Let’s see, my three favorite topics are cats, TV and food. I’m pretty sure it’s time to work a food blog into the rotation. Long ago in a land far away yours truly worked with a dietician to try to figure out how to manage the Food Situation. The first thing the dietician had me do was keep a food diary. She emphasized the importance of writing down absolutely everything I ate and drank.
She wisely cautioned me that being less than honest was really only going to hurt me in the end. So I was really, really honest. But some things are hard to describe. Like if I grabbed some M&Ms out of a candy jar. I didn’t count each individual candy! So I wrote down “handful of M&Ms” in my food diary. When I met with the dietician she asked me to describe a handful. I cupped both my hands together into a bowl that could probably hold a good quarter pound of candy. “Umm, like this, I guess, if you count both handfuls.” She peered at me over her glasses and frowned. I get that a lot.
She said “Jill, what am I going to do with you?” and honestly, I get that a lot too. I reminded her that at a bare minimum I kept her entertained and she at least met me on common ground there. We moved forward with our portion size discussion, aided by her little props. Rubber food. A little wedge of cheese. A deck of card size slab of protein. And the smallest little dot of peanut butter you can imagine. When she told me that was a full serving of peanut butter, I told her that’s actually just about the amount I lick off the knife while I’m making my sandwich. She peered, frowned, and sighed.
Ultimately, and here’s no surprise, my dietician dumped me. She said, “Please know that I love you–it’s not you—it’s me. Can’t we just be friends?” but then mere hours later I saw her warming up to another patient, a more compliant patient no doubt. It cut like a knife. Just like the kind I use to make a peanut butter sandwich.
I came across this You Tube clip from GableKermit recently and really loved it. It’s about 11 minutes long, and worth watching all the way through:
My life as a dietitian. This is a compilation of people I have seen in my office