Diets and the time savant

I'm rubbish at many things, like I vacuum around furniture rather than lifting it and I've been known to be tardy at returning borrowed items. However, I have an excellent chronological ability – a superb memory for dates and times and recalling what happened when. For example as a gift to a friend, TKF and I once put together a photo album spanning events over a 5-year period. With perfect clarity I was able to put in chronological order 600 photos - even down to the order in which the photos were taken at each event.

The relevance of this skill to this blog is because of the 'Energy Equation'. It's the e=mc2 of the diet world – kilojoules in versus kilojoules out. (Obviously in order for corporations to make money from magazines… diet books, pills, shakes, thigh masters and hypnosis CDs, thyroid conditions, hormones, metabolisms and big bones get rolled out as reasons women can't lose weight. The 'Energy Equation' doesn't make anyone money you see). Experts including, ahem me, recommend keeping a food diary as a way of making us mini-Einstein's and masters of the Energy Equation.

However, I don't keep a food diary as I'm a time savant. Rainman may have been able to count cards, but I can tell you just about everything I ate and drank and every minute of exercise I've done (or made excuses not to do) in the last week. This skill came into its own last week as I sat on the bus home. I'd been interstate for a week and had worked late which meant there was limited food in the house and I was too tired to cook. The resulting internal dialogue as I tried to calculate my Energy Equation went something like this:

I could get off the bus early and get takeaway chicken and chips - tis OK cos they use free range chicken and chips are 'fat' and absorb less oil.

Should probably try and rustle up something at home as had two big weeks of eating out

Nothing at home, not even for toasted sandwich. Chicken is healthy and need protein, could get chicken without chips.

Don't be stupid, only reason you really want chicken is so you can get chips.

Should ask for smaller serve of chips - know that once they are in my keep I'll eat them all, even if full.

Could douse half of the chips in washing up liquid so inedible?

Waste of chips and chip addiction is such it's possible will try and wipe off.

Must stop being so obsessive about food. If want chips, have chips.

What I have eaten the last week? Probably have room in kilojoule bank for chicken AND chips. [Mental time savant calculations]

Yes! Didn't eat lunch on Tuesday as busy on road. Can have extra chips if want!

So I had my chicken and chips. Of course I ordered the wing piece and didn't eat the skin because both of these things reduce the fat content. I also ate every last chip in the box because I like them... and because I didn't have lunch the previous Tuesday.

Photo Finish: the driver's license diet

My driver's license renewal arrived in the post yesterday and it forced me to confront a life-changing realisation.... I will never look better than I do now. In the past I've opted for the 3-year license on the basis that there is a period in your life where you get better with age. A woman uses her formative adult years to figure out how best to part her hair, which eyebrow shape suits her best, what make-up and hair colours work for her etc. It's the period where you look back at photos and say 'what was I thinking?', the period in your life when your looks are grateful for the passing of time.

Until now. I've now reached the age where it's time to go for the 5-year license. I want to preserve this look and pretend in the years to come that I still look like that. If only NSW offered a 10-year option like Victoria. From this license photo onwards my hair will start to lose its lustre, my collagen will begin to deplete and the the effects of work-related stress will start to show on my face.

I'm therefore on Operation RTA - I've got 2 weeks before my license expires and I refuse to smile awkwardly for that picture until I'm at my best possible. If you've noted the name of this blog you'll know I'm not one for a diet, but this is an emergency. I'm banning skin-sucking sugar (see previous post), cutting back on booze and trying to lose that current extra kilo which I feel is making my face look fat. I did not even go to this much trouble for my sister's recent wedding – but this photo will stare at me every time I got to pay for something in the next five years...it's gotta be good.

If I sound vain, it's nothing compared to my friends who Photoshopped their headshots for their Glastonbury Festival registrations (you know who you are). But photogenicness doesn't have to come from a computer program. Here is the nutrition advice I provided Bride-to-Be sister in the lead up to her big day (and yes, she walked down the aisle spot free)

• As much as possible cut out sugar - that includes fruit, alcohol and refined carbohydrates like white bread. These all have a high glycemic index, which two Aussie studies have found can cause acne. High-GI foods stimulate androgen production (male hormones) and combined with other external factors can cause mini cities to erupt on your face
• Boost your intake of essential fatty acids, found in nuts, fish and avocados. Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory and are great for general skin health, among many other things.
• Eat zinc-rich foods. This mineral is to skin what butterscotch sauce is to sticky date pudding - exactly what it needs. Modern diets are often deficient but you can find zinc in red meat, oysters, nuts and seeds.
  
• And if a pimple does decide to invite itself to your special day? Find a GP who'll give you a cortisone injection - it'll be sayonara spot.
  

Your blogger on the box

Not sure how long these links stay live for but yours truly never stops spreading the word!

http://au.todaytonight.yahoo.com/article/2656948/diet/products-voted-best-dieting
(Click ‘Consumers’ verdict on healthy food’ on the video screen on the right)

In food we trust

Indulge me for a minute while I tell you about my email inbox. Understanding its contents will help you to see how the weight-loss magazine I edit each month is almost a miracle of nature, a beautiful phoenix rising from the ashes of crap I get sent every day.

A snap shot of today:
A VIP invite to the album launch of a washed up ex-soap star
A press release on how a cabbage-rich diet help prevents bladder cancer
Info about 'fabulous' new creams that will rid me of stretch marks and cellulite
Three readers complaining their free pedometer doesn't work
And, er, multiple group emails with my friends regarding important topics such as Macs v PCs, movie castles in England and fake boobs.

Not once have I ever received a press release declaring 'Balanced healthy eating and exercise regime helps people lose weight' or 'The more you exercise the more kilojoules you burn'. Nor do I get free healthy meals prepared for me daily (my rationale being that beauty editors get sent all their products and have endless treatments). And if I get one more email from the Lemon Detox people telling me how nutritionally sound it is (even after I phoned to tell them my views, it's rubbish people!) I may be charged with crimes against Idiot PRs.

Let's not even start on my phone (33 voicemails last week from PRs haranguing me about their product - c'mmon folks, how many products do you see featured in there? We are not of the Magalogue genre). I have a point here other than to vent - it is that you should take everything you read regarding weight-loss, health and fitness with a healthy dose of cynicism. We do. And that's why you won't ever see cabbage diet recipes here or in the pages of my magazine.