The Skinny

After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I decided to give Louis J. Aronne's The Skinny on Losing Weight Without Being Hungry another try since I was still in learning about food mode.

I first saw Aronne on Late Night With David Letterman in a cheesy Biggest Loser-like segment. If my memory serves me, I believe that Aronne was one of the doctors on Letterman's quintuple bypass surgery team.

The cheesy segment initially made me go in search of Aronne's book since the Letterman staffer lost weight following Aronne's advice.

I like the front cover teasers:

Can't shed those pounds? It's not your fault. Dieting is not about willpower.

It's pleasing when I'm told things like it's not your fault.

One of the things that cracked me up was Aronne's oft-repeated mantra:

You can have an unlimited amount of vegetables.

No one ever tells you that you can have an unlimited amount of those delicious Ikea almond tarts.

Aronne's reinforcement of simple points stuck with me:

Choose the gym closet to your home.

Empty calories are fattening.

Lean protein is filling.

Low-calorie foods are filling.

They (liquids like soda) evade every calorie-detecting mechanism in your body.

...You just can't bully your body into losing the perfect amount of weight.

In Chapter 5, The Skinny Lunch Makeover, Aronne talks about the order of eating lunch: salad then vegetables then lean protein. To further illustrate his point, he puts the calorie count of some salad/vegetable items:

2 cups lettuce = 15 calories

An entire bell pepper = 30 calories

One large cucumber = 34 calories

1 cup mushrooms = 15 calories

1 cup broccoli = 30 calories

For those busy days, Aronne suggests having the following at-the-ready:

Bagged salad mix

Steam-in-a-bag vegetables

One or more Skinny-recommended frozen dinners

Aronne's recommendations for eating out at restaurants are beneficial.

The Skinny Resources are helpful too as are the Skinny Mini asides. Here's part of one:

Capsaicin, the active ingredient in cayenne and other hot peppers, may help you eat less by affecting levels of appetite-suppressing brain chemicals...

His whole person approach is refreshing:

Learn how to relax.

Don't do it (exercise) for vanity.

I'm starting now on the laughing/relaxation portion of the program.

Protein To Go

Close your eyes, my grandmother said. I knew that she was up to something so I turned around. My grandmother was straight up trying to put some peach cobbler in my mouth. I was just going to give you a little.

Yesterday, my aunt Girt tipped me off that there was a remaining piece of sweet potato pie. There were quite a few cakes around and the SP pie had been forgotten. She told me to remind her today so that she could give me the slice.

Did you see Super Size Me? If anyone posed the super size option to Morgan Spurlock during the course of of his 30 day experiment, he had his order super sized. I feel the same way about sweet potato pie. If anyone offers it to me, I'm pretty much going to take them up on the offer.

As I was leaving my g'ma's house, I locked eyes with my aunt to say goodbye when I remembered the pie. She went to get it and we made the exchange in the kitchen.


Did you taste the chicken? my aunt wanted to know. Frankly, I'm a bit tired of chicken but I could tell that my aunt had enjoyed it and she wanted to share. I sampled the smoked bird and it was quite tasty. My aunt packed some in a bag and, as I headed down State Street, I dipped into my baggie and ate my protein for the day.