A few weeks ago, I decided I was disgusted with myself and started hitting the gym hard. This was tough because I hate my new gym. It’s smelly and the equipment is old and there are only two good cardio machines (and they are both usually occupied when I get there, doesn’t matter what time of day) and most people who workout there are the kinds of guys who think it’s perfectly acceptable, if not plain awesome, to send a barbell holding 350 pounds crashing to the floor after each set of squats. It’s terribly hard to get motivated to go. But, I have been. At least three times a week.

On top of that, I decided I needed to start eating better. Because I lean a little bit toward being hypoglycemic, I have to eat often. I run out of blood sugar about three hours after I eat. So I have to eat good stuff (because your body burns through junk food really quickly), and I need to do it every few hours. So I made a Trader Joe’s run and bought the kind of stuff I used to eat when I weighed 15 pounds less than I do right now. Yogurt. Oatmeal. Baby carrots. I started eating a good breakfast, some sort of fruit or veggie for a mid-morning snack, decent lunch, yogurt in the afternoon, and then dinner. That was also about the time I quit drinking (however short lived that turned out to be).

Results: minor.

Of course I feel better about everything when I’m working out regularly (even if my knee is in a constant state of dull, throbbing ache), but my body doesn’t feel any firmer and, if possible, my pants continue to get tighter.

One night during this heightened time of body awareness and disdain, I made dinner for me and GTB. I ate a lot but felt OK about it. As we carried our dishes to the kitchen, GTB said, “So, what’s for desert?” I’m not blaming this on him or anything, but they say that when couples first move in together, they both gain ten pounds, and that one little question from my boyfriend made me understand why.

GTB and I both love food. We like going out to eat. We like cooking (well, he likes cooking and I like eating what he cooks). We like snacking. Food is a way of celebrating and bonding and spending time together. Especially during this time when we are still a newly domesticated couple, eating has taken on a larger level of importance and so we are doing it A LOT.

This last weekend, we were in Seattle having dinner with some friends. We went to La Puerta, one of my favorite Mexican restaurants on Capitol Hill. Their salsa is super hot, which makes you eat more chips and drink more margaritas so usually, by the time my plate of enchiladas arrives, I’m full. Which is great because I love having leftovers. Not Friday night though. I ate a hearty portion of chips and drank two margaritas before dinner was set in front of me, but I still managed to eat everything on my plate. I mean EVERYTHING. I practically licked up the traces of sour cream and guacamole. That has never happened to me there before. And you know what’s worse? At the end of it, I totally could have gone out for ice cream.

This was when I came to the startling realization that my problem right now is portion control. You put a plate in front of me, I’ll eat the entire thing. And then, I’ll ask what’s next. I’ve expanded my stomach to the point that it’s never full, even when it’s full.

And my ass and newly flabby tummy are very visible evidence of this.

So, I’ve been pondering for the past several days how to break this unhealthy relationship with food. I’m not eating because of hunger. There must be more to it. There has to be a way to continue to see food as celebration without gorging myself everytime I sit down for a meal.

Then, like a beacon from the sky, a friend told us about a book he’d just read called The Shangri-La Diet. He explained some of the principles and said he’d lost about six pounds in the first week. He acknowledged that this was too much weight too soon, so he was cutting back on the recommendations laid out in the book, but he was losing weight without having to do much. I was intrigued.

I spent a few hours the end of this weekend researching this new miracle of a diet. Boiled down to its essential elements (as far as I could gather), it’s bascially a way to trick your metabolism into thinking it’s getting calories without letting your body know that. Or something like that. Anyway, you cut overall caloric intake by reducing the amount you are eating, and you do that by supplementing your regular diet with 100 to 400 daily calories of bland, flavorless food in the form of either sugar water or light oil.

I also did a little looking into whether or not this is a good thing for an insulin-enriched girl like me to do. Since you are supposed to ingest the sugar water or oil an hour on either side of a meal in order to disassociate the calories you are getting with the bland food from the ones you get from your regular diet, I need to be sure that I’m not going to sugar crash before I can eat again. Turns out, there is something about sugar water (or fructose) and oil that keeps them from stimulating insulin. So my body will think it’s getting calories, but that surge of hunger-inducing insulin won’t be there to metabolize what I’ve just consumed, making me hungry again five minutes later.

Blah blah blah.

The gist: I’m gonna try it. GTB and I leave to go see my brother and his family in California on July 7. So I’m giving it between now and then to see if one tablespoon of Canola oil in the morning and another in the afternoon can help me control the amount of food I’m shoveling into my body. Between that and regular (however excrutiating) gym visits, I’m hoping to lose six to ten pounds by the time I’m hugging my nephew and niece.

Naturally, I’ll keep you posted.

Wikipedia’s entry on the Shangri-La Diet

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