I hate fad diets. Restricting certain foods – or entire food groups – seems an awful way to live. As someone who writes about food for a living – and spends weekends binge-cooking at home – dieting is just not my thing.
For decades, this has worked fine for me. I spent most of my life as a thin, fit person. I am (or was) athletic. I chose my university first based on how good the football team was and second for the journalism degree I was to earn there. I was one of only a handful of students at my university to play two competitive sports.
But sometime in the last several years, that person disappeared. I am no longer thin. Or fit.
Since arriving in the UAE nearly three years ago, I’ve gained nine kilograms. It’s shocking to admit, but somehow I failed to notice this weight gain. I have what I assume is a rare complex: when I look in the mirror, I still see my athletic, thin self. Then I see a photo where I’ve turned all pear-shaped and I don’t know who I’m looking at.
What slapped me back to reality was a visit a few months ago to a doctor who told me that it is OK to skip a meal once in a while. It was her very polite way of saying I needed to drop a few kilos.
So I ate a few salads and moped around for a couple of weeks with no resulting weight loss. And then I actually tried to lose weight. I limited certain foods – I had meat-free days, I didn’t eat all the cheese in the supermarket. And guess what? I gained another kilo. I had entered the frustrating world of dieting. It was unknown territory.
Search for the word “diet” on Google and you’ll get 461 million hits, with headlines that scream: “Diets that work”, “Best diets for women”, “25 best diet tricks”, blah, blah, blah.
The truth is, if one diet worked for everyone, we’d all be thin, and the person who came up with it would be on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean.
I found some mind-boggling dieting trends: low-carb, high-fat “treats” known as fat bombs; the hcg diet (an extremely low calorie diet paired with injections of something called human chorionic gonadotrophin); single-food diets (think cabbage or pineapple – or another food you will be sick of by day two); ear stapling (look it up).
And the breatharian diet, in which you align yourself with the universe so that you won’t need water or food. Or, as I like to call it, starvation.
A few years ago, I interviewed cardiologist Arthur Agatston, the man who came up with the South Beach Diet. He was, at that time, probably the only person in the world who was not actually on his own diet – he said so himself. The South Beach Diet was trendy and it worked for a lot of people. But it’s not rocket science – it is simply based on consuming good carbs, lean protein, healthy fats and fibre-rich foods. Yet labelling it the South Beach Diet made it wildly popular. No one’s going to tweet about The Sensible Diet.
But today, even the South Beach Diet feels a little uncool and outdated. If you’re going to put in the effort, you might as well choose a diet that’s trendy, so you have something to chat about with the girls while you’re loafing around, not at the gym.
You could, for example, try Bulletproof Coffee to trigger weight loss – a concept that ruins my favourite drink by adding a big slab of butter. Or the paleo diet, where you scarf down anything cavemen used to eat.
Or try the Whole30 – an extreme paleo-style diet that eliminates all grains, legumes, dairy, sugar and anything that is tasty for 30 days. If you mess up at all – even a little – you have to go back to day one.
Being my usual, defiant self, I snubbed those trendy diets and instead chose a 52-year-old dieting plan: Weight Watchers. This programme does not eliminate any foods, which was a big plus in my book. It is instead all about downsizing portions, not eating too much fat or sugar and keeping track of what you eat. It is, in short, a sensible diet.
Since April, I’ve lost five kilos. I have 11 more to go. I’ve gone off track several times – once during a gluttonous summer stint in Italy, during which I dined at seven Michelin-starred restaurants in six days.
I still eat meat and butter and chocolate. I just eat less of it – which is the only real change I’ve made since joining Weight Watchers. I’m losing weight (albeit very slowly), simply by eating less. Wait – is there a diet called The Eat Less Diet? Maybe I’m on to something.
sjohnson@thenational.ae