The Diet Dirt

I've been on a new diet for five weeks and counting now. In the meantime, my trusty iPhone keeps auto-correcting the word "diet" to "dirt," and lately, I'm not sure it's wrong. Apparently, it's too much to ask to be able to eat and drink whatever you want and still be able to button a pair of pants, so it had become increasingly clear that the plan Clint and I developed while I was recovering with my broken ankle was, in fact, not the best plan for us. The most fun and delicious and enjoyable plan, to be certain, but not the best for little things like health, well-being, or appearance.

There's a lot of truth here...and also a lot of tacos. 

Once we decided to put down the tacos and put a plan of action into place, we knew we wanted to try something different. As you may be aware at this point, I have been on and off some type of diet since I was around six years old. In this battle of the bulge, I've tried low calorie, low fat, low carb, Slim Fast, Super Shred, South Beach, Isagenix, Plexus, AdvoCare. I've done the one where you lose 10 pounds in three days (very sustainable, as you might imagine), I've done intermittent fasting, I've done liquid diets and meal replacements and supplements and B-12 shots and body balancing...whew! There's not much that I haven't tried, although I think I know by now that what it really comes down to is eating less, moving more, and moderation. Believe me: if there was a magic pill or potion, I would have come across it by now.

We found a nutritional coaching program that helps you simplify the bevy of diet advice out there by having you focus on macronutrients, or macros for short. The three that our program tracks are your proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. We were each assigned coaches who reviewed our personal information and gave us our numbers: the total amount of proteins, fats, and carbs we are supposed to consume each day. You can go about reaching these macro numbers any way that you please, but you should ideally come within five grams (plus or minus) of each one.

Let me start at the beginning with the coach who was originally assigned to Clint and to me (kudos to them for trying to keep married people on the same team). I got this fellow's email and read through his very enthusiastic, warm welcome, and then found his invitation to follow and befriend him on social media at the bottom of his message. Imagine my surprise (and intimidation) when I got this visual of my coach (well, I added the smiley face just to soften him up a bit):

Something tells me this gentleman and I have very little in common.

Naturally, Clint thought the coaching assignment was awesome. He would look at the pictures on our new coach's Instagram and instinctively flex, as if he was going to get buff by association. I decided that, for my part at least, a change in coaching would be necessary. After a couple of messages to the diet organizing powers that be (dutifully but adamantly explaining that I'm more Garden & Gun  than Muscle & Fitness and I would very much appreciate a mentor who grasps all that), I was reassigned. Meet my new coach, whose identity I have cleverly concealed for his privacy's sake.

Yep, coach, that's more like it.

Once I saw this new coach actually wearing a shirt--and one that endorses tacos no less--and I read through his quirky, funny social media posts, I knew we were in business. I hope the company warned him about the impatient, neurotic, diet-crazed lady that was about to come his way, but if not, he's started putting all of that together by now, believe you me.

How's it going so far? It's not easy. We are dutifully measuring and recording every bite of food that goes into our mouths, weighing every morning (simply the best way to start your day, isn't it?), and logging everything into a spreadsheet for weekly check ins with our respective coaches. 

I've become a person who weighs out broccoli, for Pete's sake.

Naturally, Clint can have more food than I can, so I feel like he is always eating. After dinner every night, I am resigned to a sad little cup of sugar-free Jell-O with a very measured two tablespoons of sugar-free Cool Whip, and Mr. I-Still-Need-Protein is in the kitchen eating fistfuls of sandwich meat and beef jerky. I'm learning to love egg whites (lots of bang for your macro buck), and Clint is noshing on hamburger patties (protein) or Gummy Bears (gummy candy is an easy way to add carbohydrates without throwing off any of your other macro numbers).

Since I have been dieting for so long, I guess I have at least acquired a bit of knowledge about how these things work. Poor Clint, not so much. He's been watching his weight since I've known him, but he's also just always asked me what to eat and followed along. Now, we find ourselves in the land of many, many questions as he navigates his own set of diet guidelines and has to plan out what to eat on his own. Among the things he's asked: do pickles have protein (while holding the jar with the nutritional info printed right there for all to see), are gingerbread muffins a carb, and what are the macros in celery? If eye rolling burned calories, I would never need to diet again. Sadly for me, it clearly doesn't.

So far, I've lost five pounds. As we used to say growing up, "That's like taking a cup of water out of Lake Hartwell." (This is a regional reference: please feel free to insert any large body of water of your choosing to customize the phrase, but you get my point). My coach is reassuring me that anywhere from half a pound to one and a half pounds a week is the preferred pace for sustainable weight loss, so I'm trying my best to keep plugging away. If the scale is just a number, why does mine have to be so high? 

You've probably heard the old adage: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Please correct that to: measure out your elephant portions, carefully weigh them, track them in the My Fitness Pal app, and only eat that sucker if it fits into your macros! I assume elephant is high in protein.

Until next time, if you need me, I'll be over here savoring every last morsel of this sugar-free Jell-O.