The Cookie Diet, or Why I Will Be Unhappy for a Week

Today I started myself on the cookie diet for a week. This diet suggests you eat 6 cookies a day: two at breakfast, two at lunch, and two more as snacks or to fill your hunger. For supper, you can have "people food" so long as it consists of a large portion of low-fat meat and a narrow range of vegetables.

The cookies are really expensive to buy. Also, the 6 cookies are in separate wrappers for every days, and there is a lot of waste; the plastic case is #6 so it isn't recyclable in Montreal. 7 packs of waste can add up.

So ideally, you would heat up a little cookie to really "bring out the flavours" and munch on them. Also, you're supposed to drink 8 cups of water per day. You're supposed to drink loads of water when you eat the cookies so they expand in your stomach and make you less hungry. But the idea of getting myself to drink 8 cups of water is actually a bit of a chore... It's easy to drink a lot of water when you're eating the cookies because the fiber makes you hungry, but between them it's kinda tough to remind yourself.

I begrudgingly ate 5 of the cookies up til supper. So supper I ate chicken and leaves of spinach, and had half a cup of cucumber with salt on it. I ate it so quickly and actually enjoyed eating real food. I'm already getting hungry...this no eating yummy food thing is already getting to me. I'm also a late night snacker, so I'm salvaging that last cookie like you would not believe. Yey, a cookie and a glass of water. So, so wrong!

I even keep thinking about my favourite foods, pasta and bread. These foods are in the 'marvelous' food category in the Canadian food guide. I also keep rationalizing that hey, I'm still kinda young, I can eat whatever the hell I want and feel super. But this is very very false. My eating habits are affecting me physically and mentally. I, like others, wish for better for myself. I'm not sure if I'll achieve this by eating yucky cookies, but it's worth a shot. I keep thinking that tomorrow, before my 6 o'clock class, I can go buy myself a big bag of chips and watch a movie. Or maybe a poutine, that's a food-drug right there. But alas, my packaged plastic-tasting cookies will be waiting for me patiently, and I really should not leave them hanging.

I wonder how many people have the same food rationalizations as me. There must be people who say, "I'll have this bag of chips, and walk to the bus tomorrow, so it'll cancel things out." No, no, no. I think society isn't aware of just how many calories we intake, and how many we spend out. We never compensate, we let ourselves eat too much of the wrong stuff, we stretch our stomachs, and we make ourselves unhappy. Whether it's that you don't like how your jeans fit, or that you're mad you can't go up the stairs without breaking a sweat, it still affects you.

So here's me taking the first step. It's an expensive, and a boring first step, but it still counts. I'll try to stop eating like a 400-pound man despite my complaining, and see if I see any true change this week. One thing I'm really happy about is that at least I don't have to stop drinking diet coke...No calories and no carbs!