Diet resutls

50 Pounds less of Mark

ROOFTOP – This evening I decided to drag your buns to the rooftop so

 we could celebrate the fact that, today, I had the first cashew nut I’ve eaten in 147 days. It wasn’t all I hoped it would be, but, then, I had over four months to ponder how good it was going to be. If you give me 147 days to fantasize about something, I’m going to come up with some serious good thoughts. It’s like when Dennis and I would start getting excited about Christmas in August. Come December, we were seldom completely satisfied with the actuality of the gift-getting part.

But, let’s put Christmas behind us. I don’t even know why you brought it up. I’m talking about Kay and I dieting away some serious poundage. At one point the diet made me question the very sense of being… which sounds like” bean” and I couldn’t eat any of ‘em. Unless they were green beans.

Green beans are okay to eat… as long as you don’t cook ‘em using bacon grease or ham or salt. Let me share something with you. Standing on its own, a green bean doesn’t have a lot going for it. Corn, on the other hand, can stand on it’s own. I prefer mine with butter, but in a pinch… But, as fortune would have it, corn has too much sugar in it, our diet would not allow it.

Sugar is a carbohydrate, and when you combine it with fat (butter) it’ll go straight to your gut or butt, and stay there. I’m sorry. To your buns. It goes to your buns… which I can’t eat, either. I can’t eat buns, cakes, peanut M&Ms, or pie. No pie!

    You wanna know what the deal is? Well, here’s the deal. Over a period of five months Kay has lost almost 40 pounds, while I’ve lost 50 plus. I lost more than Kay, because the diet doesn’t take into consideration the weight or gender of the dieter. We’re all lumped together. Kay’s smaller than I am, so one would think I should be able to consume more cr--, uh, flapdoodle so as to make our suffering more proportional. I’m apparently the only one who thought of that.

 But, we’re now in Phase Four… where we shall remain until the time the defibrillator can’t bring us back. However, at that moment I shall care just a little bit less than I would have before the diet. It’s all tied to that “sense of being” question.

By the way, Phase Four is almost doable. Remember? I can now eat a cashew. In fact, I can have a snack of one ounce of cashews. It takes 12 cashews to make an ounce. Twenty-four almonds. That’s 160 calories each. And, we can now eat toast. If I require butter on my toast, it would better if I just ate the butter without the toast. Again, try to stay away from mixing fats with carbohydrates.

Oh, and we can now have pizza. Pizza that has no cheese or meat on it. Or anything oily. The marinara sauce is okay. Say, a saltless cracker with marinara?  That’d be fine.

There is only one thing that will aid me in maintaining my weight, and that is the Day of Splurge. Not purge. That’s different. One day a week, we can go whole hog and eat whatever we want. Cake donuts with glaze and the looped edges? One day a week, I’m there. BBQ ribs and a baked spud? Oh, yeah. Real pancakes with real syrup? It’s happening.

The only downside occurs the day after The Splurge. On that day, we must reenact Phase One of the diet. That means more grass and powdered food, but only for one day. It’s one whale of a tradeoff you ask me. I was on Phase One for four months, so one day is going to be like… well, it’ll be unpleasant as all get out, but doable.

One big downside of the diet is what it makes you become. Have you been hearing what’s coming out of my mouth? (Or out of my keyboard, for those who couldn’t join us on the rooftop.) I have become the person I hate to be around. When someone starts talking about a particular diet, I just want to slap ‘em. I’ve never cared to hear about people telling me how many calories in a grape or a green pea.

Now I’m telling you about counting cashews. I haven’t mentioned green peas because I couldn’t eat ‘em. Now I can, but I don’t know how many. Calories, saturated fat, hydrogenated fat, water weight… I am the person I used to run from. But only in print. I don’t bring the subject up unless someone asks about my weight dropage. My family doctor didn’t even bring the subject up. I informed him before I left, and he said, “Oh, good, keep it up.”  I will miss Dr. Strickland forever. That guy would’ve taken one look at me and given me a hug. Then he would’ve tried to get me to start biking.

By the way, one last thing on the subject: Kay did the math, and found that each pound lost on our dietary program cost us $45. The cost included the vitamins and meals-in-an-envelope and weekly visits. Five months worth.

Let’s face it, five months would’ve still gone by had Kay and I not gone on the diet. But we did, and I can now say that it was worth it. The question before us is, will it still be worth it a year from now? Will I be able to maintain my weight?  Tell you what let’s do. This time next year, assuming we’re alive and relatively sound of mind, we’ll climb up here and get a clear view of things. If I never mention the diet, you’ll know I did not maintain. – Twelve cashew nuts? Who has the gall to even tell somebody that?

end

Mark in February

In June

mark@rooftopwriter.com