What the hell is Cottage Cheese anyway? Even with an excessive coating of salt and pepper, it tastes like lumpy old milk. Jean tells me that I’m not far off. I’m not even going to look it up. Day 5 of the Mayo Clinic diet and it’s the main course for dinner tonight. Tomatoes and celery round out the ‘meal’. Jean gets a little crazy and throws in some chopped fennel and basil for excitement. I am appreciative. The Mayo Clinic diet is a fad diet that has as much to do with the Mayo Clinic as a BLT sandwich. Also called the Grapefruit diet, it is an irresponsibly low-calorie, low-carb form of punishment. Day 1 calls for 2 eggs and a grapefruit for breakfast, the same thing for lunch, then again for dinner. Problem is, on the following days it starts to get boring and repetitive. Here’s the thing though: it works.  It sends you into ketosis within 3 days and you’ve dropped 5 pounds by day 5.  I’ve done it many times and whenever I end it, I’ve lost about a pound for each day. Ok, yes, the phrase “I’ve done it many times” does imply that the weight comes back, but it takes months. I’m doing it now because I have a beach vacation in a few weeks, and I can’t find swimsuits for sale in the winter. Mine have all shrunk. Again.I first learned about this ridiculous diet some years ago from a Sales Representative named Tracy in the Rockford, Illinois area. She was identified as a high-potential person and we were about to enroll her in a management development program, so I was spending a day with her.  She was exceptional, and although she left the company a few years later, she is now a manager for a Biologics company. During the day she casually told me that she had a vacation coming up with her partner, so she was dieting to drop some weight.  I was stunned. This woman was not fat. She carried no extra weight. You would actually describe her as skinny.  It is one of the tragedies of our society that women, especially, struggle with their body image. Having learned a bit as a husband and father of two daughters, I bit my tongue and avoided scolding her for her perception. She brought with her a green salad with lemon for lunch to follow her Mayo Clinic diet. Her mother, she said, lost 10 pounds in 9 days on the diet. I told her that if she lost 10 pounds she’d have to be admitted to the hospital (couldn’t help it).I did have her email me a copy of the diet though because I, gentle readers, am overweight. Actually, according to the BMI scale for my height, I am Obese. Nasty word; Obese. It happened one night in the Spring, as I recall. I went to bed weighing 150 pounds with a 32-inch waist and woke up 30 pounds heavier, needing 36-inch pants.  Good thing it was on a weekend because I had to go shopping.There are several reasons for my weight gain:My Genes: my Dad was always ‘hefty’ and grew ‘heftier’ as time went by. My mother was small and petite most of her life, then had the same internal explosion at about 55 years old.My Sloth: I love to play sports, but I hate to exercise.  As I got older, sports opportunities fell off dramatically and I was loath to replace them with what I saw as repetitive, monotonous movement. I despise every second of exercise, and despite my checkered past involving the purchase of gimmicky exercise equipment, I avoid it like the plague.My Wife: Jean is an amazing cook. Simply incredible. She routinely turns random food items into gourmet meals. She sometimes follows some newer recipes, but she just knows how foods go together.  Just look at Cottage Cheese with tomatoes and celery above. Before I met her, my dinner, when I remembered to have it, was most often a microwaved package of goo that tasted like something an astronaut has to reconstitute. Sometimes I’d do one of those boiled bags of vegetables. Or cans of La Choy Chow Mein when I felt fancy. After we married at age 30, I enjoyed dinner every night as a full-course, balanced meal. Jean’s family is good at food. And they are very fit, but with hearty appetites. To wit: during summer of a college year, working as a construction laborer, one of her “smaller” brothers would open a full loaf of bread, make about 8 healthy sandwiches, insert them back into the bread bag, close it with a twist tie, and eat them all during the work day. This all to say that the portions Jean served were huge.  For the first few years of marriage, I ate about half of what she put on a plate.  But I was determined! I stuck to it and eventually was taking second helpings. What I won’t do for that girl.It’s funny how you see others when you are on a diet. Yesterday I went to the grocery store to pick up more grapefruit, tomatoes, and a few steaks. (and a case of Orvieto wine that the wine guy orders for me every few months. If you like Pinot Grigio, look/ask for Orvieto; it’s cheaper and better, a nice combination.) Anyway, I’m strolling through the store as I scan aisles and aisles of incredibly unhealthy foods. The very foods I would normally fill my cart with, now disgust me. I look down my nose at the unwashed as they fill their carts with soda, chips, baked goods, and ice cream. (BTW, the inventor of ice cream should have received a Nobel prize or two, dontcha think?). I make awful assessments of people as they pass, correlating their outward appearance with the crap overflowing in their carts. Even as I know I’m being a total ass; I shake my head in derision. In a few days when I quit this ridiculous diet, I will load up my cart with some of the same stuff, but when you are in the throes of one of these things, YOU BECOME THE FOOD POLICE!Woke up on Day 6 to find I had dropped 6.5 pounds to date. I am pleased to announce that I’ve gone from Obese to simply Overweight on the BMI scale. Woo hoo! My excitement is tempered when I see that I still need to lose another 20 pounds to be at the entry point of ‘Healthy’.Well, I just put in a full 7 days on this diet and it’s time to stop this ridiculousness, at least for now. I’ve dropped a solid 8 pounds and my pants no longer squeeze my waist like a hose clamp on an old radiator hose.Jean has never been a fan of this diet and exhorts me to employ a more rational diet or just eat healthier all the time. I do try to eat better now that I’m retired, most recently trying intermittent fasting. (I used to call it skipping breakfast). But forget that. I prefer to eat what I want every day, then every 12-18 months I sacrifice and easily commit myself to this starvefest for a week or so, losing 8-10 pounds. Then I drop back to my regular beer-drinking, pasta/hamburger/ice cream/late-night charcuterie-eating self for the rest of the year. It’s a great tradeoff.Be well, and thanks for reading.  

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