(idea) by teleny Fri Jun 08 2007 at 18:34:27

a/k/a The Checklist Diet

Now that the recovery people have had their say....

I can't claim anything for this, even authorship, but it was featured in a major women's magazine (Real Simple), and has served me well for about five years. About all it does is give you a good-enough, varied, moderate healthy diet, that almost everyone will like. It's adaptable to almost any style of current cuisine, and every doctor I've run this by has liked it. Its biggest virtue is variety. Most meal plans, including the USDA's, tend to eliminate say, red meat in favor of turkey. The problem with this is that eating turkey-as-hamburger, turkey-as-bacon, and turkey-as-turkey tends to become monotonous as a lifestyle and causes all the problems of a mono diet and culture. Think of how our greater reliance on fish and seafood has caused environmental problems, as cod, sole and swordfish have become "fished out". Food sensitivities can be exacerbated by eating only one or two protein and carb sources, as well. By getting nutrition from as many protein and carb sources as possible, you can greatly improve your odds. Plus, it's more fun!

The Diet

Every day, eat at least this:

Spread out over a week, try to eat at least three servings of each of these: Every week, try to eat this:

This isn't the only food you should eat, merely the outlines. Most of the rest of what people eat (other veggies, herbs, pasta, tropical fruits, fungi, clear soups, seaweed...) are free foods, and can be eaten at will (as long as you eat the good stuff). You can also have up to 1 ounce of dark chocolate a day, a glass of red wine, and/or a cup or two of tea (black, white, green, mu, herbal) with noncaloric sweetener to treat yourself. There's nothing you can't eat, per se, but there is a "wicked list":

Try to eat these less than once a week, and in moderate portions:

  • Pizza
  • Tacos, burritos, hamburgers (beef, non-lean), ground beef with full fat
  • Ham, spam, pate, processed meats, hotdogs
  • Nondiet salad dressings
  • Cheese spreads, soft cheeses
  • Doughnuts, pastries, pie
  • Cake, cookies (yes, that means the lowfat, low sugar, whatever kind, too), candy bars (even the granola/good for you kind)
  • Cream, sour cream, premium ice cream, cream sauces and soups (lowfat versions OK)
  • Anything deep-fat fried, in any kind of oil or fat
  • Potato chips, snack foods (even the low-fat kind), non-air-popped popcorn
  • Soft drinks with sugar, sport drinks, fruit punches
  • Any kind of coffeehouse concoction (espresso with sweetener and/or plain coffee and whole milk, OK, though), milkshakes, power shakes
Our anorexic friend would find a million reasons not to eat this much. I'll admit it's humdrum: there's little in it that you can embrace as an ideological imperative (although it's rather Slow Food, and pretty much bars even "organic" proprietary meals), it's not too different from the way Americans ate 50 years ago and it won't dramatically shrink you into a size 00 overnight. But remember, you can pretty much eat everything you used to, and the requirements will goad you into eating a lot more kinds of food. Remember, variety!

Implementing the plan:

Keep a version of the list at all times. I like to have one copy on the door of the fridge, one on 3" x 5" index cards, and one in the household book. If you want to experiment with laminated versions and/or actually checking off the items, you're welcome.

You can eat anything, anytime! Salad for breakfast, cereal for dessert, and if you're still hungry, you can just see what you haven't eaten yet. Mostly, though, I find I pick any old cereal that says "whole grain", and rely on that, with milk and fruit as breakfast. Dinner is Beef/Pork/Lamb on Monday, Chicken on Tuesday, Pasta/Cheese on Wednesday, Fish (as in dinner out at the Japanese place) on Friday. Saturday I generally cook a steak, Sunday I make a roast (chicken, usually, although I've been known to switch off and make Saturday a Potluck night, doing a little beef on Thursday (like burgers) and making a roast beef Sunday) both of which I use for leftovers. Thursday night I eat anything I feel like, which is usually stir-fry, stew or similar leftover catchall, or something from the Wicked List. Technically, you should have protein, starch, and at least two veggies for dinner, however.

This leaves a few remaining meals of beef, chicken, fish, eggs, beans and so forth, which I save for lunch, snacks, and appies. Getting all three veggies of the triad isn't too hard: if I find myself really up against a day when I'll only have MickeyD's around, I pick up one of those veggie/dip plates (with broccoli, carrots, and pearl tomatoes) at the super and nibble on that. It's not too hard to eyeball frozen meals and dining-out dinners with a food-plan eye: a few paltry shreds of carrot on chicken with rice mean you'll want to supplement with a salad, an evening eating sashimi means a side of pickles (or a wicked tempura!)

What the Wicked List does, more than anything else, is to break the habit of simply reaching for mindless consuming and to retrain the eater into regular meals. It's easy, especially when you've been listening to enough advertising, to want to try the latest proprietary food ("Enjoy, rich, decadent Chocolate Pedophile Rapist! Tastes forbidden...and Good For You, too!"). Led along by the "it's healthy! it's heart-smart! it's on the latest diet!" hoopla, you vaguely feel you can, should, and are entitled to eat a whole package every night, little wotting that the reason why they can cut way back on whatever is because it's full of sugar, starch, and other empty calories. By simply making not-so-healthy foods a once-in-a-while treat you actually stop wanting them so much, since you've gotten used to eating other things.

Holidays with other people cooking aren't that much of a problem, I've found, as long as you a) decide what is and is not, the holiday (that is, you can pig out on Thanksgiving but not from Wednesday night into next Tuesday) and eat lightly until The Meal is upon me, b) don't take home, or at least ditch leftovers that aren't on the plan and c) find whatever's on the plan, eat that first, then take a portion of whatever wickedness is around. By the time the day (weekend, week, whatever) is over, I feel happy to go back to the familiar grind anyway. If I have to cook for other people on a special occasion, I put in as many good things as I can, but even if I have to burn every slot on the Wicked List in one meal, I never use any of those shortcut recipes from the well-meaning. Life's too short!

Bon appetit!

I like it! 1 C!