Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Ed Levine's Serious Diet Week 8: Timing Is Everything and Temptation at Every Turn

Posted by Ed Levine, February 28, 2008 at 6:38 AM

This semipublic dieting (or "living," as they call it at Weight Watchers) is tough stuff. With Thursday being my weigh-in day, I have tried to arrange for Wednesdays to be light eating days. But sometimes life intervenes and temptation positively stalks me at every turn.

Yesterday was a perfect example. The day started innocently (and positively) enough. I played squash at 9 a.m. after having some nonfat Greek yogurt and a tablespoon of Sarabeth's strawberry peach preserves. I know many of you have implored me to give up the jam, but I'm just not there yet. I love sweet-and-tart combos, and there are few better than yogurt and preserves. Squash was great as always, and, according to my heart-rate monitor, I burned more than 400 calories on the squash court. But it was after squash that the food sirens started calling my name.

Breakfast

We were having an important meeting at Serious Eats headquarters starting at 11 a.m. that would likely go all day, so I bought a few breakfast items for our guests at Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery, two blocks from my squash club. I picked up the following:

• A cinnamon-honey scone
• A caramel macaroon
• A coconut-pineapple macaroon
• A brown-butter-pecan macaroon
• Two pesto croissants
• A small coffee cake
• An exotic-fruit danish
• A pistachio-cherry brioche
• Pain au chocolat

Our meeting mates swooned over this array of baked goods. I ate a couple of very small slices of the sticky bun, the pesto croissant, and the brown-butter-pecan macaroon, but I always find it's really hard to monitor your eating in these situations unless you go in with a game plan, which I unfortunately didn't.

The Noontime Meal

A late lunch followed three hours later at The Spotted Pig, perhaps my favorite gastropub anywhere. Its gigantic burger and shoestring fries plate is actually enough food for two or three, but that didn't stop seemingly half the people eating lunch there from ordering it. I resisted and ordered the Jerusalem artichoke salad with hazelnuts and pecorino Romano. Miraculously none of my lunch mates ordered the burger either, so there were no french fries to sample. I ordered two desserts for the table to share—a banana toffee pie and a ginger cake—and had two forkfuls of each.

Again, I think I did pretty well, but until I get on the scale this morning I can't be sure.

Dinnertime Temptation

Dinner was even more difficult. Serious Eats' Adam Kuban and I were driving up to the Bronx for a little pizza exploration. He'll tell you about it in greater detail on Slice, but suffice to say, it was not easy to practice portion control confronted by some of the best pizza (some Salerno-style and some grilled) I had encountered in awhile.

We also ordered an excellent calzone at the first place we went to and a hopelessly overcooked cheeseburger at the second. Why? Calzones are often a useful measuring stick for judging pizzerias, and Lauren Krueger over on A Hamburger Today had raved about the burger at the grilled-pizza joint. I had one small slice of pizza at the first place and a few bites of the calzone. I had one bite of the cheeseburger and two small rectangular slices of the grilled pizza at the second spot we hit.

The Weigh-In

So as you can tell from what I've just described, yesterday was a particularly tough day for my diet, or for "my life," as I've come to call what I'm doing. I think I exercised tremendous self-control, but I'm not sure if I did, so my appointment with the scale this morning is filling me with dread. Well, here goes...

Yes, yes, yes. I'm down another pound. I managed to get through yesterday's food gauntlet unharmed. Maybe I really am making progress.

14 Comments

Tags: diets, Ed Levine's Serious Diet, health