Like everyone else, January brings a set of New Year full of promise and good intentions. But six weeks into the new year and 80% of us have likely ditched their diet or stopped going to the gym. I’m here to tell you I’m still going strong on mine! More on that in a minute.
Restrictions on foods seem to come from those who love food the most. I was having lunch with a self-described foodie who then proceeded to tell me everything they could not eat. Another fruit-loving-friend told me she was going keto and had to give up bananas—fruit—all together! Ketosis, it’s a good thing? It sounds contagious.
Living in California, I can’t avoid reminders about the latest diet fad! There is the Whole 30, the Zone, the Paleo, the Raw Food diet, the Boiled Egg Diet, the Volumetric diet , the Master Cleanse diet, the Grapefruit , the Vegan Diet, the Macrobiotic Diet.
It’s not that I blame anyone for wanting a fresh start or to take control of their diet, it just seems like we’re going about it the wrong way in America. Diets create some many rules and we have so little time to apply them. Are they all designed to fail? Probably. Not my new diet!
I just got back from France, where it is sacrilege to not start every morning with a croissant, a pain au raisin or a warm slice of baguette slathered in buerre and jam. Sometimes all three! There is no guilt here, no questioning of one’s food choices (the baker will never question if you ask for five croissants to go). The food isn’t somehow substituted, no attempts to trick your mind or body, it is just pure pleasure.
I hate to admit that with a pain au chocolate in my mouth, I was thinking about my diet, too. I was thinking about what would be something I could stick to and stay on for as long as possible. I call it the Kilo diet. In the Kilo Diet, a large slide of French bread with a lovely hunk of butter are daily requirements (pastries are acceptable substitutions too). A rich glass of red wine and a chunk of cheese are rightly considered heaven on earth. And pâté, pâté, pâté.
In truth, I am tired of letting food and restrictions from a new hype diet permeate my brain. The Kilo Diet is really just to let food be food. It’s an acknowledgement of simple pleasures: you eat the things that make you happy, that give you pleasure and that can satiate you physically and emotionally (like my kid who demands a strawberry tart every time she comes home to visit). And you know what? Kilos be damned. Who cares! Carpe diem, not carpe diet.
Anyway, I have got to go! I am on a mission to find chestnut ice cream. Yes, there is such a thing, it is has sugar glazed chestnuts and more fat in one tbsp than some food regimens recommend for a week! Ah, only the French could invent something so perfect for my Kilo Diet.
