Adam vs. Eve

   Boy, it was a toss up for what to write about today. I was sorely tempted to document my love-hate relationship with diet pills and how crazy they make me. It's been said that writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. That certainly holds true for writing while on diet pills. Woo-hee... I'd just like to say that while my heart may explode and I would love to be able to stop tapping my foot, my house has never been cleaner. That said, what I think I'm actually going to enlighten you on is something else that makes me equally crazy: the fact that my husband makes losing weight look so easy. Like sitting watching your favorite show easy. You see, here I am completely overhauling my life & sadly accepting the fact that there has to be at least some form of deprivation in order to lose the blubber. No pain no gain (or in this case loss) right?

     This means that while I feed my family bagels with cream cheese for breakfast I make myself a killer slim-fast shake in the blender by pouring in tons of ice (excellent calorie free filler after all), 8 oz. light vanilla soy milk (because it has less calories than it's dairy counterpart), and a scoop of slim-fast (flavor varies since variety is the spice of life). I can totally handle skipping bagels. My shakes are actually not bad  & are even more filling when I remember to add extra fiber by throwing in some flax seeds or some frozen berries. Of course, snacking is key to keeping your metabolism going strong and preventing binges, so I usually have a mid morning snack of Weight Watchers yogurt or a 100 calorie bag of smart pop popcorn while checking up on all my blogging friends. I also keep the fluids flowing with mason jars full of herbal tea or lemon water all day. Sometime between my mid morning snack and the kids coming home from school I nosh on a Lean Cuisine (but only the NON- pasta ones like roasted garlic chicken w/ spinach or salmon w/ broccoli stir-fry). I typically try to make the kids a yummy after school snack & it can be difficult to not dip my finger into the cookie dough, but I've found that I'm willing to sip some diet hot cocoa instead. I like the Swiss Miss sensible sweets line a lot. You have to be careful though since the calorie counts vary widely. I usually grab the stuff that comes in at 25 calories a cup & is fortified with calcium, but I've accidentally grabbed the 60 calorie stuff before too. Not cool. That 35 calories matters.

    See, here's the part that the Adam vs. Eve thing gets frustrating. My DH isn't the type of guy who thinks 35 calories matters. In fact, he doesn't think about the calorie thing AT ALL. That doesn't stop him from dropping weight like a prisoner in a concentration camp though. I know that love isn't supposed to be selfish or jealous and that I should be happy for him. Blah, blah, blah... You know what I'm thinking when he says, "Hey Honey, can you hand me my belt? These pants are so loose they won't even stay up without a belt now" is that I want to throw myself on to the floor & throw a royal tantrum because it's NO FAIR!  I told you what I eat. You know what he eats? He goes through the drive-thru at McDonald's for a nice artery clogging breakfast. He stops at the gas station & picks up pizza or egg rolls or BBQ beef burritos and a bag of chips. For dinner, while I'm "diluting" my dinner by adding extra veggies & carefully arranging my plate so that 3/4 of it has some sort of green leafy something or other, he is skipping the veggies all together & filling his entire plate with the main course & lots of bread. He doesn't drink water. The one thing that he has done to lose weight is switch from Mountain Dew to fruit punch Gatorade. That was only because he knows too many people who have had kidney stones from drinking too much pop. By my math, Gatorade still has WAY too many calories for me though.

So, what gives?  I completely get the Slim-Quick commercials. Have you seen them? Designed to target the 6 ways women need help losing weight? Which is why I'm all hopped up on diet pills (could have been crack if I didn't know better.) So, if you see me on the street and I appear to be schizophrenic and you wonder why I'm talking so fast... that's it. I thought my body was so immune to the effects of caffeine that I could handle it, but alas the combo of caffeine, hoodia, ginseng, and ginkgo have proven too much for me. Not enough to make me stop taking them before I give it long enough to see if it works (please, please, please let it work.) Oh well, at least there's that my house has never been cleaner side effect. ;-)