The Diet Diaries

I have been on almost every diet imaginable. Most are giant wastes of time. I hate the entire concept of dieting. This girl likes her groceries. Once upon a time, I could eat all that I wanted to without really worrying about buying bigger pants. Not anymore. It's like my metabolism saw my impending 30th birthday and decided to give me a nice "Fuck you!" as a present.

Slim Fast sucks because I truly believe that meals should be chewed, tasted and eaten... not drank. Atkins was great in its hey-day but the market for it dried up. When low-carb was all the rage, you could "cheat" safely. There were low-carb versions of pizza, pancakes, chocolate and chips. Now all you can find in the grocery store is the low-carb ice cream and the sorry excuse for bread. I tried to do low-carb again earlier this year but had to quit after I almost killed a co-worker at lunch for his french fries.

Faced with a trip to the Bahamas last year, I broke down and ordered the Nutri-System plan to shed some pounds pre-vacation. Yuck... I had better tasting food out of MREs during my army days. In addition to tasting like something that came out of an E-Z-Bake Oven, the stuff was expensive before you added all the supplemental groceries they don't tell you about in the commercials.

After cycling through diet after diet, I decided a few months ago that I would just try to eat healthy and watch my portions. No prescribed meal plans, no off-limits food, just healthy choices with portion control. Still working out a few times a week. Hell... I even started to incorporate some light jogging (Anyone who knows me well remembers that I swore I would never run again post-Army unless being chased). Great plan, right?

I got on the scale this weekend and saw a number I hadn't seen in a long, long time... and it wasn't a good one. This is serious now. No real plan of attack just yet but I haven't consumed over 1000 calories a day since Friday night. My blood is a toxicology nightmare with all the Hydroxycut I have popped. Sensible? Not at all. But desperate times call for desperate measures.