The South Beach Diet: Not Just For Drunks Anymore

notice how i haven't really mentioned any progress related to my weight loss or the SBD(FD) recently?

right. well, it turns out i can't magically lose 10 pounds in three weeks. much as i think i should be able to because i've been pretty damn good on this thing and i totally deserve it.

so i am not a size 12 yet, despite my wishing really hard.*

even though my version of the SBD is so like, not the Real version. the Real version involves things like preparing foods. which in turn involves buying foods that need preparing. and this is where i falter.

take for example the sad fact that in my refridgerator at home, i currently have: butter. sugar. one bottle of salad dressing from my first (only) dinner party five weeks ago where i set things on fire. and one bottle of salad dressing from the first (only) time i made dinner for The Boy sometime before christmas. oh, right, and the recent addition of diet tonic to go with the vodka i don't have anymore.

and i'm totally not kidding.

[ex: "wow. you weren't kidding in your blog about the food you don't have in your place," a friend said to me last weekend. so see? i don't lie to you, imaginary internet friends.]

anyway, how i get by having no food in my house is that, in my version of the SBD(FD), i go shopping at the safeway next to where i work, and keep my foodstuffs at work, and then eat them while at work. easy.

and to make it even easier, most of the things i buy come already ready. apples. cheese sticks. yogurt. soup. (whole-grain) bread (which sometimes i go so far as to toast, which is about as fancy as i get).

and mostly i don't care that i'm not fancy, but i kind of don't care in the way you might not care that you're having a bad hair day until someone next to you is having a great hair day and someone else says to you about the person next to you, "isn't she having a great hair day?" and then you just want to put on a hat.

which brings me to the point. i know i mentioned that my boss, KnitterStacy (which rhymes with BitterStacy but is way more pleasant) decided to give SBD a whirl. which is great, yay.

but it wasn't until she started doing SBD that i realized how bad a hair day i've been having with it, because KnitterStacy is actually doing the Real version of the SBD (much in the way she is a Real knitter, who, since learning to knit approximately 6 minutes ago, has already made a fucking sweater, whereas my poor friend is walking around in a lopsided CondomHat.)

consider our lunch today.

we both shop at the same grocery store and "prepare" lunch in the same kitchen. right?

so i:
  • go to the fridge and get out soup and non-butter spread.
  • toast bread. add non-butter.
  • pour soup into paper bowl and heat in the microwave.
  • put quarter in machine and get diet soda.
  • eat toast and soup with diet soda.

KnitterStacy:
  • goes to the fridge and gets out tuna, garbanzo beans, olives, celery, chipotle peppers, parsley, and arugula.
  • pulls pure olive oil out from hidden "gourmet" stash in her desk.
  • gets out cutting board (yeah, um, our office kitchen has a cutting board. who knew?).
  • chops celery.
  • chops olives.
  • finds salad bowl and lines it with arugula.
  • adds tuna and garbanzo beans and combines them with the olive oil over the arugula.
  • adds chopped celery, olives and peppers.
  • sits at table with arranged bowl, paper-towel-as-placemat, and proper silverware (not the plasticware i use).
  • adds kosher salt and fresh pepper to taste.

isn't that amazing? are you amazed? she has freshly chopped greens. every day. i eat sticks of cheese from plastic tubes.

she has tiny little tupperware containers filled with exactly the number of pistachio nuts you are supposed to allow yourself. i drink low-carb yogurt from the bottle.

she splurges on having two glasses of wine. i have (roughly) 846 gin and sodas.

she will lose the precise amount of weight you're supposed to. i um, well, i guess the thing is, i probably will too.

just ever-so-slightly less elegantly**.



*but i swear i will be by the time i travel in june. mark my words. and i have lost at least 15 lbs since january, so it's not like i'm completely misguided in my goal.


**totally a bridget jones quote.

Comments

  1. on the upside, you ate lunch.... and didnt just practiced your kintted skills during your lunch...i skipped lunch to do something odd.. i worked.. ha :0) i <3 your blogs

    ~a new friend in san diego~

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  2. I try to do the whole eat right at lunch thing too.
    I find that trader joes has good frozen low calorie/low saturated fat, prepared items..
    Something you might want to check out.
    The little container things are great too. I buy premixed/cleaned mixed greens and put dressing in a small glad container and take that to work with me...
    just dropping some tips..
    it is tough though.

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  3. I think people like this are part of What's Wrong With The World. As opposed to the "pre-people", these are the "per-people", or Perfect People.

    The comedian Shelley Berman used to have a bit where he talked about going to a dinner party and encountering one of these people. "You know the type: after an eight-course meal, when they clear away the plates, you can still see the crease in the tablecloth in front of him. On the other hand, judging from the tablecloth in front of me, it looks as though I brought along my own beet juice and scattered it around..."

    ~Kurt

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  4. if I got down to just one lunch a day it would be an improvment I am sure

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  5. HELLOOOOO!!! I am NOT "one of those people" at the office. My lunch was NOT that complicated! I swear. It was a little more time consuming than i planned -- but really. Not. That. Complicated. And if you ate friggin' tuna fish -- i'd share it with you. Really, I would. Even with my gourmet olive oil. Or EVOO as that annoying Rachel Ray calls it.

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  6. Lunch? What is this "lunch" of which you speak?

    Yesterday I ate some instant oatmeal around 4:30 p.m. so that I wouldn't gnaw on the corner of my desk. Today I went straight from breakfast (bagel and fancy juice) to tea time (tea, of course, and three small squares of Trader Joe's dark chocolate truffle bar). Too busy to get real food. Bad habit.

    I consider my secret weapon to be the All Other Things Being Equal diet. That means, well, if I don't change anything else about my diet but instead of buying, say, a hugeous deli sandwich every day, instead I bring a small, vegetarian frozen food pod that I can heat in the microwave, not only will I save approximately $7 per day, but also I'm bound to avoid gaining some weight I would otherwise have gained. Right?

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  7. Loved the typo of eating your soup from a paper bowel; makes the soup so much more appealing, I'm sure.

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  8. that's so funny. what's funnier is that i was reading this while eating my 4 bagel bites--still half-frozen. our office toaster doesn't work very well.

    we have those types of people here too. i just love it when they, while devil-ing their eggs and stuffing their fresh peppers, ask, "so what are you having for lunch? frozen burrito again?"

    ~Katy

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  9. typo? what typo? i don't see any typos!

    *hides*

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  10. Your words are so funny and utterly impressive, i will be back.

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  11. The hardest part of the whole SBD thing for me (and the cause of it's eventual removal from my bookshelf) was the alcohol thing... What do you mean NO BEER! That can't be right is it? What about for those of us that don't like Bacardi and Diet Coke?? So after 2 weeks of attempting to drown myself in red wine (very expensive and doesn't quite feel the same) I went to the pub and had a beer! Best damn beer I've ever had I'd say... Well except for the first beer I had after giving up beer for Lent last year... That first Sunday was heaven!

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  12. I, too, have been following the MSBD (Modified South Beach Diet.) My plan: Phase One, plus moderate amounts of whole grain bread/pasta and red wine. (Moderate on the bread, that is-- not the wine.)

    I have been doing this for a month. I have said no to doughnuts, cookies, cake, sandwiches made with white bread, beer, margaritas and yes, even fruit.

    And.... nothing. I don't think I've lost even a pound. How is this possible? How can the results of eating whatever I want be exactly the same as the results of the MSBD plan?

    It's a cruel, cruel joke.

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  13. What Is The South Beach Diet?

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  14. Holy crap! I have those kinds of "lunch" people at my work too. But they have the little wives at home doing all the preparing.miami beach luxury condos

    ReplyDelete

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