The MIL's Diet

My MIL is a lovely woman. We are very fortunate to have her in our lives. She's also a good sport and doesn't know anything about my blog mind my sharing things about her on my blog.

Over the years she's tried various diets to lose 'a couple pounds', each with varying results. There was the Daniel diet. I think it was no meat or bread and just vegetable soup for each meal. To be fair, the soups she was making during this smelled heavenly and tasted wonderful!

She's also tried limiting portions and eating more frequently. The sad part of these diets is that well, a little meat here and there and well, cake isn't bread, is it?

And of course, those more frequent meals grew and grew until it occurred to her that she was eating 4 or 5 meals a day!

So, when she told us a couple of months ago she was going to try a low carb diet to lose those couple extra pounds she put on last winter, we rolled our eyes took it in stride. The Mr. cautioned her that he'd heard plenty of negative things about these and took it upon himself to do a little research.

Well, he didn't expect to find anyting positive about them but he actually did. Apparently it isn't the heart attack inducing, stroke coercing fast track to death he once thought it was. So... he sent her an email with lots of information about it and how to start it and what foods she should or shouldn't eat.


She doesn't actually read her emails. This is probably something similar to the thing where she can have a conversation with you without actually hearing a thing... which is probably why she talks over you without noticing or gets up and leaves the room without waiting for you to finish your sentence. So, of course, the diet was started with little or no guidance.

The first day she said she did ok. She ate chicken and cheese and eggs and olives and some other things that she 'didn't realise' had carbs. She drank juice and tea and coffee. Um, those all have carbs too. Sigh...

So, I made a list for her with the information from the site the Mr. found ideas on and wrote out some recipes even! We gave them to her on I think day three. It wasn't going well ha ha. So, the idea of the low carb diet is to push your body into burning fat because it isn't getting carbs. There is a technical name for this...which you probably won't find anywhere in the text of this post. I'm non-technical like that when I never ever sleep anymore don't get enough sleep.

Well, she was talking with her friends about her new diet. Of course, they all chimed in with their ideas for it and since she won't take a doctor's advice but will take the advice of a complete stranger at a bus stop she thought it would help her stick to the diet she decided to implement some of their ideas.

1. Liquids such as tea and juice don't really count as carbs since they are liquid and are just passed through your system without being absorbed. They are no different to water because of this. As well, juice contains fructose rather than sucrose which means the sugar doesn't count.


Actually, they do count and your body does absorb them! Many people find that drinking a lot of juice or tea (it is the milk and sugar that adds up in the tea) causes them to gain weight.


2. Since you can eat as much as you want of the protein rich foods you should just eat until you are absolutely stuffed so you won't notice cravings for other foods with carbs. Now, this is essentially what the diet says with the exception that they don't recommend you eat until you can no longer move or stand up without assistance.

This, along with some of her other great suggestions, will stretch your stomach and in the long run you will be eating more and well, gaining, I'm fairly sure...

3. Be sure to give yourself a free day every once and awhile so you don't feel you are being cheated. The 'technical' reason this won't work (hey, I can be technical after all!) is that it takes a couple of days for your body to get into that other technical mode I mentioned up there where it will start to increase your body's metabolic rate and burn the fat. If you keep having free days you won't ever enter that phase and you won't lose much weight.

As well, her free days became more of a competition or marathon to see how many cakes and other such things she could squeeze into her 'free day' and after a bit those days were stretching into weeks, not days! She was spending much more on food because now she was having all these treats AND she'd increased her appetite as she was eating more and more of them!

Well, I don't know why I even try mentioned to her that the web site the Mr. got the recipes and such from didn't say all this, in fact it contradicts a bit of that so maybe she may want to have a look 'again' at that email.

We saw her on the weekend. The Mr. asked her how the diet was going and then quietly asked me if it looked like she's gained weight or if it is just the outfit she had on. I don't really like when he asks me questions like this. I mean, really, there is no 'win' in any answer to that... Either I've just suggested that his mother is fat or that her outfit makes her look fat. I opted for the pretending I was hard of hearing and kept saying 'what?' and then I was sure I heard Little Poppet needing me.


She said that she had decided to stop that diet. She'd heard it really doesn't work and she's fairly sure she gained weight on it! She has decided it is bad for you and can cause heart attacks you know. As well, who can afford to eat that way anyway?




Disclaimer: This post does not contain any medical advice. Always check with your doctor prior to beginning any diet. A lifestyle of eating healthy foods (fruit, vegetables, meats & grains), avoiding junk food and getting adequate exercise and rest is the best way to maintain a healthy weight.