I spent a goodly amount of today, my last vacation day, comparing diets on the Internet. My conclusion is this: none of them fit right. Aside from the occasional fowl or fish, I'm not much into meat, so that makes the low-carb diets much more complicated. No Adkins or Zone diets for me. Vegetarian or vegan diets, on the other hand, get all righteous with the no meat rule, and that just bums me out. There's nothing like a can of chicken broth to pep up your lentils! I'm also wary of losing my good dietary habits by buying into a diet culture like Weight Watchers that allows/encourages megaprocessed foods like fat-free potato chips and Splenda. Furthermore, I'm broke and I don't have a ton of time for cooking.
What I need is a diet plan and cookbook that is mostly, but not completely vegetarian, includes lots of quickie menus, uses minimally processed food, and is cheap. Does this animal exist? Help me, O Internet readers! In the meantime, I'll just finish this 5-gallon tin of caramel corn. (Psyche! I finished that yesterday.)
Although none of the diets floated my boat, these two sites were the best I found for comparing various popular diets:
The plan that is working best for me right now came from a women's mag I was reading at the gym ---
Shape, maybe, or
Self? (Sorry about the vague source citation. Bad Pam.) Anyway, it boiled down to four pieces of advice:
- Eat lots of healthy food, including snacks, earlier in the day so you won't binge on junk at night.
- Lose the empty calories -- sugary drinks, multiple cocktails, Cheetos, Christmas cookies, etc.
- Control portions. Avoid "starving" or "stuffed."
- Um...I forget the last one. It was something like, "Chill out." Get enough sleep. Find nonfood ways of managing stress.
Maybe I'll go back to the gym and read that article again. Couldn't hurt, right --- exercise + reasonable diet advice? Good luck if you too are jumping on the diet train.
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