Changing Diets Daily

Balanced Diets



I figured this out watching my wife eat a plate of French triple cream cheese the other day.

Now Conni is a very diet and health conscious person. Her maintenance diet is basically low fat. But every once in a while, she will sit down and eat a plate of cheese. When she does, she simply announces that she is on a low carbohydrate diet. Then later in the day, she goes back to low fat. Conni finds nothing irrational in this. Neither do I.

Having lost over 600 pounds, I am no stranger to dieting myself. I have been on low fat diets, low carb diets, low calorie diets. You name it. I was even on an egg and wine diet once. It really worked. (You ate two hard boiled eggs for breakfast with black coffee. You ate two more hard boiled eggs for lunch – with a glass of wine. For cocktails, you had a glass of wine. Then for dinner, you made an omelet with whatever you wanted in it and then finished off the bottle of wine!. Two weeks, fifteen pounds! Just don’t tell your cardiologist!). Last year, I lost 12 pounds on a pâté and cheese diet. I am good at this dieting thing.

But Conni’s cheese trick was what really got me to thinking.

Basically, diets, like foods, fall into groups. There are the low fat diets (American Heart Association, Bahamian). There are the low calorie diets (you all know those – constant counting and boring, even if healthy and effective). There are all kinds of low carbohydrate diets (Atkins, etc.).

And there are what I call regional diets. There is the Mediterranean Diet. There is the South Beach Diet, (I always thought someone on the Western Shore should do a North Beach diet! It would have to be based on crabs and Bud Lite, though.). There is the Southwestern France Diet -- high in duck and goose fat. (I am not making this up. There really is.) There is the Baton Rouge or New Orleans Sugar Busters Diet. And there is my favorite of all – the Southern Sanity Diet – where two or three days a week you eat a breakfast with your favorite combination of grits, sausage, bacon, eggs, pancakes, and, of course, biscuits. But on the days you eat this behemoth meal, there’s no Pabst before lunch.

So what you have then are four food groups and four diet groups. Just as one is supposed to eat a certain number of servings from each of the food groups daily, the happy dieter should eat a certain number of servings from each of the four diet groups daily. I’ll show you how it works.

Here is a hypothetical day in a diet I could enjoy. For each item, I indicate the diet or diet group from which it comes.

Pre-Breakfast

Fruit (Bahamian – low fat)
Coffee with milk (Southwestern French)

Breakfast

Your favorite combination of:

bacon, sausage, eggs (low carb, Sugar Busters)
biscuits, pancakes (Southern Sanity – low nothing)
grits (low fat, Sugar Busters – except for the butter)

Mid Morning Snack

There is no way I can justify pastry or donuts. Skip this or eat an apple (low calorie).

Lunch

Linguini with shrimp with arugula and basil pesto (South Beach, Mediterranean, Sugar Busters)

Salad (low fat, low calorie, Sugar Busters)

Wine (Southwestern France)

One cookie (South Beach)

Afternoon Snack

Forget it, unless you are really into fruit (low fat)

Cocktail Hour

Martinis (low carb)
Olives (Mediterranean)
Peanuts (low carb)
Pâté (Southwestern France, low carb, Mediterranean)
Shrimp cocktail (low fat)
Carrot sticks (low calorie)

Dinner

Foie gras (Southwestern France) with apples (low fat) sautéed in butter (low carb)
White wine (low carb)
Rack of lamb (low carb, Mediterranean, Southwestern France)
Rice (low fat)
Ratatouille (low calorie, Mediterranean)
Red wine (Southwestern France)
Salad (low fat, low calorie)
Cheese plate (low carb) with crackers (low fat)
Strawberry Shortcake
Strawberries (low fat, low calorie)
Biscuit (Southern Sanity)
Whipped cream (low carb)
Faux espresso (if you are over 50, otherwise real espresso – low fat, low calorie, Sugar Busters)

Post Prandial

Cognac (low carb)
Chocolates (Come on. Go ahead. You have to allow yourself some treat on any diet!)

There you have it – balanced diets. During this hypothetical day, we will have eaten ten servings from the low fat diet group, nine servings from the low carbohydrate diet group, seven servings from the low calorie diet group, and seventeen servings from the regional diet group (there is some double counting here as some dishes fit into more than one category) – a day of balance and harmony.

The point of all this is simple – you need to know what foods fit into what diet group. That way, whenever you are about to tuck into some particularly delicious morsel, you can say to yourself, “It’s okay to eat this. It’s on the _____ diet.”

I promise you will not lose ten pound in two weeks on this diet -- but you may shed some guilt and you may just find a little peace and enjoy life just a little more. And isn’t that a significant part of what keeps us alive longer?

Have a good one.

Dr. Peter