Waisting Away

I was standing in line at the grocery store checkout the other day. Being blissfully free of children (which those mothers of you out there will know is second only to lying on the beach with a fruity drink in your hands), I was not too wrapped up in mediating sibling tensions to peruse the wide selection of magazines targeted at women like me. I was briefly distracted by a magazine that claimed to hold the key to turning your passions into employment, until I noticed that it was a magazine for women age 40+. While that is fine and good, and certainly women age 40+ should have magazines just for them, I felt like it would be cheating to read it. You know, like the beautiful young blonde who is under-qualified, under-experienced, but overly buxom, who comes in and steals a coveted position from the older, more experienced, more intelligent mother of 3 who sags a little more around the curves than her perky young rival. That is not to say that I’m perky or young, or buxom or blonde. But I felt like it would be wrong, nevertheless, to steal wisdom intended for my esteemed elders, and appropriate it for my own use.

So I turned my gaze to the other side of the aisle and my eyes landed an a pseudo tabloid I suppose. A magazine on newsprint called Woman’s somethingerother…I’m not exactly sure. This was a magazine targeted directly to me. The thin, smiling woman on the cover was offered up as proof that you could start shedding belly fat TODAY! Now that is something that was meant for the under 40 housewife in me with an enlarged belly that appeared when I got pregnant the first time, and has never since retreated. This magazine had no age limits or guilty pearls of wisdom intended for others.

I turned quickly to the page that promised to help me shrink my grand belly. “Foods that help you burn belly fat” it promised. I was quickly captivated and read the break out sections, and bullet points they highlighted for those of us with little time or attention span. And quickly I was terribly disappointed. It was as if any idiot could write a weight loss article. The promises of new revelations faded quickly in the face of information I already knew!

Limit you calories to 1400 daily: What? 1,400 Calories?! Anything more than 1,200 daily for me and I grow more rapidly than one of those magic dinosaurs in a capsule that expands to 15 times its original size in 24 hours.

Eat meals of no more than 500 calories: It went on to say that while a woman over 30 couldn’t burn a 1,000 calorie meal as well as her younger counterpart, there was little difference in how both women burned a 500 calorie meal. Let me just point out to my reader (who is no doubt of higher intelligence than the writer of this article) that it would be rather STUPID to eat a 1,000 calorie meal when you’re limited to 1,400 a day. Eating 71% of your daily caloric allotment in one sitting is rather like spending 75% of your monthly budge on a single item of clothing.

Eat 6 times a day: Okay, small, frequent meals is a popular diet strategy, proposed by many of the most popular diets including weight watchers. But if we take the first 3 items together, it would be impossible to do this diet. I’m supposed to eat 500 calorie meals, but 6 times daily while not exceeding 1400 calories…you do the math!

Avoid refined carbohydrates: So I see the author has read the South Beach diet, and probably Dr. Atkin’s book as well. Thank you very much for adding nothing new to the diet dialogue!

Avoid highly processed foods: You mean I can’t live on wonder bread, hotdogs and velveeta?! What a shocker!

Eat lean protein: Here we go again with the south beach/ atkins wisdom. I’m glad to know the author of this “article” can at least read and comprehend a book, even if he has nothing original to add.

Do aerobic exercise: the point here is to choose whole body workouts instead of targeted abdominal work. I’ve done enough sit-ups and abdominal isometrics in my life to tell you they don’t work.

So I put the magazine down, thoroughly disappointed. Yes, I was the intended target reader, the frazzled mother with more belly to lose than will power. However, I was supposed to have those children in the cart wrestling over control of a pocket pack of tissues snatched off the shelf next to them. I wasn’t supposed to have time to pre-read the article and find out that it had NOTHING NEW to offer, or that there were no magic fat burning foods.

Hanging my head in disappointment, I placed the contents of my shopping cart onto the conveyer belt. Yes, there were 2 half gallons of ice cream (I know, that’s a whole gallon, but somehow it feels better to say half gallon). And here is where the truth comes in. I know all of this stuff already. I’ve read and tried Atkins, South Beach and Weight Watchers. I’ve lost weight in the past, I’ve walked miles and miles in the process. I know how to do this.

My problem at this point in my life is that I don’t want to give anything up. I want to be able to eat my ice cream and still watch the pounds drop off. I decide to try one diet, and then another in rapid succession. And apparently it doesn’t work to eat an Atkins meal for lunch and a weight watchers dinner. I don’t want to stick to any one plan and miss out on the flavors I love. Frankly, at this point, I like food more than my size 4 dresses that hang ever hopefully in the back of my closet.

So I sigh. At least I’m only buying double churn ice cream that claims to have ½ the fat and 1/3 fewer calories. Surely that will make a difference in my waist line.