You Choose

Every popular diet plan will tell you that their program does three important things. First off, their food will be satisfying (or, in other words, you will feel the need for an exceedingly long nap after you eat it). Second, you will not be hungry (see my previous thoughts on this topic). And lastly, you will have an endless array of food choices. Of course, you must have an endless array of food choices because if you didn’t, you might find their diet to be… drum roll please…

Boring!

Is there anything worse than being bored by the food you’re eating? We take it as a gospel truth that our meals must contain variety, for if Heaven forbid you get bored with what you’re eating, you will want – be compelled even – to eat more. Lots more. Since eating more is generally a bad thing for a person trying to lose weight, or trying to maintain a large weight loss, it follows that a diet of the same old same old can’t be good.

While this may seem logical, in my experience I have actually found the exact opposite to be true. Think about it. If you are, say, at a party surrounded by a dizzying assortment of delectable morsels, i.e. “good food,” what would your reaction be? Naturally you’d say, “I’m going to eat just this one bacon-wrapped scallop because the feast for the eyes is more than satisfying enough.” Right? Wrong! You would be overwhelmed and seduced by the cornucopia spread out before you. You’d probably find yourself sitting in a corner at the end of the night, dazed and vaguely nauseous, having tried a taste of everything, at 100 or 200 calories a pop.

Even the occasional treat has this effect on me. Central to the holy dogma of variety is the belief that we have to allow ourselves “indulgences” from time to time, so as not to feel deprived. But for me, the occasional indulgence simply reminds me of how much I miss whatever it is that I can only indulge in occasionally. I imagine this is like telling an alcoholic that they can have a drink on New Year’s Eve – and only New Year’s Eve. That’s a bit sadistic, isn’t it?

What works for me is to eat basically the same thing every day. I’ve put together an anti-variety meal plan, with the help of a nutritionist, which includes foods that, 1) I like, and 2) are healthy. For breakfast, I have scrambled egg whites, a dry English muffin and an orange. Lunch is a salad with chicken. I have yogurt for a morning snack and a pear for an afternoon snack. In fact, the only part of my diet that varies routinely from day to day is the type of protein and kind of vegetable I have for dinner. Yes indeed, I’m one wild and crazy chick!

Boring you say? Well, I find it comforting. It takes the stress out of my dining life to know exactly what I am going to eat today. And tomorrow. And the day after. No worries about getting tripped up or falling off the food bandwagon. No qualms about whether I can resist the siren song of chocolate. No fears of a cheddar cheese binge or an ice cream avalanche.

If this sounds like an extreme reaction, I suppose it is. Yet it’s not as extreme as weighing one hundred pounds too many. And while the way I eat now offers fewer choices than before, I find that life offers many more choices now than before. All in all, it seems like a fair trade.