Putting My Personal Superpower to Work

Everybody seems to be following different diet plans. There’s the all meat diet. The gluten free diet. The keto diet. Paleo diet. I can’t keep track of them all. I’ve always stuck with the calorie counting diet in the past. It’s been reliable for me, and I’ve always been able to lose weight before. (Why am I writing about diets, you might ask? Europe and my birthday and MLA Annual Conference have put me 10 pounds over my “line in the sand” where I’m supposed to start seriously dieting, that’s why.)

The one problem with the calorie counting diet is that you have to actually count stuff. This is not something I enjoy doing. I really don’t like sitting down to a good meal and having to weigh it all out and do calculus to figure out how much of that great meal I can eat.

However.

One strength of mine is basic immunity to repetition. It’s kind of like a superpower, I’ve decided. (Even if I haven’t figured out how to take over the world with it just yet.) I can wear the same thing every day, and I don’t care at all. I can eat the same thing for breakfast for months at a time, and I still enjoy it. I just don’t care that I had it yesterday. I’m immune to the feeling of “I need to do something different this time.” (This, sadly, does not extend into my work routine. I do like to mix things up when it comes to what I do each day. But for the little things like food and clothing? Who cares? I’m hungry. I eat. Now I’m not. Problem solved.)

This is not to say I don’t enjoy different foods. Obviously I do. And when Denisa’s here making delicious food, I eat it. Because why not?

Each day, I always eat the same breakfast (oatmeal), snack (banana at 11am), and lunch (peanut butter sandwich at noon). Typically I then mix things up for dinner. While Denisa was away over the summer, however, I discovered that I can eat the same thing for dinner as well. In fact, I can eat the same thing I ate for breakfast: cold, raw oatmeal with cold milk. To treat myself, I put in chocolate chips instead of raisins. (What can I say? I’m good to me.) Then for a snack at night, I have my peanut butter, cocoa, banana, and milk smoothie.

I lost  6 pounds in about 1.5 weeks with that approach.

Now that I found myself so high above my goal weight, I finally decided to bring down the diet hammer again. And this time, I was done with counting calories. I told Denisa that I’m not going to be eating anything with the rest of the family until I’m back under my goal weight. It’s just going to be oatmeal, sandwiches, and smoothies every day. I’ve already lost 4 pounds. (6 to go, though I might try to ride it all the way down to 175 this time.)

This is just the natural extension of something I’ve always told people: find out what you’re good at, and do that. Find out what works for you. Will the oatmeal diet work for any of you? Doubtful. I’d imagine most people would get sick of it. But for me? I can do it without breaking a sweat. When I’m hungry, I just realize that I’ll be eating something at my prescribed time later on, and that’s enough to keep me going.

What’s your superpower?

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