Lazy Grazing

The variety of apps available for meal plans is staggering.  I’ve used a website to track my fitness, and it worked great.  The problem?  I hate taking the time to add in all my data.

If you were to tell me that I had to use one of those apps or die, I would probably go ahead and die.  Truthfully, my minimalism and my credit-cardlessness are both effects of this laziness.  If I don’t have a lot of stuff, I don’t have to tidy often.  If I don’t use credit cards, I don’t have to track them and make sure they’re not charging me fees out the wa-hoo.

So why should my food be any different?

My mother loves Weight Watchers, and I love their motto, “Eat to live, don’t live to eat.”  But what I don’t love is having to figure out how many points I get, how many points I’ve used, and how many points I have left.  For thousands of people, it has helped them get their weight on track.  To me, that just sounds like homework.

In reality, I want to be able to just say “yes” or “no” to food without having to think about how much or how often.  Enter the easiest “diet” ever.

Disclaimer: I hate the word “diet.”  I have a long history with diets, not because I’ve gone on them, but because I have a family member that has been on a diet since before I was born.  I don’t weigh myself, except to mark milestones, and I don’t “try out” different diets.  So moving forward when I say “diet,” I am only referring to the pattern of food consumption which one follows, not to a specific copyrighted plan.

In my opinion, Paleo, the Caveman Diet, or Processed-Food-Free, is the laziest diet ever.  And that’s why I love it.

Most diets tell you how much, when, and how many.  My personal introduction to Paleo came in three forms, and my favorite is on NerdFitness.com.  The winner in his explanation is where he explains that you can literally eat vegetables all day and never get fat.

I am an avowed grazer.  I don’t eat large meals, and I follow the philosophy of “stop eating when you’re full.”  Have you heard the expression that “if you sigh when you’re eating it’s your body trying to make more room in your stomach”?  Whether or not it’s true, hearing that expression helped me learn to be conscious of when I was full.  It started with recognizing that deep sigh when I was eating, and moved on to a viewing list full of documentaries about food production in the US.

You could say I have something of an addictive personality.

The thing is, gluten is a gateway drug for me.  If I eat cake, I want more cake.  If I eat cheese, I want more cheese.  If I eat vegetables, I want more vegetables.  Like being vegan, buying gluten-free processed foods leads to an over-consumption of sugar and starch, and ends up with me feeling like I just ate a big old stack of cardboard.

So while those fancy apps with their daily calorie counts look like a great option, an item is only effective if you use it.  Going back to being lazy is the best option for me.