I don’t want to give the impression that I visit Philadelphia just for the food. But planning how to fit all my favorites into just one day of free time does take up quite a bit of effort:

• Cheesesteak with grilled onions and sweet peppers from Michael’s
• Special Italian hoagie with sweet peppers, also from Michael’s
• Hot sausage with sauce and onions from The Last Stand
• Soft pretzels from Wawa

Add in the road food on the turnpike between Cleveland and Philly, dinner at the wedding Friday night (the real reason we made the trip), and road food on the way back, and my daily weigh-in looks like a politician taking a polygraph.

Here’s where it will get interesting

If my research is correct, I’ll be back to my pre-binge weight by Thursday morning, without skipping meals or doing anything out of the ordinary.

My wife sets the over/under at Friday morning. Who wants a little of this action?

 

Some things in life you’d rather not know. As long as you never say this stuff out loud, you can convince yourself that you don’t know about it:

• Your husband looks at other women’s boobs.
• Your wife buys shoes you don’t know about.
• Your teenager is having sex. Yes, your teenager. With someone they met in bible study. (If you’re lucky it’s another student.)

If there’s nothing you can do about it anyway, you might as well pretend it isn’t so and save yourself the stress of wishing it would change.
[Read more…]

This weekend I’m going to a wedding in New Jersey. Which means I’ll be near Philadelphia for a couple of days. That means cheesesteaks. And hoagies. And The Last Stand.

Three meals I need to fit in. And only one day to do it. Hmmm … I have a feeling I’m going to miss my weekly goal by just a little bit.

By the way, I just put up the first article explaining what Undieting is all about. Along with the recipes I’ll start posting tomorrow, I’m going to be putting up a series of articles explaining the guidelines I follow, and why they work. You’ll need a free guest membership to read the rest of the articles, so click here to sign up now.

UPDATE:

Sally called me out for a hypocrite down below. Well, she was nicer about it, but I am being a hypocrite. Just today I was saying over on Summer Tomato:

Don’t eat out (often). And when I do, don’t worry about eating healthy. As long as I’m only eating out once a week or less, it’s a complete non-issue.

Thirty-plus years of anti-food messages are hard to shake. Thanks for the reminder.

Image by Chris at You Look Tired

… a cross between an elephant and a rhinoceros?

Elephino. (Say it out loud.)

… someone with no musical ability who hangs out with musicians?

A drummer.

… people who use the rhythm method for birth control?

Parents.

… someone on a low-fat diet?

Fat.

Okay, that’s a little unfair. What I meant to say is: Someone on a low-fat diet is going to be fat.
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We all knew that girl in college who had the boyfriend nobody liked. Everyone knew he wasn’t good for her … except for her.

I don’t mean he was beating her or anything. But for some reason she was constantly apologizing, either for him or to him.

I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way … I should have remembered … I don’t know what I was thinking …

The only thing he ever made her feel was that she wasn’t good enough. Everyone could see it but her.

And now she’s on a diet.[nonmember]..

Sign up for a free guest membership to see the rest of this post.[/nonmember]
[ismember]

You don’t owe your diet anything

If your leader suggests a goal and you don’t reach it, do you feel like you let Weight Watchers* down? A little guilty because you only lost a half-pound instead of the three pounds she wanted?

What the hell is that about? They’re the ones who are supposed to understand weight loss. That’s what you’re paying them for. And somehow it’s your fault that it isn’t working?

That’s completely backwards.

It’s not your fault

Trying out a diet that doesn’t work is no more your fault than being mistreated by a boyfriend. (Or girlfriend.) Sticking around and thinking that everything will work out if only you worked harder … Now that’s your fault.

Einstein — the general relativity guy — said:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

But that’s exactly what people keep doing. They try a new diet for a month and it isn’t making a difference. So they resolve to just do it harder. And this time it will work.

Don’t believe me? Look at the results I got when I asked, “What’s the worst thing about most diets?” The most common answer — at just about 50% of all responses — was “I can’t stick to it.”

Lots of ways to blame yourself

Here’s the results from 638 responses as of today, 3/25/11. (Readers could choose two answers, so the total is more than 100%.)

Response	%	Votes
I can’t stick to it.	49%	310
The weight comes right back.	22%	143
It doesn’t work.	20%	130
I don’t like the food.	16%	105
It’s too expensive.	16%	102
I don’t have time to make the food.	14%	91
I can’t go out to eat.	6%	41

 

Five of those answers — I can’t stick to it, I don’t like the food, It’s too expensive, I don’t have time, I can’t go out — are all different ways of saying, “It’s my fault.”

Only a fifth of the respondents said the biggest problem with diets is that they don’t work. And barely more than a fifth said that the weight comes back. So maybe it worked for a little while, but then they got off the diet and it came back, which sounds like another way of saying, “I can’t stick to it.”

There’s only one right answer on that list. The problem with diets is that They. Don’t. Work. Diets fail — people don’t fail, diets fail — because they set the wrong expectation from the beginning.

It’s not a diet if you like it

Let’s start with what most people mean when they say they are “on a diet”. Darya Pino writes about food for The Huffington Post, SF Weekly, KQED Science and Edible SF. (She also has a degree in molecular and cell biology from Berkeley, and a PhD in neuroscience from UCSF.) So she knows plenty of ways to talk about food, and she doesn’t even use the word diet any more:

I don’t like the word diet because for most people it conjures up ideas of deprivation, rapid weight loss and temporary changes. I think the only way to achieve permanent, long-term health and weight loss is through a lifestyle approach.

I also think everyone has to find what works for them, because when it comes to food and taste one size does not fit all. “Healthstyle” combines the idea of a lifestyle approach to health while giving you the freedom to find your own “style”.

Don’t think it’s just about the word, though. The point is if you eat “diet food” until you hit your goal weight, then go back to “normal” eating, you can’t expect anything to last. You’ve got to find a way to eat that will get you to your goal weight, and that you’ll want to keep eating once you make it.

It’s not dieting … it’s eating

Vegetarians aren’t on a diet, they just don’t eat meat. Jews aren’t on a diet, they don’t eat pork. Goldfish aren’t on a diet, they don’t eat french fries. Okay, that last one might not be a fair comparison. The point is, there’s a difference between deciding how you want to eat and being on a diet.

Don’t go on a diet. Diets are jerks. They make you feel bad about yourself. They don’t give you anything in return. And they don’t work.

Kick your diet to the curb, and decide how you want to eat.

* I’m obviously not affiliated with Weight Watchers, and they didn’t approve this message in any way.[/ismember]

I hate diets. The biggest problem with them is … Well hold on a second. Tell me what you think.

Pick one or two answers. Feel free to leave a comment explaining your answer, or offering a different one.

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