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Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 54: What Kind of a Diet Am I On?

Posted by Ed Levine, February 13, 2009 at 9:00 AM

"What does this mean? It means that when I go to Katz's I have a third of a pastrami sandwich...It means that when eating pizza, I try to make sure it has a supremely light crust and sparse toppings."

I had a revealing conversation with Serious Eater Linnea yesterday afternoon that started me thinking about the exact nature of my diet. I was talking about what I was going to eat last night in anticipation of my weigh-in this morning. I mentioned the slice of pizza possibility.

"A slice of pizza?" Linnea responded incredulously. "Doesn't that have a ton of fat? There's all that cheese. What kind of diet are you on, anyway?" I told her that the pizza I order has very little cheese (most of my favorite pizzas around the world go light on the cheese) and that I often have a slice of pizza for dinner, and that furthermore I'm on a diet that involves eating less and still deriving maximum pleasure from whatever it is I do eat.

So does anyone except me subscribe to the "Eat Less of the Foods You Love" Diet?

My interaction with Linnea made me realize that a lot of people don't understand my diet because I'm not on Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, the Zone, Protein Power, South Beach, Atkins, or the grapefruit-only diet. Nope, I'm on the Eat Less Seriously Delicious Food and Weigh Less diet. Is this such a radical concept?

I hope not. If I had to give up pizza, hot dogs, pastrami, cheeseburgers, fried chicken, barbecue, ramen noodles, french fries, pie, fleur de sel caramels, and ice cream (among many, many other foods) I would be a miserably unhappy camper feeling utterly deprived day in and day out. Those feelings of food pleasure deprivation would quickly lead to depression, which in turn would make it that much harder to control my weight.

What does this mean? It means that when I go to Katz's I have a third of a pastrami sandwich. Damn their hand-cut pastrami is good. It means that when eating pizza, I try to make sure it has a supremely light crust and sparse toppings. Una Pizza Napoletana and Co. in Manhattan and Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, I'm talkin' to you. If I have a burger it's going to be a four or five ouncer with cheese, but there will be no fries and shake with that. At restaurants with either friends or colleagues I have tastes of things and eat half of what's put in front of me.

As most of you know, I'm a Serious Eater. I derive serious satisfaction and pleasure from eating seriously delicious food. Somehow I have managed to drop more than thirty-five pounds since I started watching my weight almost a year and a half ago
(I started posting about Ed Levine's Serious Diet 54 weeks ago).

I have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad, peaks and valleys, plateaus that can get me down that I have to fight through, meals and vacations where I am not as careful as I should be, but somehow, some way I have made it this far.

Making it this far means having two slices of very light (and not very good, at least last night) pizza for dinner on Thursday night, along with a one ounce, 100-calorie bag of dried cranberries for dessert (I know they have sugar added). And sometimes it means having a banana and a box of raisins for dinner on Thursday night because I know I'm going to have to face the Serious Eaters and Thinner on Friday morning. I know that a banana and a box of raisins is not a balanced meal. But I'm not looking to eat a balanced meal three times a day. I'm looking for a balanced life, and maybe, just maybe, I can get there. We'll see.

The Weigh-In

Let's see if my two slices of pizza and dried cranberries dinner worked. I was 231 when I got on the scale yesterday, but my weight has been yo-yoing around all week, from 232 to 229. This morning it's 230. Same as last week, but no, definitely not same as it ever was.

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