french | toast

Well, a summer of bacon ice cream and chocolate mousse cake has certain inevitable consequences.

I’ve buckled down and hired a trainer. As soon as I heard her start talking about diets and low-fat foods, though, I decided to try something different: real, honest-to-goodness food. See, it seems to me that the human body has evolved to digest certain foods. I’m wondering if, in our quest for the ultimate fat-free double bacon cheeseburger, we’ve managed to engineer foods that are absolutely alien to our own bodies. In short, I’m wondering whether the human body has figured out that fat-free food is healthy. I suspect that simple, unprocessed food is a more efficient fuel because it is more evolutionarily familiar.

So I’ve done it: no high fructose corn syrup (turns out you can get a really delicious whole grain oatmeal bread made with sugar instead). Nothing out of a mylar package. I’ve been eating the Honeycrisp apples we picked last week, cream top yogurt, full fat cheese and veggies dipped in hummus from a restaurant in Michigan City. It’s been really tasty and very satisfying–even when I eat the same thing day after day, which I usually can’t stand.

And you know what? I’m not as hungry as I used to be. Yogurt and fruit keeps me full longer than waffles or cereal did. Lunch actually keeps me going until dinner. And after dinner, I’m not interested in grazing. I, the inveterate and incorrigible snacker, am full until breakfast. How weird is that?

We’ll see if it works! If it works, I vote that we dub this the Pollan Diet, since the persuasive indictment of low-fat foods in “In Defense of Food” is what started me down this road in the first place.