Point-four pounds. Ugh.
I could blame my in-laws. My third cheat day in a single week might not have happened if they hadn’t arrived from Ontario. How many chocolate chip cookies did I eat? At least two store bought and two homemade. Then there was another incident with potato salad.
That’s not really fair, though. It wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d followed my diet strictly the rest of the week.
A couple of people have expressed confusion about the diet I’m following. Well, there’s no name for it. And no secret, either. A diet where you drop less than half a pound in a week doesn’t get to claim a ‘secret’.
I aim to eat 2,000 calories a day, period. If I eat more than that, I ‘cheated’ on my diet. One cheat day in a week is fine. Two is borderline. Three is bad.
What I eat to make up that 2,000 calories is very mood dependent. I will confess it’s not the stuff nutritionists will tell you to eat. For example, I had a Jos. Louis for dinner Sunday night. Mmm, delicious – and pretty low in calories! I eat too many packaged foods and too many sweets. But they’re convenient and the calories are labeled, making the math simple. A Vector bar has 230 calories. Twenty-five lime- and chili-flavoured almonds have 150.
I should eat more greens and more fruit. But variety in a diet, while healthy, is my personal path to diet dumping. Routine keeps me strict: one bowl of cereal for breakfast, for example, and dill pickles to fill my stomach when I’m almost out of calories.
It’s too early to call this unorthodox diet a success. But the number is still dropping. I’ll be sub-190 next week, or my name’s not Erik Spalding.
This is not an advice column. Please consult a medical expert or nutritionist for sound dietary advice. Eric Sparling is an Amherst Daily News reporter, and former senior editor at Oxygen, a women’s fitness magazine.
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