Earlier this week, I saw the "Good Eats" episode where Alton Brown explains how he lost 50 pounds. Good for him! Really! He made 'scientific' lists of what/how often he could eat, and you can find them (and a lot more) in this article: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-867-LowCarb-Lifestyle-Examiner~y2010m1d6-A-50pound-lowcarb-weight-loss-for-Alton-Brown-from-The-Food-Network

Now, don't get me wrong- I'm a big fan of Alton; he knows a lot about food and cooking and creating a successful media presence. His TV show is great, usually, and always informative. But, man, I can't eat like that!

Losing weight is simple in concept: eat fewer calories than you burn. (Calorie definition: the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 gram of water by one degree Celsius. They say there are 9 calories in a gram of fat, 454 grams in a pound, so to lose one pound, 9X454= about 4,000 calories. Now I have a headache. How many calories does that use up?)

The problem is, the food you eat has to satisfy more than just the calorie requirements of your body. Getting all your calories from donuts will satisfy the energy requirement just fine, but (1.) you're not going to get the proteins, minerals, vitamins, and all that other stuff your body needs, and (2.) nobody really wants to eat just donuts, no matter what they say. The lists Alton created probably do provide all the other stuff, being so scientific and all, but they're still not for me.

So, what I'm getting at (and you were beginning to wonder, weren't you?) is that everybody's different. We all like different foods in different proportions and are willing to eat more of some things and less of others to achieve our 'desired' weight. Alton Brown chose things that he was willing to eat more and less of, made a rule to eat breakfast everyday, and for him, those things worked.  

I'd like to lose some weight, too, though not 50 pounds; more like 10 or 15. (It was the holidays. I swear.) So here's the plan: eat less fatty stuff (for example, chips: a small handful with lunch sandwiches instead of a heaping pile); eat less salt (I'm a sucker for the red and white canned chicken noodle soup, but I can live without it, easy); eat more fresh vegetables of ALL kinds (the garden will help with this as it gets bigger); and watch the ice cream (but I just HAVE to have it once in a while). But I won't eat breakfast. Never have, never will. If I eat that early in the morning, I just want to crawl back to bed. But an hour before noon I'm starving, so lunch is a little early at our house. It all balances out, maybe.

That's it. No scientific list. No schedules or frequencies of consumption. No forbidden foods or drinks. Just a few choices to cut down the intake of calories, and keep using them at the same rate. (We're remodelling the 'fixer house' we live in, mostly by ourselves, so that's not going to be a problem.)

I'll report back in a month or so....and we'll see if Mr. Brown's way would have been better.

(Jeez, I hope not. I better do good on this, huh? I don't want to eat 'Brislings'.)