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Ed Levine's Serious Diet Week 5: Can 'Start Living, Stop Dieting' Work for a Food Writer?

Posted by Ed Levine, February 7, 2008 at 8:00 AM

Every day I ride the subway to Serious Eats world headquarters surrounded by the "Start Living, Stop Dieting" Weight Watchers ads. It's a brilliant campaign, one I want to believe in with all my heart and soul. But there's just one question I have for the good folks at Weight Watchers: Does it apply to food writers? It seems to me that the Weight Watchers slogan is just another way to say what was the late Julia Child's mantra: Everything in moderation. That's what I've been trying to practice, but it ain't easy. Every week the sirens of fat tempt me with goodies and temptations, some of my own making.

Take this week, for example.

First there was the Super Bowl. As I've mentioned before I had a few buddies over for a bo ssam feast (pork shoulder, chicken wings, Kewpie cole slaw, made from scratch cracker jacks (delicious, way better than the original, but no surprise) and not very good peanut brittle. To munch on during the game I bought some excellent store made popcorn from Fairway and very judiciously sprinkled some delicious organic truffle oil on it. I think I ate moderately, but who knows given the excitement of the game. Somebody needs to come up with the calorie equivalent of the pedometer (a calorometer?) that would give you a running count of the calories you ingest.

Then this week in preparation for Valentine's Day the chocolates started coming into the office. In fact, I went out and bought all the See's candy I could find in New York for a taste test (you'll read about the results tomorrow). Again I tried just having one small bite of each candy and throwing the rest out (the garbage can next to desk looked and smelled like a chocolate spitoon). How successful was I in my dietary endeavors? We're about to find out. The scale awaits me.

Damn. I gained a pound.

Well, I guess the jury is still out on whether I can stop dieting and start living, because the way I live and the way I make my living makes it difficult to control my weight. This is not an excuse because I am going to keep at it. But it ain't easy. Because I can eat everything in moderation most of the time, but it's the mindless, irrational eating that trips me up, when I'm not even thinking about what I'm stuffing into my mouth. Do you experience the same problems?

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