Tag: diet

Diet Rules

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Some people who know me may realize that I have an odd diet concerning sugary foods. Basically, for 2/3 of the year I don’t eat most sugary foods; for the other third I do. The point of this diet is not to give up sugar, but to eat less of it.

This has worked well for me. I generally stick to it, and as a result I think I’ve at least halved my sugar consumption. I regard it a permanent part of my life, and have no plans to ever go off it. In this blog post I will shares the intricate details of this diet.

The main rule of the diet is that, for the most part, I can only eat sugary foods in the following months. (These are called the Allowed Months):

  • March
  • June
  • September
  • December

I don’t officially limit my sugar consumption in any way during Allowed Months. Unofficially I don’t really drink sugary beverages any more. (Maybe the odd milkshake, or a craft soda once in awhile. I almost never drink juice.)

All other months (which I call the Limited Months), my consumption of sugary foods is limited. In general, I think of these as sugar-free months, but they’re really not. As I said, this is not to prohibit sugary foods but to reduce. In practice, I allow myself certain exceptions.

Here are the exceptions I allow myself during all Limited Months:

  • I can eat fruit that isn’t too sweet. For me that means mostly apples and bananas, but canteloupe and watermelon I sometimes eat too. Maybe even grapes. This applies to fresh fruit only. Not juice, dried fruit, or anything like that.
  • I can add honey or jelly to a peanut butter sandwich.
  • If someone offers me something sweet, I can take one piece. So, for instance, if someone sticks a plastic bowl full of cookies in my face, I’m allowed to take one. But it has to be a deliberate, active offer from someone. If there’s just a bowl of cookies or candy sitting there, I can’t take one. If someone just mentions, “Hey there’s cake”, I can’t take a slice of cake. But if they said, “Hey Carl, I made a cake, why don’t you have a piece”, then I can.
  • I can eat Girl Scout Cookies with impunity, but only if I bought them myself from an actual Girl Scout. (So no second hand cookies, and no buying them from her mother, or from a box at work.)
  • I can take a single breath mint from a bowl after eating dinner at a restaurant.
  • Cough drops with sugar are ok. (Though I prefer sugar-free in any case; the sugary ones make my teeth sticky, moreso than candy. Sometimes sugar-free cough drops are not easy to find, though.)
  • I have a rule that I can add about a tablespoon of honey or syrup to yogurt, which I did a lot when I first started this diet, but I don’t eat as much yogurt as I used to.

In addition to these permanent rules, I usually also give myself a monthly exception. The monthly exception is usually a broad category: “ice cream”, “maple syrup” (unlocking pancakes), “12 ounce bottles of craft soda”, or something like that. Sometimes, if I feel like I didn’t do well during the previous month I won’t give myself this exception, but most months I do.

Here’s the thing about the monthly exceptions: I won’t simply shift all the sugar consumption to that one item. What I try to do is consume the exception at the same rate as I would during an Allowed month, and drop all other sugary foods. (At least that’s the theory; I’m sure I end up at the upper range most months.)

And finally, I waive the limits for sugary foods on major holidays.

In spite of the numerous exceptions, I have not stuck to this diet perfectly. I have eaten sugary foods for comfort here and there. I’ve waived the diet in certain situations (like when travelling). I used to not bother at all when I visited the family, since they always used to leave all kinds of chocolate and candy laying around the house, and at that point it’s hopeless. (Though they don’t leave chocolate out so much any more, no idea why.)

However, by and large this has been successful. At least for me, the exceptions give me a bit of an outlet and allow me to be strong in the face of temptation most of the time. It’s a lot easier to give up something when you know you’ll be able to take it up again soon.

I’ve been doing this in some form since 2011, about eight years now.

When I first started, I was like a statue of stone. I gave up the sweet foods absolutely during Limited Months, did not cheat at all, and gave myself fewer and narrower exceptions. Then, when Allowed Months came, I went crazy. I’d eat as much sugary food as I could, knowing that soon it would be a Limited Month again. I ended up eating more sugary foods than I otherwise would have during Allowed months (although it was certainly still less overall when you averaged it woth the Limited Months).

But as time went on, a very interesting thing has happened. I started adding new exceptions, and also ended up cheating more. But during Allowed Months, I got less and less crazy. Temptation had a smaller and smaller effect on me over time.

Now, I hardly eat more sugar during the Allowed months than I eat during Limited Months, and I eat a lot less sugar in any month. About the only difference now is that I might buy a candy bar while visiting a convenience store during a Allowed month, but won’t during a Limited month.

Basically, by sticking to this diet, I gradually learned to moderate.

I have a few tradtions associated with this diet. The first sweet I eat on an Allowed Month is always a King Size Kit-Kat. The last sweet I like to eat before I go back to Limited Months is an ice cream sandwich from Diddy Riese, but I don’t do that all the time (especially since I moved away from the Westside). And on holidays I usually limit myself to thematically appropriate sweets, so for Halloween I’ll only eat candy, for Thanksgiving, only pie.

Next Health Phase

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Ok, so back in May I joined the Y and began to work out (for the first time in awhile). It’s also the first time I took working out really seriously, for real.

My plan was to try to build upper-body strength first, then, when I reached a goal or two, to switch gears and focus on cardio health and stamina. Because I was really serious for real this time, I actually studied what to do, made a plan, and set realistic goals. One thing I discovered, that pretty much everyone agrees on, is that to build muscle, you have to gain weight. Therefore, on days that I worked out, I would splurge at the only buffet in the Westside, or eat 40 chicken wings during happy hour at Hooters.

This worked quite well. I reached my first strength goal (to bench press 200 pounds), added three inches to my arms, and overall am much stronger, in about six months, while not being all that consistent. The only problem is, I put on 30 or so pounds in the process.

So now it’s time to lose it. I’m shifting the workouts to more aerobic exercises, of course, but it’s also time to diet. I’ve never been on an official diet before, although I have implemented temporary eating rules here and there. But this time I am counting calories, with the help of a nice cell-phone app.

I have utterly no hope that I’ll be able to stick to counting calories for very long. However, if I stick to counting calories for at least a few weeks or months, I’ll get a good feel for how many calories foods really have (which I don’t have now), and will make wiser decisions from then on.

Here are the rules I have in place for at least a couple months:

  1. Limit to 2000 calories per day; absolutely no carryover. (If I find out 2000 is around what I eat normally, which I highly doubt, I’ll knock it down a few hundred.)
  2. No more ordering additional side dishes when eating out. (This one might depend on me managing to eat breakfast or lunch.)
  3. No sweets. Minor exceptions:
    • up to two teaspoons honey or fruit syrup topping for yogurt
    • bran muffins
    • medium-sweetness fruits

Finally, I get a cheat card for Christmas day.

Update: December 26, 2011

Well, it’s the day after Christmas and I am still counting calories faithfully. Am getting a feel for how expensive calorie-wise foods are. Pickles are nearly free, who knew? I had a glorious Christmas Day where I ate a couple small chocolate bars and some cookies, and 3500 total calories. Now back to 2000 a day max for a couple months.

Rule #2, no sides, didn’t last long. I found out that I had a lot of trouble eating enough calories if I didn’t order an additional side, especially when I eat late in the day.

I guess I should mention that I’m noticeably thinner in the waist. I haven’t (and won’t) weigh myself, though.

Mini diets

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I have never been on what I would officially call a diet. However, I find that it’s good to have some rule in effect about what I can eat, even if it’s minor. A rule like that forces me to think about what I’m eating, and that alone is very helpful in maintaining decent diet.

Generally I stick to a mini diet for about a month or so, but I’ve done longer and shorter.

Here are some of the rules I put in place at some point:

  • No alcohol: I’ve been a teetotaler my whole life. I believe the most alcohol I’ve ever consumed at once was at The Melting Pot (a restaurant specializing in fondue).
  • Many years ago I tried having different dietary restrictions for different days of the week, so Monday I couldn’t eat this, Tuesday that, and so on. It didn’t work that well, because I’d have to change my shopping/cooking/storing strategies day-to-day. However, it did get me thinking about what I was eating.
  • No fried food. I did this for nearly all of 2007 (mid-January till Thanksgiving). This was prompted by the fact that I’d been living in Georgia for the last year, and anyone who’s lived in the South knows, fried food is a way of life there. (It’s probably that way because it’s pretty much the only thing you can expect Southerners to cook reliably well.) After a year in Georgia I was sick of the fried food, so I just quit eating it. To this day I eat much less fried food than I did before my year off.
  • Various limitations on carbonated beverages, including (at different and sometimes overlapping times): no carbonation at all, no beverages with sugar, no caffeinated beverages, and nothing with aspartame. Once when I was living in Cincinnati I had no sugar/no caffeine/no aspartame in effect, but sucralose (Splenda) was ok. Splenda is a good sweetener for fruity drinks but sucks for cola; nevertheless I would have to grab an RC Zero every once in awhile.
  • No caffeine. I gave it up cold turkey after some precautionary medical checks. I should mention that caffeine does almost nothing to my mental state until I drink enough of it to give me a racing heart, which conversely I seem to be rather sensitive to. After a while (and noting that stopping it had solved my racing hearts) I allowed myself to use it occasionally.
  • Don’t eat out. For me it makes economic sense to eat out. I value time saved more the money lost, though I do like to cook. So every so often I add a rule to eat in for a period of time (usually around a month or so).
  • Only eat out at places I’d never tried before. (This is my current mini diet.)
  • No sugary foods. I’ve tried this a few times a while back, but wasn’t as successful as I’d have liked. I’m planning this for next month, though, and I am more experienced on how to stick to these mini diets now so I think I’ll be successful this time.
  • Once I tried to go a month only eating ethnic food. I thought this would be an easy one. I lasted about one week.

A few future mini diets I have planned are:

  • No meat. I’ve been told it’s not as easy as it sounds.
  • Eat something every day that I wish I ate more of. This includes foods such as fish, sweet potatoes, hot cereals, vegetables in general.
  • Calorie counting. I.e., a “real” diet. I’ve never done it but I’d like to try sometime to see how I cope. Maybe I’ll even try an extreme limited caloric intake.
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