Jennie SMASH!

My husband has lost three pounds on this diet so far. The only problem is, he’s not on it. Also, he doesn’t need to lose weight. He is, however, eating what I cook, and that seems to be making a difference.

A lesser wife might be annoyed at such a person, but I am a superior kind of wife, and so I only muttered, very lovingly, under my breath for half an hour or so when I discovered his weight loss. I would be the last person to point out that he’s still eating pizza twice a week for lunch and puts cheese on everything. I would never complain like that to you about life’s unfairness.

I have heard, however, that even in couples where both parties have perfectly healthy metabolisms, if one of the parties is male, he loses weight faster. I guess if both halves of the couple are male, and neither has metabolic issues, they just have a metabolism-off.

“I lost three pounds just by thinking about giving up cheese!”

“I had a lite beer and now I fit in my swimsuit from college.”

It’s possible that I am slightly bitter. But perhaps when all of this is done, I, too, will have an amazing metabolism. I promise if that happens, I will only use my powers for good.

This appears to be a street sign. Possibly on the *worst road ever*.

Flickr: sanchom/Flickr

Tags: haylie pomroy, the fast metabolism diet

I wasn’t expecting a loss today. I actually ate more than usual yesterday — all diet-approved, but like, a lot of fruit and three cups of chili instead of two at dinner. Which makes me think that my plateau was because I wasn’t eating enough.

This is hard for a veteran dieter to wrap her little head around. I’m not so far gone that I think eating a ton of veggies will make me fat, but I’ve become suspicious over the years of fruit, ever since a doctor looked at my food diary and sniffed, “You know, bananas are full of fat.”

Looking back, I think she had a wee small problem with food herself. She talked a lot about how she never ate breakfast and only had a salad for lunch. The lesson here is that doctors are people, and they have problems that leach into their work, just like the rest of us. Unfortunately, their work is kind of important.

This weekend, I went to the park with one of my best friends, and then we went to the farmer’s market and bought a lot of kale and some herbs. I have so much more energy now, I actually went out yesterday and got pots for them. I’m pretty sure the oregano is already dying, because I have that much of a black thumb, but I’m still pleased that I followed through on a project. The old me would have been staring at dying herbs in their original black planters three months from now. New me can stare at those same dying herbs in pleasing earth-tone pots, artfully arranged.

I have made progress, people.

“Did you hear? Jen lost 10 pounds.”

Image: Christi Creations/Flickr

Tags: haylie pomroy, the fast metabolism diet

If it’s true that stress hormones make you fat, it’s no wonder I’ve had trouble with my weight all these years. I am the most stressed out person, and usually for no good reason.

Years ago, coworker Dennis said to me, “It’s strange that we’re so stressed out all the time. What would we do if we were heart surgeons?”

We were not heart surgeons, of course. We were editors. “Quick, I need a new promo for the homepage, STAT!” doesn’t have the same ring to it as anything you might yell out in an operating room on a medical drama.

Still, the pressure of constantly trying to make things perfect — accurate, typo-free, hilarious if possible — does wear on a person. All the editors and writers I know are completely zonked on stress, to the point where if we don’t have something to obsess over, we’ll manufacture it. Difficult to say which came first, this tendency to freak out, or the job that encourages it, but either way, here we are.

I’ve been making real efforts to calm down during this. For example, this morning, UPS called me at 7 a.m. I’m waiting for a delivery of some physical therapy stuff that I ordered from Amazon, a foam roller and some weights, and for some reason, they can’t get it together to deliver it to me. It’s been a nightmare of calling and tweeting and trying to explain apartment buildings to people who claim to be living in New York. And now, the 7 a.m. phone call to “resolve” the situation, complete with mumbled phone number and an unhelpful message.

But even as I write that, I realize how silly it is. It’s a nightmare, really? Tell that to people in Yemen.

“Sorry about your village and all, but my giant foam roller is missing in action!”

You see what I’m saying. There is no more first world problem than an Amazon Prime shipment gone awry. I’m trying to keep the small stuff in perspective and take deep cleansing breaths, but old habits die hard. I’m starting to think that if I manage to make it through this diet, the next project I should take on is creating a low-stress life. I’m just afraid that would mean burning all my earthly possessions and going off into the wilderness in a loin cloth. I’m afraid of nature and I have a thyroid condition, which means I get cold easily. I just can’t see myself embracing the loin-cloth lifestyle.

Image: program witch/Flickr

Tags: haylie pomroy, the fast metabolism diet

Ordinarily, one pound of weight loss wouldn’t be a big deal. But I’ve been at a plateau for a couple of days, and I was getting discouraged. This, despite the fact that my hair and skin look amazing (well, besides a few residual zits) and I feel better than I have in years.

It’s funny how fixated I am on the number on the scale, which doesn’t really matter at all. If I stayed the same weight, but had less fat and more muscle, that would actually be awesome. I’m fully willing to “tape out,” as they used to say when my husband was in the Marine Corps. I’ve lost an inch around my waist, two around my hips, and one and a half around my thigh, which is actually more important than pounds. Still, let’s not lie: I almost whooped when I saw the number on the scale.

One thing I have noticed is that I’m craving off-diet foods, and weird ones. For example, Adam and I were watching “Saturday Night Live” last night, and a commercial for margarita mix came on, and I was like, “Oh my God, that looks AMAZING.”

I don’t even usually like margaritas all that much. I mean, they’re fine, but I wouldn’t cross the street for them. I’m going to assume that this means my body is burning off a fat cell made out of margaritas.

These flowers are also called margaritas, and they are totally diet-approved.

Image: lumiago/Flickr

Tags: haylie pomroy, the fast metabolism diet

The past few days have been a little rough. Not only have I not lost any weight since Tuesday, but my face was breaking out like a teenager’s. Every stubborn clogged pore I had (and I knew where every one was, believe me) turned into a volcanic zit overnight. Also, I was super sleepy, possibly in part because when I was awake, I was as anxious and wired as someone who had just had three espressos. All of this in combination leads me to believe that I spent most of week two in a healing crisis.

For those of you who aren’t total woowoo frootloops like me, I will explain. A healing crisis, supposedly, is when your body starts trying to flush toxins and other baddies faster than it can cope. So while you’re getting better, you feel (and look) like shit on toast. People report all kinds of symptoms, from joint paint to poor coordination. This time, I got a bunch of zits and a persistent need to nap. Also, my body was holding onto the fat, because that’s how it likes to cope with pollution, apparently.

Before you go all bananas on this, I should mention that not everyone believes that healing crises even exist. I looked for links for you, and 90 percent of the sites I found featured marching ants and a harp playing in the background whenever I moused over a link. Still, having been through this twice, I’m inclined to believe. (First time was for candida and I would never wish that on my worst enemy. I spent two days feeling drunk and six weeks looking for my house keys.)

When I woke up this morning, however, my skin looked better and I felt amazing and well-rested, so maybe the worst is behind me. How are you all feeling this fine day?

This is what Flickr associates with the term “healing crisis.”

Image: marsmet541/Flickr

Tags: haylie pomroy, the fast metabolism diet

I’m seriously thinking about doing this until the party on May 11, and then starting all over again the next day. No promises, but I’m thinking about it.

The background, for people who haven’t been reading the comments, is that I’m going home to visit my folks on May 10. May 11, I have a party to go to — an awesome party, in fact, featuring beer and cheese and the birthday celebration of one of my oldest and bestest friends. Naturally, it’d be hard to show up and drink club soda and eat veggies, so my thought was that I’d do the diet up til then, and then let it go, to be resumed (or, more likely, done over) at a later date.

But now the diet is going really well for me, even though I’m in that week two slump at the moment, in terms of weight loss, and I hate to give up my momentum. Which makes me think that the answer might be to start all over from scratch the day after the party.

Here’s why: If I partake at all, I feel like the diet is kind of sunk, in terms of continuity. Beer and cheese are two of my favorite things, but they’re also three no-nos in one: wheat, dairy, and alcohol. I feel like all the liver-balancing veggies and herbs and water in the world probably won’t make up for that, even if I only have a beer or two.

So, as I see it, I have three options:

1. Do the diet up until the 11th, and then stop, incorporating some of what I’ve learned into my regular meal plan.
2. Do the diet up until the 11th, resume the morning of the 12th, drink water and hope for the best.
3. Do the diet up until the 11th, then start over again on the 12th as if it were the first day.

The last option didn’t occur to me until commenter Tess tweeted at Haylie to say that she’d only lost five pounds, and it was the third week. Haylie replied, “Hang in there. Fixing a years-broken metabolism takes time, and this is why the plan is 28 days.”

Which I knew, but that sort of brought it home to me all over again: if I only do this for 18 days, I’ve sort of wasted my time. I mean, not really, because I lost weight and I learned all kinds of stuff about how food and caffeine affects me and I feel tons better. But if the goal is to fix my metabolism, I kind of have to do the whole 28 days, straight.

Oh, also, you might wonder why there isn’t a fourth option: go to the party and drink club soda and eat veggie snacks. I thought of that, but that just feels like a giant bummer, especially since these are old friends I don’t get to see very much, and we used to drink barrels of beer and eat wheels of cheese together back in the day. (Probably not the best for my health, but man, was it fun.)

So that’s what I’m thinking about right now. A lot will depend on how I feel when I get home. I don’t want to inconvenience my folks while I’m visiting, although I suppose they’d probably be delighted that I was cooking for a change, instead of just lying around like a giant teenager, dropping snacks in my mouth.

What would you guys do, in my spot?

I like/Flickr

Tags: haylie pomroy, the fast metabolism diet

I’d estimate that about 95 percent of my female friends have been on a diet at one point or another, even the naturally skinny types with perfectly functioning thyroids and a running habit. One could be forgiven for thinking, since we ladies spend so much time on diets, that we love being on them, despite our complaints.

One explanation, of course is that we diet because of distorted body image, thanks to magazines and TV. I don’t think that’s it, at least not entirely. My theory is that many of us diet because it’s the only time in which it’s socially acceptable to turn our focus completely inward. When you’re on a diet, you’re giving yourself permission to say no: no, I won’t have that cake; no, I can’t go to that drinks outing; no, thank you, I’d rather stay home and do half-assed pilates off of a program I found on Hulu.

The rest of the time, most women have a lot more social and familial obligations than most men. Not that those go away while we’re dieting, of course. But we’re giving ourselves permission to spend a lot of time thinking about ourselves — what we’re eating, how we’re feeling, how we look.

I understand, also, that this could be taken to an extreme. That’s one reason why I waited for Haylie’s book to come out before I tried yet another diet. Even if every phase isn’t a ton of calories, it’s a lot of eating. I felt like it would be difficult for me to get into bad habits of thought (e.g. “juice is totally a meal”) on this diet that would lead to me becoming both overweight and unhappy down the line.

In other important news, although I’m holding steady, weight-wise, from yesterday, my skinny jeans now fit. I think I might notice a difference on the scale tomorrow.

How are you all doing this fine day?

Image: epSos.de/Flickr

Tags: haylie pomroy, the fast metabolism diet