Yes, I know it's New Year's Day. But I've been listening to David Bowie quite a bit lately, and this song has been playing in my head.
Anyway, what I really came to tell you ("...and I alone escaped to tell you") is this: I signed up for the Quantified Diet project, where you follow one of ten diets for four weeks. The aim is to collect data to see what works best. I saw a tweet about it from Buster Benson a week or two ago, and it sounded intriguing. Plus, I trust his judgment (he developed Health Month, which I used for a long time).
So I signed up, read up a little more about the diets offered, and thought about what I wanted to do. You can go with the randomized approach and just follow what is chosen for you, but I wanted more control. I know I hate counting calories, and I wanted to pick something I could stick with after the four weeks of the project are done. I considered no sweets, paleo, and whole foods, vegetarian, and slow carb - but whaaaat, no cheese with the slow carbs? And cold showers? Brrrrrrr.
And then of course I worried. OMG it starts on January 1st, and they haven't published any additional detailed information a few days before the start date! How am I gonna get off to a good start? Then it occurred to me that the lift people are good at easing you into new things, one baby step at a time*, and I trusted them to give me what I need when I need it, starting on January 1st.
I also did some more thinking, and some prep work, and got some support features set up. I settled on the "whole, no processed foods" diet because that is how I would like to eat anyway. I checked out the blog of the advising foodie, summer tomato, and like it well enough. And I decided that keeping a food journal would be a smart idea, so I poked around the App Store for a suitable app, and settled on MealLogger because it looks like a lot of fun and very little effort.
Also, here is what I'm NOT doing: I am not primarily interested in weight loss. While I am hoping that getting rid of my gut padding will be a side effect of eating healthier, it's not my primary motivation. I know I eat more sweets and starches when I am stressed and overworked, and I've tried to look at the extra weight as insulation. With the holiday craziness behind us, I assume that now is a good time to get into good habits and stick with them.
* Today's baby step: read Everything You Need to Know about the Whole Foods Diet, fill in the introductory survey, and eat at least one meal on the whole foods diet today. (Two meals tomorrow, and all in on day 3).
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