The Tourist Diet

Like most women, I live in a war-zone. This is the battle of the bulge, folks, and it's not pretty. In general, I would consider myself a health-conscious person. I avoid most junk food. I try to eat lots of whole grains, vegetables, and fruits. I like to jog and take ballet classes a couple of times a week. I don't drink much alcohol and I don't smoke. And yet...all that seems to be for naught. I still find myself needing to diet. Over the past few years, I've been more or less successful with various approaches to weight loss.

First, there was the infmaous Stress Diet. During my first year of graduate school, I worked 80-hour weeks, freaked out constantly about my grades and my research, and agonized over the poor performance of my students. I also ate whatever was cheap, fast, and portable in whatever quantities I wanted. I lost weight, but I also had headaches, crying meltdowns, and a bad back. Trust me when I say that being stressed out is a terrible way to lose weight. Just ask my husband.

A year ago, I tried the South Beach Diet. The premise behind the SBD is that you cut out refined foods (sugar), fruit, and grains and eat lots of vegetables, beans, dairy, and lean meat. This theoretically "resets" the way you think about food. Then you gradually reintroduce whole grains and fruit in somewhat limited quantities. The SBD did help me get over my addiction to sugar and I started eating a lot more vegetables. Yay, me! The problem with SBD is that it seems to be designed for people who don't do much. Sure, I can live on vegetables, chicken, an apple, a little bit of rice, and a fudgesicle, but don't expect me to get up off the couch, much less go for a run.

This frustration lead to the Running Diet, which wasn't really a diet at all. Basically, RD is SBD with a lot more grains and fruit, plus an allowance for treats like bagels after long runs. The problem with RD is that I actually gained weight doing it. This trend might have something to do with my natural tendency to build a lot of muscle mass when I exercise. It might also have something to do with me really enjoying eating food. I'm still working on this one...

My most recent diet would be the Tourist Diet, which I discovered after a recent trip to Germany. The TD has nothing at all to do with being smart or making healthful choices. In fact, it involves a lot of stupid over-exertion (like going for a long run and then walking around all day) and foolish procrastination (like "Let's get lunch after we find the museum.") The TD involves eating whatever you can find, but not a lot of it. You eat dessert first and then maybe you don't get around to eating anything else. You get lost, you take the wrong subway exit, you walk an extra mile because you got confused, and you try to find a beer garden, which turns out to be a unappealing Chinese food restaurant. The amazing thing is that the TD actually works and it does have it's perks (like when I thought I ordered an iced-coffee, but it actually turned out to be coffee float with vanilla ice cream...oops!).

The only problem in all of this is that the tourist diet doesn't work at home. I woke up today, ate food, got in my car, drove to work, and sat down at my desk. I did get up a few times to go powder my nose, but that doesn't count for much. I'm just about to go eat lunch, which will involve a three minute walk followed by an hour of sitting under an umbrella outside. I suppose the only solution is to travel more often in foreign countries. Bummer...