Food Confusion

Could someone please tell me what I should eat?

The low-fat diet, with all its green-labeled food products, surfaced about the time my daughter was born, and I got on board enthusiastically. What could be a better way to lose that "baby" fat than by eating SnackWells fat-free fudge marshmallow cookies? The food industry was amazing - fat-free cookies, fat-free popcorn, reduced-fat crackers, reduced fat cheese (which was really nasty - rubbery and tasteless), reduced fat hot dogs, reduced fat salad dressing (another disgusting product) - with all these "substitute foods," we'd soon have to start eating butter by the spoonful to keep from wasting away, right?

Never mind that I didn't manage to lose the baby fat. Never mind that I gained an additional 20 pounds over the next 7 years by choosing low fat alternatives to products I normally bought. "The fat you eat is the fat you wear", said the experts, and I believed it.

At that 20-pound point, I signed up to racewalk in the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta, and through training for the race and assiduously recording the calories and fat grams of every bite I ate for 5 months, I lost every one of those 20 pounds. And I kept them off (within about a 5 pound window) for over 3 years. I also finished the race - I've got the shirt to prove it.

But they're back. They started creeping on with the advent of the new millenium, as I watched my friends and co-workers get layoff notices, and as I continued to convince myself that I was lucky to remain employed. I'm a stress eater, and all the massage therapy and exercise and meditation on earth couldn't dispell the stress I was under.

About that same time, people around me began to eat "low carb". Suddenly, we were bombarded by messages like "bacon good, potatoes bad". I really didn't buy into the basis of the low carb craze at all - vegetables, which are all carbs, are good for you. It is a bad idea to eat in such a way that vegetables are banned. But as if in a backlash against the low-fat era, "comfort food" became trendy at the same time. Meat loaf and mashed potatoes showed up on the menu at upscale restaurants - and they were wonderful.

My husband and I did try the South Beach diet for a while - we stuck to the very restrictive Phase 1 for about a week before we couldn't stand it anymore. Eating nothing but protein and a restricted list of vegetables at every meal and snack was kind of nauseating. Two days in, I never wanted to eat another egg again. But I did manage to lose 6 pounds, and I think my husband lost even more than that. Once we added the fruits and veggies permitted in Phase 2, the weight loss stopped dead. So we didn't stick with it for long, and eventually, the 6 pounds returned.

So, how about this idea? I think we'll just stay away from restaurants for a while. We'll do a revolutionary thing and eat at home each night (it's a working mother thing - when I get home after a hard day with the client and my husband asks what's for dinner, the only way I keep from killing him is to suggest that we go somewhere that sells food). Yeah, it'll take a little planning and maybe some extra work, but I'm betting that if we switch from the portions that restaurants offer to the ones that recipes give, we'll lose weight, even through the upcoming holiday seasons and all the requisite candy and cookies. I'm not going to get worked up about carbs or protein or fat or "net" anything; I'm just going to cook things that sound good. We will even eat food that starts out in a box with the word "Helper" on the outside (although in our house, it will be "Bison Helper").

I'll let you know how it goes.