"Perhaps I should rename this column Ed Levine's Serious Diaita or Ed Levine's Serious Diaitasthai."

[Image: merriam-webster.com]

Sometimes I'm a little slow. It's taken me 121 weeks to realize that some folks, including me, are misinterpreting just what my serious diet is. To clarify matters for myself I decided to take a serious look at how the word diet is defined. Here's what I found on merriam-webster.com:

a. food and drink regularly provided or consumed
b. habitual nourishment
c. the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason
d. a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight

Wow. It turns out that my serious "diet" is actually an amalgam of all four definitions of the word. "Diet" does relate to the food I regularly consume, to the kind of habitual nourishment I receive from, for example, the zillions of falafel sandwiches Carey Jones and our intern Faye Leong have brought into the office, to the kind and amount of food I've prescribed myself to try to bring my weight under control.

But it's in the derivation of the word, which dates back to the thirteenth century, that I found the true meaning of my serious diet:

"Middle English diete, from Anglo-French, from Latin diaeta, from Greek diaita, literally, manner of living, from diaitasthai to lead one's life."

My serious diet is a manner of living, it's a way I'm trying to find to lead my life. It's not like Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers. Those diets relate to the fourth definition of the word: "a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight going on a diet.

My conclusion: Perhaps I should rename this column Ed Levine's Serious Diaita or Ed Levine's Serious Diaitasthai. Kind of has a nice ring, doesn't it?

Weigh-In

It's been a pretty good week, I think. I was at 222 yesterday, Thursday, before embarking on a road trip that included two stops for fried clams. Here we go: 224. Same as last week. This week's life lesson: sometimes my diaita is not conducive to my serious diet.