My friends, for the first time in my life I’ve started an honest-to-goodness diet. Okay, so we’re not calling it a diet—Brianne insisted that I dub it a “healthy eating strategy,” since diets never work, you have to make long-term life choices, blah, blah, blah. But the bottom line is that the sweets obsession was growing out of control. In one week, I ate almost the entire mini-cake that David’s mom made for my birthday. My co-workers will tell you that I mooched a steady stream of chocolate off them on a daily basis. I think my teeth are rotting.

So I have temporarily liberated myself not only from desserts, but from all meat and most carbs. David and I are carrying out the strategy together, holding one another accountable to avoid the temptations of such things as bread and chicken. He has lost several pounds already.

You’re probably thinking at this point, “What the heck are you eating, then?” Well, my new healthy eating strategy consists primarily of fruit, vegetables, some dairy products, and beans. Yes, I am learning all about the joys of beans. I’m not sure whether beans are a vegetable—David says that they are a plant product. However, beans are low fat, low carb, and high in protein, an important factor with a meatless healthy eating strategy. There is a bean for every day of the week, too: kidney beans, pinto beans, garbanzo beans, great northern beans, navy beans, chili beans, and butter beans.

When I first started the healthy eating strategy about a week ago, I whined prodigiously about giving up most carbs (we still permit healthy cereals, oatmeal, or grits for breakfast). What would I do without my turkey and mustard sandwiches? My quick quesadilla and pasta dinner at night? Yet I’m finding that beans are not such a bad substitute, in addition to Gardenburgers and lots of salad. For a quick meal, you can stock cans of vegetarian chili. Beans are cheap, too. I bought several cans last night for less than 50 cents each. If nothing else, this experiment has taught me that bread and/or rice are not essential to a good meal.

Now, I’m not recommending this healthy eating strategy to everyone. I was never a fan of the whole Adkins diet fad, since I didn’t think it was particularly healthy to replace bread with a greasy quarter-pounder every night at dinner. And it takes a fair bit of discipline to eat so many beans in one week. I will say, though, that I do feel better since cutting a lot of the junk out of my diet. Yes, I may miss my daily diet of Dove chocolates, but I know that my body feels much happier with all the nutrients it is getting out of my regular dose of fresh spinach.

But I’m not going to complain when healthy eating strategy ends officially on March 1!

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” --1 Corinthians 6:19

Kelsey

PS—Not sure how the healthy eating strategy will play out on the World Tour… I don’t always have much choice in what I eat. I will at least avoid all meat.