight gain. She was walking her 18 mo old grandson in the stroller when a drive by shooting took place just in front of her. One man was killed and another wounded, and she and her stroller bound grandson hit the pavement. She was so shaken that she indulged in comfort food, and we all sympathetically understood. At that time one sees the goal of weight loss as a lower priority in the big picture. Thank God neither she nor her grandson were hit with straying bullets.

Bullets can kill quickly, but I need to constantly remember that extra fat also kills, albeit more subtly.