The Small Bowl Diet tm

I was recently dismayed to find out that I weigh 20 pounds more than I did 2 years ago and 30 more than my ideal, target weight (which is: the weight I have to be at for my awesome collection of size 6 hand-me-down jeans to actually fit). I had a mild nervous breakdown for a few days. Okay, not mild.

Then, because at this point in my life I’ve learned the hard way that no secret angel is ever going to come fix all my problems for me, it became sadly obvious that I only had one choice: DIET.

I have never been a dieter, ever, although I have tried every smart and wholesome eating system this side of the Sierras. I’ve done all manner of juice/wheatgrass/colonic cleanses/protocols, and they have never worked for me. All they ever do is whack out my blood sugar and send my entire system into the sort of distress that inevitably leads to horrific rebound binge eating and emotional trauma. (And if you are thinking of recommending that ONE AMAZING CLEANSE I have never tried, save your breath.)

I’ve also gone the route of more gentle and holistic eating protocols, such as the 3-month elimination plan that my acupuncturist Caylie See put me on last winter. That actually made me feel fantastic and helped me with a lot of things, but, unfortunately, it did not make me lose weight, even though I stopped drinking, eating sugar, eating dairy, gluten, stopped enjoying everything, basically, for three months. (And I have to note here that the goal of the program was NOT to lose weight, so it’s no fault of Caylie’s. She’s truly incredible at what she does.)

My great grandmother. Hot, right? This is what 9 kids looks like.

Here’s the thing — the women in my family get fat.

I’m from a long lineage of matronly women. The Westcott/Bangs/Hamilton women, they start out reeeaaaallly skinny and then swing to the opposite side of the pendulum over a long lifetime of having babies and being enduring, stoic New England sorts. I thought I might evade this pattern, since I am woefully childless and moved to California, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter. It’s hardwired.

As a kid, I was emaciated and actually anorexic for a while, and my mom and grandmother were also wispy little waifs when they were young. It’s when we get older that things predictably slide. Now, my mom is in pretty fine form these days, mostly because she owns a restaurant and so (ironically) doesn’t eat because she’s too busy running around being mad at her employees all the time. She also doesn’t have blood sugar issues. She’s one of those annoying people who “forgets” to eat food and maybe eats one meal a day, maybe. And she is a jogger. Me, not so much. I wake up starving and get hungrier, crankier, and fainter from there. If I go too long without eating, I become palpably murderous. And as for jogging, no.

I know that technically it’s unhealthy to starve yourself, but here’s a dirty little secret that all women know and most holistic consultants don’t want you to find out: it’s the only real way to lose weight.

So I have come up with my own eating plan that is my shining salvation and only hope. Fingers crossed.

The Small Bowl Diet^TM is basically an artistic expression-meets-portion control eating plan.

Here’s how it works. First, you make a really cute, small bowl in pottery class. This is your one and only Small Bowl^TM. Now, you can eat whatever you want (except evil sugar, of course) as long as it fits in Small Bowl^TM. When you eat out of the bowl, you always take a moment first to admire how good you are at pottery. This is essentially a distraction from the fact that you are eating a concentration camp amount of food.

You wait until the point that you are absolutely starving, and then you wait just a little longer, for good measure, and then you eat ONE Small Bowl^TM of food. You eat it slowly, as if torturing and punishing yourself for being fat, and when that’s gone, that’s it. You should still be hungry when you’re done with the one Small Bowl^TM. If you’re not, you overfilled it or you need a smaller Small Bowl^TM. The key is to always be at least slightly hungry.

Then, you once again wait until you are out of your mind, chew-your-own-arm-off starving, and you wait the requisite little-bit-longer, and then you maybe accidentally murder someone, and then you eat another Small Bowl^TM.  Don’t go overboard.

Again. The key is to be basically starving all the time.

Oh — and a fucklot of exercise. You can’t forget that part. Basically, if you want to lose weight, you have to get on board with your genetic legacy and mimic the amount of physical activity your forbearers used to get. So in my case, the same amount of exercise as if I was chopping firewood and lugging water uphill from the river on black ice, 15 hours a day. That’s how much exercise my aging metabolism demands for me to stay at my “peak weight,” and even then, it’s a losing battle, since my genes think that a faux pregnant belly is a good thing — gets us through the long, cold, sedentary New England pilgrim winters, after all.

Unfortunately, my genes and my jeans are at odds, and if me and Small Bowl^TM have anything to do with it, the jeans are gonna win.