The biggest part of dieting is 'die'

My mother has been telling me for several years, as you get older, the weight just doesn’t come off as easy when you were younger.

I figured this out without her prophetic words as I noticed my waist expanding and clothes getting tighter in recent years. Each time I went up another size, I would say to myself, “I love wearing baggy clothes and soon enough I would go back down to smaller sizes.”

The illusion nobody had noticed my weight gain was shattered over the holidays.

It hit hard I wasn’t the guy who was thirty pounds lighter as recently as three years ago when a friend who has known me for 20 years asked me, “What happened to Mike, did you eat him?” (I am sure many will be surprised to learn it was Jimmy Campbell who said those words, since he is such a shy guy. He saw me at a Christmas dinner at the Hotel Wolf.)

That did it for me. No more going up another size for me.

Time for a diet.

Dieting isn’t hard really. Stop eating and exercise your brains out and you will lose weight. This has worked for me every time over the years. Even though living in Wyoming can make exercise challenging I have lost weight this way many times before. Just not quite this much excess baggage. The pool in the Hanna Recreation Center has been the place I have kicked out 40 laps five times a week in the past. Swimming always seems to work when losing pounds not needed. Sadly, I have hardly done any swimming for almost a year. Hmmm, wonder if there is a correlation about my weight gain this past year and not swimming. Maybe, but diet is important too.

So knowing what to do for a diet isn’t the hard part. It is preparation for the diet.

If you are like me, possessing an unholy desire for anything containing chocolate and, to a lesser degree, foodstuffs heavy in sugar; this means fruit, granola bars and just about any dessert.

Curse my years working and running restaurants/bars, because I am way too good a cook for a person going on a diet. I always listened to the chefs on how they made wonderful meals and I learned much from these culinary specialists. I think the best lesson taken from them; if you make it yourself, the quality will usually be awesome. Hell, I bake my own pies from scratch because a pastry chef showed me how in Australia. From having my place in Laramie, I learned how to make Beef Wellington, along with Yorkshire pudding, which is crazy delicious in my book. Unfortunately, neither are low cal. My saving grace: I always have vegetables with most meals.

From past experience, I find there are two steps in dieting successfully.

Step one is eliminate everything edible in the house that could tempt me (it doesn’t take much) in a weak moment. Get rid of everything that is screaming high calorie, so when the urge hits, there is nothing to consume.

Again, it all makes sense to get rid of temptation. The difficult part is getting rid of all the dangerous un-diet edibles before starting the effort to lose weight.

I actually have a couple kitchens at my disposal and that means tons of room for food. My refrigerators will attest to my cooking prowess, usually having sauces and meals prepared in anticipation of me getting home late and not wanting to cook.

So I can’t just start my salad meals right off the bat. I have to get rid of the food in the fridges.

I can’t just throw it away. My mother’s voice comes to me, “You have to eat everything on your plate because we don’t waste food in this house,” usually following with the words, “Think of all those starving kids in India.”

My reply, especially when it was okra, “Lets send it to them.” That might have elicited a smile from her, but I knew the next act was to eat the food. Of course, now I like okra.

Since I don’t own a trail pig and I can’t bring myself to throw away good food, it becomes my duty before starting a diet to cook everything up and get it out of the house as quickly as possible. This means probably eating double my norm.

Plus, who I am kidding, if I don’t use up those Nestle chocolate chips in Toll House cookies. I can’t just hide them. Some night they’ll come back to haunt me. Just smarter to bake them up now and eat them as quickly as possible.

Then there are the sauces. I usually make enough for several medium meals, but if I eat double my usual, they get used faster. If I eat pasta with the sauces instead of making them into soups, I get rid of two baddies in one sitting.

This is what I consider progress.

Another thing I realize I have to get rid of is my mixers I use for drinks. I have made no secret of my love for creating cocktails, so I have incredible juice mixers. The other day I made pomegranate/key limeade especially for a gin cocktail. Since I squeezed all the juices fresh, I pretend the sugar I added is okay. Well it isn’t and the juice has to go as quickly as possible, which means I will be drinking a lot of gin too. Well, it does have less calories than whiskey.

This is hard work getting rid of all this tempting stuff.

Step two is to go buy all the good stuff diets are made of, like leafy vegetables and a lot of soda water. Problem is, as I put the new food in the fridge, I will inevitability find some bad food that needs to be eaten first.

So the diet is delayed a bit more.

The worst part, in anticipation of going on the diet, my exercise program is not really started because I am waiting to do it right. If I eat bad and exercise, then I might justify, I am losing weight, just slower.

Can’t have that because I want this weight off quick as possible. I have to be honest with myself and wait for me to finish the bad food before starting any exercise program. As I start eating salad as my meals, weight will drop off some and exercise will be easier.

Think I read that in Men’s Health.

So I guess it boils down to this.

To lose weight, you have to gain weight.

You know, a thought just hit me.

Maybe I can just eat smaller portions and start exercising now. Good idea, but what about the Toll House cookies? Not make them and take the chance of a night of chocolate haunting.

That would require willpower and discipline.

There is only one thing I can think to do, since I have realized my two step plan of dieting is going to mean an additional ten pounds before I can start my try at weight loss.

I have to put a picture of the slimmer me on the refrigerator door and get a recording of Jimmy Campbell to play, asking me if I ate Mike Armstrong as I open the door.

Probably need to put the recording on my pantry too.

Problem solved.

When you see me around this summer, hopefully you will be seeing less of me, too.