Is anyone not on a diet? South Beach, Atkins, low-carb, low-fat, green tea, no sugar. Sure, some of them work better than others, but the nutritionists seem to agree that the best diet —for everybody—is he one that simply lets in less calories than you burn up in a day. Like they say, eat less, exercise more, and the pounds will come off.
Not too many folks actually try this. While few would dispute the logic behind this diet plan, it isn't new and exciting, it can be hard to follow, and, really, who wants to eat less and exercise more?
I tried it. Back in college, I had just a few pounds to lose, but I couldn't shake them. I decided a diet was the answer, and I just went with the only one I knew. That meant counting calories. And count I did. Every single stinking calorie.
At first, I met the challenge head on. Wheaties with skim milk for breakfast. Lunch was an apple. Just an apple. Dinner would be a broiled piece of boneless, skinless chicken breast, a vegetable, and—wait, there was no 'and' anything. About twice a week, I'd allow myself a fat-free Fudgesicle, and then felt guilty about it.
If I were really hungry during the day, I'd have a piece of sugarless gum. Wait, not a piece. Half a piece. Look on a package of sugar-free gum, and you'll see that each piece has several calories. Break the piece in half, and you've just broken in half those calories too. Soon, I was getting lightheaded. Dizziness was a small side effect, though, as the pounds did come off. Rather quickly, too. Still, I could do more.
That night, as a typical underage drunk at one of the campus bars, I sat with my friends and my rum and Tab. I'd been too embarrassed to go up and order a rum and Tab myself, so I waited for a friend to get more drinks, and told her what I wanted. She has since gone on to a career in the CIA, and I hope that her skills at detecting trouble are better than they were at this bar.
A moment after leaving our table to order, everyone heard as the bartender got on the P.A. system to announce, 'I've got a girl at my bar who wants a rum and Tab.' Hoots and hollers followed, and she returned to the table with my diet mixed drink and a good deal of animosity towards me.
I decided right then and there that if I was following such a strict and, let's face it, sort of crazy, diet, then what was I doing blowing all those precious calories on booze. That was my last drink, and I've never had one since. Don't feel too bad for me. I may never have had a drink when I was legally allowed, but I got in a lifetime of drinking before then.
No drinking, however, meant a lot more than just not drinking. There I was, in the middle of cornfields with nothing to do, but drink. I tried going to the bars anyway, but when you're sober, the surroundings are shoddier, the jokes are weaker, and the smoke heavier. My friends tried joining me elsewhere, but where?
Thank God for coffee.
Especially because it goes so well with cookies. See, after two weeks on the starvation diet, I was craving just about anything besides apples and chicken breasts. I decided that on Sundays I could eat whatever I wanted to. And I did.
While every other college student slept in on Sundays after a hard night of partying, I was doing my sit ups at the crack of dawn, and planning my menu. Before 10 a.m. rolled around, I would have already baked a batch of cookies, and was boiling oil for my homemade egg rolls.
By the second free-for-all Sunday, I was near vomiting before noon. In fact, I had decided that I was so close to throwing up, that I might as well just keep eating, because it was going to come back up anyway. It's amazing how many cookies one can get down, when using both hands to shovel them in.
Two amazing things then happened. First, I did not throw up. Second, I realized then and there that enough was enough. I was exhibiting symptoms of several widely variant eating disorders, and maybe eating until my body actively rejected the calories wasn't such a healthy choice.
That was the last day of the diet. I no longer counted the calories in sugarless gum, and I no longer set my alarm for 6 a.m. n Sunday mornings, so I could bake bread. The drinking, however, never resumed, and I don't miss it. In fact, I look on that hard month of dieting as a self-intervention.
Without knowing it, or even meaning to do it, I managed to cut off a drinking problem in the making.
That is, unless you consider being drunk six nights a week the norm. To be fair, it probably is, on this particular college campus.
