No White Food

I'm trying a food experiment. I'm not calling it a diet, because I've had enough diets, and with two teenage girls at home, I try to keep any of my food and self-esteem issues to myself.

I get annoyed when women dive into their diet and body image woes with impressionable young girls around who listen to every word, and pick up clues about which parts of their bodies they should hate. I've never heard my husband and his friends say "Oh my god! I am so fat and disgusting, I hate my legs, I can't even fit into my fat jeans this week and I just hate myself!" at least not in front of their young teenage girls.

I'm just sure. How can you hate your legs? They're legs. If you're lucky, they let you walk and run and maybe even skip. I think you should be thrilled if your legs work. They're just doing their job, it's not their fault you ate too many cookies and they got jiggly. Besides, what's so wrong with a little jiggle anyway?

So anyway, my new experiment is this: I cut out all white food. That means no dairy, no refined foods, no bread or rice, etc. I'm eating lots of veggies and meat and beans and lentils and a few nuts. I will eat those white northern beans, but their more of a "blush" I think.

Even though cheddar cheese is orange, I'm thinking it came from white milk, so I gave it the boot. That's been a sad thing, I must admit. It's still in the fridge looking at me hopefully when I'm scrounging for spinach, but I ignore it. Cheese hates to be ignored, I think. It's so used to be adored.

I cut out the wine for a few days too, but that was short lived. I figure if I can't have anything sweet, I'm at least going to have a bit of Merlot.

I've done this kind of thing before and had good results with steady weight loss if I stick to it. Sometimes I just need a little gimmick to get myself off all the crap.

It's been a week, and it's working well. I'm not as hungry (blood sugar levels are probably more even) not so crabby, I've lost some pounds, and my skin is getting kind of glow-y again.

But it's getting boring already. Broccoli Wokly is fine for the first few days, but...hello? How many ways can you really make it taste good without dipping it into a lovely little fondue pot filled with cheese sauce? [The cheese told me to say that.]

Plus, I have to remind myself that even though brownies aren't white, they have white things in them (sugar, flour) and I'm only kidding myself if I try to kid myself into eating brownies. I'm actually smarter than brownies when I choose to be.

We'll just see how long I can last with this clever trick. It's nice to have contests with myself every once in a while, to keep myself competitive in the food ring.