Wanna lose weight? Try the child diet!

May 15, 2017 Ashley 0 Comments

“Adulting.”

This noun-turned-verb is one of my faves when it comes describing my day to day to do’s. Work. The bank. Paying bills. File it all under the grown up stuff. And why do I love it so much? Because, while “adulting” itself isn’t so much fun, the term makes it seem less like a permanent status, and more like a mask I put on to survive society. (Meanwhile, underneath, I’m a childwoman who dances with her Pekinese to Fitz and the Tantrums before going to MMA training every Saturday morning.) The word reminds me that it’s just an act – not a mindset. But, for many of us, it’s become more than a mindset. That mask has adhered to our faces (yes, just like in the Jim Carrey comedy) and morphed our personalities as well. We’ve convinced ourselves we’re it. And why’s that bad? Because – aside from making us boring – it can also make us downright fat.

(With that breakfast, that fitbit’s about as useful as measuring how many squirt guns you can shoot at a forest fire.)

Think about it. As an adult, you’ve got to have lunch at whatever o’ clock exactly. You buy the bigger bowls because they’re on discount. (It’s the frugal thing to do, after all.) You sit still while waiting for dinner or the commercial finish. (Because, god forbid you break a sweat and have to shower again later.) And, coming full circle from when you were a kid, inculcated into the club of clearing your meal from the plate, you still follow the same rule:

Finish that food like it’s a Mortal Kombat enemy.

(Lest you beat yourself with a metaphorical wire hanger later.)

Children, on the contrary, have got something quite correct that we’ve egregiously effed up along the way. They innately know weight loss better than any’ve us. After reading a few inadvertent “tips from kids” about pound dropping recently, I realized, those micro sized humans know what they’re doing. For example, they know what they’re talking about when they say, “I don’t WANT lunch.” Seriously. How many times has the clock struck lunch o’ clock and you realize you’re not that hungry? And how many times do you eat anyway? (Because A.) it’s an excuse to leave work for a bit, B.) comfort food, C.) starbucks, or D.) all’ve the above.) One tip kids can give us is to wait for weight loss’s sake. Wait ‘til you’re legitimately craving sustenance to put any in your face hole.

And when you do detect peckishness? We don’t need to put it in a behemoth bowl that could pass for a Japanese ramen cauldron. A little dinner dish will do. When I think about my niece’s teensy plate at dinner, it makes me realize something. She knows she doesn’t need more than that. Why don’t I know what I don’t need more than? I mean, I’m significantly bigger than her – but I’m not big enough comparatively to warrant that massive platter on which I’m dumping all these servings of sides. All I do is end up filling up the whole thing.

(Unless you’re buffing up to fill in for Vinn Diesel in Fast & the Furious part 15, you don’t need anymore than this.)

Worse? I finish the whole thing, too. First, I serve to much. Then, I massacre it all with my maw like each morsel’s an abductee who might run off and share my whereabouts if I don’t mouth murder it immediately. Why can’t I just save it for later? Why won’t the term “leftovers” live peacefully in my vocabulary? It did when I was a kid. That is – until I was told I had to finish it all, therein sealing my fate into fatty habits forever. (Don’t feel bad, mom ‘n pops; you were just teaching what you – and heaps of other human-makers learned yourselves.) That said, had I not rid myself of my kid brain early on, maybe I wouldn’t’ve erred over into gluttonous nomming habits for a while there. Either way, it’s a nice reminder – hearing from the mouths of babes how to behave with what we put into our mouths.

So, if all your adulting diet’s have failed you, try dialing it back to childhood.

You might just dial down the scale numbers, too.