Diet Daze, Praise and Prays

I’ve got religion! And like all religious zealots, I speak of nothing else. My new-found religion is not a traditional religion, nor is it New Age hippy, dippy. My new religion is my new diet. More specifically, it is my new-found diet success! I’m following the cabbage soup diet. I’m sticking to it and I’m losing weight.

Now, I’m no fan of cabbage unless it’s prepared by my Grandma (long gone), stuffed with ground beef, rice, seasoned with Hungarian paprika, and a host of other deliciousness that I don’t have the recipe for and cannot even approximate – though I’ve tried countless times.

The cabbage soup diet isn’t officially – that is, medically – sanctioned. It’s basically a quick-loss, starvation diet and carries with it all the risks of crash dieting. Quick loss frequently leads to quick weight gain. Yet somehow this somewhat dubious desperado diet is helping me get back in control.

If you can stand the soup, the diet is pretty simple to follow. Each day you get as much soup as you can chug down plus one day fruit, another day vegetables (and hosanna, a baked potato with glorious, glorious butter!), then a day of fruit and vegetables, one ignoble day of just the soup plus three bananas and skim milk, and then two heavenly days of steak (!) and so, it goes. Soup and starvation plus control – that’s it!

At the Controls

As a middle-aged muddler, control is something I have precious little of in my life … and I’m not just talking about my inability not to keep my hand out of the Oreo bag. I cannot fight the wrinkles and the wild, wooly gray hair. I cannot control my adult children. And, sometimes, I cannot shake off those creeping moments of sadness when I think about loved ones who are gone.

So, control, even in the guise of cabbage soup, is something I genuinely welcome into my life. Thus, in the name of vanity, I’m down bowlfuls of the stuff to lose weight and fit into my clothes more comfortably.

A Diet, but Oh, So Much More

What’s even more amazing than my new-found cabbage-y control is my non-stop obsession with talking about my diet. This is where my comparison to a religious zealot comes in. Dieting is all I talk about.

Each morning, I greet my family with my weight loss number, and just to be sure I’ve told them, I tell them (each) the number two to three times more times throughout the day.

We live in a modest-sized house with modest levels of soundproofing. That means each time I gleefully say/shout my update to the poor innocent walking by, they all hear it – again and again, and …

Do the math: 1 husband + 2 kids times 2 (to 3) repetitions = 6 (to 9) daily announcements of “Hey, guess what? I’ve lost X pounds since I started the diet! Isn’t that amazing?”

And That’s Not All

“Do I look thinner?” I query/demand of Handsome Hubby an equal number of times a day – as if there’s a marked improvement between 8:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. when he returns home.

In addition, I detail and I do mean detail, as if it were of national import, what I’m allowed to eat the next day. Then, I repeat that info the next morning; and again, at dinner, I re-repeat what I’ve eaten so far that day and also what’s left for the remaining hours till bedtime. “I still get a banana! Isn’t that great?”

You might say I’m boring. You might say I’m obsessed. Admittedly, you’d be right on both observations. What can I say? I’ve got religion.

Self-flagellation?

Some penitents beat themselves with whips. I have my own, dieters’ form of self-punishment. I speak aloud the foods I crave but dare not eat. I give voice to my caloric cravings, my demonic dessert desires, and my sinful snack yearnings. Creamy chocolate eclairs! Spicy Chinese b-bar-que buns! A slice of toast dripping in salted butter!

A New Lifestyle?

As if these non-stop statements and utterances were not scintillating one-sided conversations enough for one spouse to endure, I also inflict onto my Handsome Hubby my thoughts on a wholesale lifestyle change. You see, I am currently plotting a dietary revolution worthy of Marx, Lenin, and McCarthy (I mean Mao) and the Keebler Elves!

One day I plan a one-day-a-week cabbage soup diet for myself FOR LIFE! The next, I decide to make it two days a week. And the next, I plan a cabbage soup diet one-week-per-month FOR LIFE!

On and On It Goes.

And speaking of going, I have got to sign off for now. I’m out of cabbage. So, I dash to the market and brew up a fresh batch before dinner.

By the way, did I mention I lost one ounce in the time it took to write this blog?