As I have already mentioned, we envision 2007 as The Year of Transition. Oh, sure, that includes new jobs and new housing and new degrees and all that, but it is also time to get serious about losing that middle-aged spread. Every year for probably like the last 15 years I've vowed to lose some weight. Every year, I lose nothing: in fact I gain more.
So yesterday we raced around to the few branch libraries that are OPEN ON SATURDAYS (which could be a blog entry in itself were the topic not already so ably covered by literate (and stadium-skeptical) Minneapolitans) and got the South Beach Diet book.
It's a lot like The Zone, which I had some success with about 5 years ago. I think it's nutritionally sound, but eco-irresponsible. If everyone on the planet ate only meat and fresh vegetables, the food chain would be pretty screwed up. Nevertheless, although I love pasta and potatoes, I don't love bread or cookies or sweets generally so the diet doesn't represent a life of total self-denial. So that's good: a diet that is in tune with my basic habits of eating.
On the other hand, it's also like the Zone in that preparing meals and snacks takes more time because you can't just reach for the cracker-box, or the nuked potato, or whatever. The meal plans in South Beach are VERY elaborate but I think I can streamline that right down to our simple way of eating. There's (for example) no need to spend an hour before breakfast boiling artichokes for Artichokes Benedict when you can just boil some eggs and whip out some Canadian bacon and eat that instead. Good grief.
Once we have eaten up all the fruit and bread we bought last week, we plan to embark. In the meantime, I am studying up on principles and recipes.
Posted by otto0114 at January 7, 2007 05:08 PM