Thoughts from the ammo line

Referring to my post a few weeks ago about my adventures in low carbohydrate eating, our friend Ammo Grrrll chronicles her own struggle to reduce to fighting trim. She writes:

I read with great interest both Scott’s recent post on weight loss paradigms and the many sincere and helpful comments readers shared. For those success stories, mazel tov, and may you all go from strength to strength!

Not to pull rank or anything, but I consider myself to be An Expert on weight loss. Oh, sure, I haven’t been a van driver — which would qualify me to stare like a deer in headlights into the camera and lie inarticulately on national security — but in the arena of weight loss, dudes, my credentials are nearly without peer.

I have lost well over 400 lbs. It’s the truth, my hand to God!

Unfortunately, it is the same 20 lbs., lost and regained some 20 times.

And here is my best advice: GIVE UP. At 5’3” in heels, I have a better chance of being called for goal-tending in the NBA than I do of maintaining my goal-weight for over 3 days.

Let me break it down for you: if you give up smoking, or even heroin, it’s a binary decision. As long as you continue to say “No,” you are succeeding. I smoked 3 packs a day in college, quit cold turkey, and have never had another cigarette. I do sometimes hang around outdoor places where addicted employee-pariahs are forced to congregate, so that I can get a second-hand contact high. I plan to start smoking unfiltered Luckies (do they still exist?) when I’m 90. The tobacco, they claimed, was “toasted”! Yum! But I digress…

Eating is NOT a binary decision. Every single day, you must make wise decisions, 3 or 4 or 5 times a day, depending on your paradigm with allotted meals and snacks. What ARE the chances, seriously, that you are never going to make an unwise decision? That after weeks of gluten-free or low carb crap, you aren’t going to go from gluten to glutton and order a Deep Dish Pizza, a side of Fettucini Alfredo and a whole Carrot Cake for dessert?

But the worse news is that it doesn’t even take a major freak-out. If you take in just 100 calories a day more than your body uses for fuel (one small chocolate chip cookie, say), that’s about 10 pounds you will put on in a year. My husband burns calories like the Obamas burn money on vacation. I, on the other hand, have a metabolism so efficient that, if I were a car, I could go from coast to coast on a couple gallons of gas. Call me Volt.

Hold it! Did I say, “Give up”? Ammo Grrrll has a milestone high school reunion coming up in 3 months, so it’s time to lose those last few pounds, assuming that “few” is defined as 15-20. I found a “Thyroid Detox” diet in the most recent issue of “Woman’s World” – a fabulously optimistic magazine I buy weekly that has headlines like “Lose 45 Pounds By Friday on the Chocolate Diet!”

The Thyroid Detox entails eating 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I bought a whole bunch of wretched vegetables at Walmart and I put them in that little bin at the bottom of the fridge that I call The Rotter. Not to brag, but after 5 days, I have already lost .2 of a pound! Wish me luck. And stay tuned.

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