Belly Redevelopment Plan

Conventional wisdom and the wisdom of our elders always states that once you hit 30, your metabolism slows down a bit and over the course of the next decade or so you become a big fatty. Or at the least you gain a few pounds. I once read an article which spelled out that the average American gains a pound a year between the age of 20 and 40. And that's just the average. So for every person who's 40 who hasn't gained that weight, there's a person who has gained twice that.

Suffice to say that it wasn't 30, but more like 31, 31 and a half where, unexpectedly, I started the inevitable weight gaining process. I can't stress enough how suddenly this happened, like I woke up one morning 25 pounds overweight. I wish I had the biofeedback intelligence to notice this sort of thing, but alas, I don't. It's a very odd thing since too I haven't substantially changed my eating patterns or exercising regimen. Most folks who know me can attest that much like a dog, "a tired John is a happy John", and as such, I make sure that I have activities every day that tire me out.

Combine my twice weekly beach volleyball sessions, basketball league, the obligation to take Shaak Ti running, and our twice daily dog walks, and I feel like I exercise pretty damn well, and pretty damn often. So then where the hell did this belly come from?????

The petty side of me wants to blame Alycia a bit for this. In my attempts to fatten her back up to healthy weight and find a good stable of reliable gluten free foods/baked goods I feel like I made too many delicious meals and deserts, and not having the self control I should, partook in way too many of them. Truth is it's not her fault, and if I really wanted to blame someone, I'd foist the blame squarely on my own shoulders (not just for having no self control when it comes to sweets) for being such a damn good cook.

The moral of the story is that I've decided to take osme of this weight off. But how? I'm none to fond of the grapefruit/South Beach/Atkins/Three Legged Dog diets, but still want to figure out how to shed some unwanted pounds, when all of a sudden, like a divine inspiration, I read an article online that made perfect sense. Thank you Internet!!!

It's called the Steve Ward diet. He's a professeor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT in the 1980's (just the person that I want dietary and nutrition adice from) and described what he considers the simplest diet in the world. His explanataion goes like this:

"All that you need for my diet is graph paper, a ruler, and a pencil. The horizontal axis is time, one line per day. The vertical axis is weight in lbs. You plot your current weight on the left side of the paper. You plot your desired weight on a desired date towards the right side, making sure that you've left the correct number of lines in between (one per day). You draw a line from the current weight/date to the desired weight/date. Every morning you weigh yourself and plot the result. If the point is below the line, you eat whatever you want all day. If the point is above the line, you eat nothing but broccoli or some other low-calorie food."

It's pure genius. Not only does it satisfy the numerical cravings of my accountant-brain, but it gives me a whipping boy, something other than Alycia or myself to get pissed at when I can't eat a handful of chocolate frosting (Damn you Sara Eddy for your delicious buttercream frosting recipe!!!!). Instead of coaxing Alycia to nag me to eat better (which she is loath to do, something about being too nice), I can simply get mad at the graph for forcing me to eat steamed turnips instead of cake. It's perfect.

Suffice to say I'll let you know how the progress is on this....