Eleven pounds in 11 weeks: At this point, I have to accept the dreary fact that it’s going to take me six months to lose 25 pounds. That’s twice the time it would take my triumphant opponent, Sean Kelley, to do the same (though he is prone to spectacular fluctuations; he says he has roller-coastered as much as nine pounds in a week and seven pounds in a day. He must retain water, as John Turturro said to his wife in Quiz Show, like the Grand Coulee Dam).
I suppose the silver lining of tortoise-paced weight loss is habituation: Somewhere along the way, it ceased being a diet and became the way I eat now. Vegetable consumption: up. Meat: down. Desserts: few. Portions: smaller. Wine: we all have our weaknesses.
You do get out of shape. What once was pleasure now lays me low. Before, a classic steakhouse dinner (something I consumed about twice a year) produced only a slight logy feeling. Now, as I recently discovered, it reenacts Gallipoli in my gut—the explosions, the screams, etc.
Restaurants have made it easier on careful eaters in the past few years, even the chain restaurants. And at the high-end joints, there are a lot of interesting vegetables and grains, as long as you realize that it costs a rutabaga a lot of money to go to finishing school. (Amy O’Connor reported spotting $17 cabbage-wrapped barley; I recently considered a side dish of "Tokyo turnips" for $12.)
As for seafood, I was tacking toward a lot more spicy tuna rolls and tuna tartare until the New York Times reported that sushi-grade tuna contains enough mercury to turn a habitual eater into a superfund site.
First you live, then you diet; hopefully you learn along the way. I’m not discouraged and I’m not bored. I’m just slow.
Comments (1)
Rock on, Scott! Going slow and changing your mindset likely means you’ll keep it off. But watch out or you’ll end up being 52 pounds lighter by year’s end.