Diet Blooper Reel.

Hi Compadres.

It's been 2 months. Oops.

After mulling over some conversations I've had with friends recently, I found that we don't talk about "things ya just don't talk about" often enough. Cause a lot of people are in the same boat on touchy subjects. So I think I'm just gonna share my metaphorical boat with the interwebs. And here it is.

Today's topic of discussion: Food.

I've been around the dieting block quite a few times. I would consider myself pretty well versed in "how to not lose weight while intentionally changing your consumption patterns." So I've decided to provide, if nothing else, a brief, comical summary titled:

"WHY GOD WHY?! A brief, chronological, lighthearted look at Kaitlyn Dessoffy's diet plan(s)"

Plan 1: The Dance Diet

Summary: Dance 7 hours a week. Eat whatever you want.

Pros: Mon-Friday, lose 6 pounds.
Cons: Saturday-Sunday, find them. Self hatred ensues.


Plan 2: The "After Six" Diet

Summary: Rather than stopping eating at six pm, start eating around 6 pm. Usually resulting from a lack of planning, packing, and lunch hour. Struggle buss it through the day on a Nutrigrain bar and a handful of chex mix.

Pros: You save so much time not eating. Now you have time to sleep, funny how you're so exhausted all the time.
Cons: It doesn't work. Also you have zero energy. Don't do this.

Plan 3: The Soy Milk Diet

Summary: Circa 9th grade I discovered I was allergic to Soy Milk. Having a hard time stopping yourself from eating? You can't eat when you're working on keeping lunch down.

Pros: None. 'cept that this one was super short lived.
Cons: On top of the swollen throat and digestive tract fire storm, you're pretty disappointed in yourself. Also, this is a pretty ineffective way to get energy from food. Or lose any weight from a lack thereof.

Plan 4: Weight Watchers!

Summary: Sound familiar?! The WW diet gives you 29 "points" per day, with 42 extra points to use throughout the week. Fruits and Veggies are free. As are diet, non-calorie foods. Points are calculated using Carbs, Protein, Fiber, and Fat content values. Ex: Bread: 3 points. Chicken: 5 points. Cheese: 6 points. Yogurt: 7 points.

Pros: It works! And you're not starving yourself! And you have to eat fruits and vegetables!
Cons: Point Values are so fucking annoying to calculate. You thought calorie counting was hard? This is not even a value on the box. And it makes you look at food in a quantitative form. You can eat this diet on apples, lettuce, chocolate, and crackers. Eventually you find the right way to combine your allotted 29 points so you are still dieting, but you are also gaining weight. Also, your body adjusts to this within a few months. So you have to gradually eat less and less points to maintain your body weight. At 25 points a day, No bonus for working out, and no points plus, you start to panic a little. How much less can you eat?! This is your cue to take yourself off the diet. 

Plan 5: The CATS diet

Summary: See "Dancer diet" but add to that the looming threat of dancing 4 shows a week in a spandex leotard.

Pros: I was in the best shape of my life
Cons: The run only lasted 3 weeks. The diet lasted 3 months. No good. No good.

Plan 6: The Love Your Body Diet.

Summary: Accept the 6 pounds you gained last summer. You're not overweight.

Pros: You're in great shape mentally! And physically too come to think of it.
Cons: Who are we kidding here? That acceptance lasted 2 days. Literally 2 days. Then it took a journey that went a little something like, annoyance --> critical mirror looking --> scales and tape --> panic --> TREADMILL! And sadness. 

Plan 7: The back to basics

Summary: An honest attempt to eat well. Stipulations: 1. Mostly Vegetables 2. Get all the food groups in there 3. Eat only when you're hungry 4. Don't weigh yourself more than once a week 5. Don't freak out about how you look.

Pros: Days 1-3 you do a bang up job.
Cons: Day 4: You weigh yourself. No progress. --> Anger and self loathing. Convince yourself that you are too uptight for this silly "mindful eating" thing. Scour the internet for crash diets. Yeah, cause if you didn't have the will power to make THIS one work, eating only soup for a week is definitely a better option.


Plan 8: Calorie Counting

Summary: myfitnespal.com. 1270 per day. Ya get some extra if you work out.

This is pretty much what I'm up to now in terms of food. So far so good. It's definitely a little obsessive, but I'm pretty type A, so this is run of the mill. Counting calories is definitely a restrictive measure, but I find that any stress caused from counting calories is not nearly as bad as stress I feel when I'm not comfortable in my body. It's a work in progress.


Welp, that just about covers it. I hope you enjoyed my metaphorical boat. I'm thinking a lot of people have shared this metaphorical boat. So how about we make food discussions a little more open, yeah? Don't be embarrassed. I just regurgitated (sorry, couldn't pass it up) my questionable dieting methods from the past 7 years to a public forum. Ya can't do much worse than that.

Meh, that's all I got. 

Kait