February 2, 2007
Dieting when your son lives on Little Debbie snack cakes and your husband eats a pound of peanuts a day can be impossible. But my real problem is that I’ve always thought of dieting as an extreme sport. Once the excuse of I’ve just had a kid lasted for 10 years I got serious again about dieting, real over the top, cutting edge.
My first serious extreme sport diet was the grapefruit diet. For four solid weeks I went through grapefruit training. I ate six to 10 grapefruits every day, adding occasional small servings of other food. I lost friends with my foul breath and whining about all the cutting it takes. “Call me when it’s over,” my best friend told me. I lost 20 or 30 pounds and couldn’t even look at a grapefruit for three years.
Then I took a break for a while until the cabbage diet came along. This diet was brief. My stomach ached and my family complained about the smell of cooked cabbage. I finally gave up when I overheard Arna tell his friends, “My mom is crazy. She eats this stinky food three times a day. Let’s go to your house.” If I’d known then that these same kids would have a rock band, I would have eaten cabbage for the next six years.
I started every diet, some major and some minor, with a burst of enthusiasm. That bikini was just around the corner. One diet required 4 hard boiled eggs per day for one week. I ate the eggs, burped a lot, and gave it up. An interesting diet was the one-food-per-day diet. This was a great diet on bread-day, and chocolate day (maximum one pound), but lettuce-day and tomato-day drove me around the bend. Three weeks of this and I was ready for eat- everything-in-sight day.
One of my favorite diets was the rice and fruit diet. You could eat gobs of rice and fruit. My son Zack reminded me, “Wasn’t that the diet that you spent all the time in the bathroom?” I did lose a lot of weight.
On the Adkins diet I thought I’d gone to heaven. Meat, cheese, and eggs all the time and at every meal. My family enjoyed that diet too. It was great for 4 weeks and then I started thinking that wood chips might taste good. I dreamed of bread, oatmeal, cereal, and fruits. I quit.
Then I ran into the best diet ever—hypnosis. Don’t laugh when you read this. I went to my hypnotist after I saw his ad in the paper. I was nervous, but we talked for awhile and then he got down to business. He hypnotized me.
When I woke up here was the deal. Every time I wanted to eat I would think about this: the house was going to burn down and I needed to save the kids; but I was so fat and slow I couldn’t reach them, just too fat. Every time I started to eat I thought, “ I shouldn’t eat. I won’t be able to save the kids from the fire. I’d better not eat.” For six weeks I ate sensibly with no fattening or sugary foods I lost a lot of weight. I also started exercising, just in case I’d be prepared.
My hypnotist was like a god. He’d done it. Then the hypnosis started to wear off. I thought things like how hard would it be to rescue them? I can run pretty fast even if I am a little fat. We have a smoke alarm anyhow. I definitely needed a tune-up. I scheduled an appointment with my hypnotist, my god. But before I could go for my appointment, my hypnotist was arrested for fraud.
I cussed. I fumed. I wanted to testify. He was not a fraud. My husband pointed out that hypnotizing women so that they would believe that their breasts were getting bigger might be a bit fraudulent, even by my standards. My key to happiness, the gatekeeper to my future bikinis was now in jail. That was the end of that diet.
My last extreme diet was taking fen-phen, before they knew it was bad. With a BP of 90 over 60 I was probably safe. Sometimes my BP was so low that if I reached down for some dirty socks I got dizzy. Anyhow desperation drove me to it. My college reunion was in 4 weeks. I needed a law degree, a Ph.D, an MD, or some impressive career quickly. I settled for losing weight and coming up with a plausible, vague career.
Fen-phen did work, but maybe too well. I lost lots of weight, couldn’t sleep very long, and got tons of work done. I cleaned up my bedroom for the first time in years, cleaned out the kitchen cupboards, and even cleaned my car. Four weeks later and 25 pounds lighter, I went to the reunion. My story was that I was between careers and working on a manuscript that I couldn’t discuss. I definitely couldn’t discuss it; that part was true.
Meanwhile as long as I kept cooking pancakes, tacos, quesadillas, spaghetti, brownies, and cookies my family stayed quiet, always happy to eat my portion. I guess it’s age, but I’ve given up my extreme sport. Dieting now is mostly eating less and exercising more. I’ve never had more time for both. But still, I wonder if my favorite guy is out of jail yet. I can just see it now. He would hypnotize me one last, long time. I would wake up thinking: I can’t eat. The house is burning down. I must run upstairs and save my manuscript. It’s on the third floor and I can’t be too fat or I won’t be able to save it.”
Comments
Sunrise (anonymous) says...
What a hoot! If you find another hypnotist, share his/her #...or if your "god" is released share his number.
Self-discipline supported by a little hyno is needed for a smoking problem I have.
Happy exercising, nibbling and manuscripting, Home Alone.
February 3, 2007 at 4:07 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
sbcathro (anonymous) says...
Leah,
This is the first time I have been to your blog. I love it. Keep writing!!!
February 9, 2007 at 12:16 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Esmarelda (anonymous) says...
Leah,
You are a great writer. I can relate to your experience since I have been on some of those diets, but this is the first time I have seen any humor in the sport.
If you get in contact with your ex-hypnotist, give him my phone number. Maybe he could hypnotize me by phone or maybe I could do a website for him. I don't see why they put him in jail when they didn't incarcerate the grapefruit, fen-phen or cabbage soup profiteers. Shades of Martha Stewart!
February 15, 2007 at 12:54 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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