Day 14: The Bacon and Whiskey Diet

As the second full week of the new lifestyle comes to a close, I find myself with plenty to do for work and my family.  However, I have no desire to leave you with nothing to read.  So I present to you my book idea from the heart of my love affair with the low carb lifestyle a year or so ago.  I was dropping the weight and feeling the love for all things low carb.  I even found a TED that made me think low carb might cure cancer.  Hell, maybe it does.  I think I can safely say that there is not one wonder diet that will work for everyone.  Instead, you may need to try many before you find the best one for you.  Heck, maybe even this one…

The Bacon & Whiskey Diet

(or.. How to Make Yourself Hate Bacon and Whiskey)

by Jason Gillett, M.D.

Introduction

It will come as good news to some and bad news to others, that this diet, the Bacon & Whiskey Diet, is slightly more complex and varied than simply gorging on bacon and Jim Beam.  If fact, in this informative weight loss guide, you will learn that there are several brands of whiskey that would work well with this diet.

[The previous sentence uses a type of sarcasm that will be found in abundance throughout this book.  Part of the challenge is filtering out the serious bits from the nonsense.  The author’s family is undoubtedly relieved that other people are now enjoying this brand of humor as much as they have over the decades.]

But whiskey selection is far from the point.  The point is that when using the Bacon & Whiskey Diet, you can be successful having neither bacon nor whiskey.  You can also be successful having only bacon and whiskey.  You see, this diet is all about choices.  Unfortunately, one of the choices you make when starting this diet, is to give up eating a bazillion of your favorite things.  That may seem like a harsh way to loose weight, but sometimes you just have to look yourself in the mirror and say, “Suck it up fat boy!”

There will be more about personal inspiration and affirmation later.  This chapter is going to be devoted to rumor control.  Once this book hits the New York Times Bestseller List (if the stuffed shirt Ivey Leaugers know a good book when they read one) there will undoubtedly be some rumors flying around about the Bacon & Whiskey Diet and its charismatic creator, Jason Gillett, M.D.

The first assault will be on my credentials and education, since the first way to discredit revolutionary ideas is to undermine the visionary who dreamed them.  “Oh my dear sense and sensibilities,” some light headed book critics will swoon, “this man is no doctor.  However shall I be able to take his advice on matters of health and diet?”   It is that kind of whiney tripe that is really going to piss me off while I’m cashing my royalty checks.  I did not spend 10 years of my life taking electives at FOUR different universities so that some tweed jacket wearing nerd can tell me that a Bachelors of Elementary Education does not make me a doctor.  All I know is that 10 years is 10 years.  I put in my time and I have the student loans to prove it.  If that doesn’t make me a doctor, what does?  Plus, I NEVER said I was a doctor.  I just put M.D. after my name and they (the Man) assumed I was a doctor.  Well you know what they say about people who assume, right?  They’re big jerks.  M.D. could stand for Mega Dude, Most Def, or Mustard Doughnut…  and the list goes on.  So don’t tell me I’m not a doctor.  I never said I was or wasn’t what they will say I said I was.  In my professional opinion, we should just drop it.

The second slanderous rumor that is sure to surface before long will be about the Bacon & Whiskey Diet itself.  This is terrible news, because when we start discrediting fad diets, the terrorist have already won.  These critics- who are enemies of lean, hunky bods- will probably claim that the Bacon & Whiskey Diet is merely a fraud, poached from the pages of books researched and put together by hard working doctors and dietary specialists.  I won’t even dignify such accusations with a response.  Except to say that if that were true, the critics who were worried that I wasn’t properly educated, no longer have anything to complain about.  Aha!  A logic trap so cleverly placed even the greatest logicians would bow before it!

There will undoubtedly be many other crazy rumors floating around during my 15 minutes of fame, but if all goes well, a celebrity divorce or arrest will occur at the perfect time to divert the media attention before they get to any of the embarrassing stuff.  Like the zippered wee-wee incident.  However, hopefully, most of the discussion caused by this revolutionary rehashing of ideas will be in the form of kudos for the book and its author, as countless readers benefit from the rapid and somewhat safe weight loss.

In the following pages you will find an amalgam of advice and personal experience.  You will be able to grasp the fine points of the Bacon & Whiskey Diet, and you will enjoy some of the personal reflections of someone who has been able to use the diet to loose the same 75 pounds, TWO times so far!

Are you tired of having so many X’s in your shirt size that numbers are used instead (5XL)?  Are you sick of watching the last few inches of slack in your car’s seat belt disappear?  Are you done getting dizzy every time you stand up to pay for another delivered pizza?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then this book is for you.  Otherwise, just buy the damn thing for your fat friends.

Table of Contents

Introduction                                                                                    xxii

Table of Contents                                                                        xixivc

Chapter One, Admitting You Have a Problem                                    1

Chapter Two, Blaming the Problem on Everyone Else                        3

Chapter Three… to be continued

Chapter One, Admitting You Have a Problem

Step one in any rehabilitative program is admitting you have a problem.  However the hard part is figuring out IF you have a problem.  This can be really tricky, depending on what you are rehabilitating.  Alcohol? Drugs? Tobacco? Tabasco?  Nepotism? Necrophilia?  How much is too much and when does too much become a problem that you need to admit too?  These questions and more will be ignored as we move on.

America is a great place to be fat.  Nobody likes to be alone, and fat guys in third world countries are not very common, and they are usually called El Presidente or Heffe.  Everyone knows it’s lonely at the top.

Day 12: My Meds

I had to pick up a refill for my blood pressure medicine today.  It is an embarrassing prescription to pick up.  The hope is that after several months of cleansing and healing I will be able to wean myself off of the medicine.  After I missed two days of pills I checked the BP at the pharmacy self-serve blood pressure torture chair.  The numbers were high.  I might be able to blame the extreme caffeine mistake I made earlier this afternoon when I ordered a large Brazilian drip and finished it.  Its like a crazy big espresso and my caffeine intake has been half what it normally is for the last 12 days. I like that excuse better than the alternative.

When I started this blog and started the vegetable for medicine style of eating, I had already dropped 50 pounds on a low carb diet with all you can eat steak and bacon meals.  I can be brave and say publicly that my top number was 336.  It is no easy thing to own up to, but pretending it never happened wont accomplish anything.  I doubt seriously that my baggie shirts tricked everyone in to thinking I was a big boned guy with a flair for stylish yet comfortable clothes.

Anyone with a calculator app can see that twelve days ago I was 286.  This number is no easier to drag out into the sunlight.  Sure I’m proud of the loss, and I give myself the Most Improved trophy, but I was really concerned about staying on the Atkins style diet for another 100 pounds.  If I had no cardiovascular concerns I might have never given it another thought.  Today’s refill and last doctor visit’s cholesterol numbers were enough make me open to a change like this- and this morning’s weigh in at 272 is reason enough for me to continue.

Day 10: Wait, What? Ten?

I will undoubtedly chuckle at how precious it is to be impressed by a ten day run of this vegetable based life style.  In geological terms, ten days does not even exist.  However, after a steady diet of sausage, salami, pepperoni, cheese, pork chops, beef ribs, roasted chicken, hot dogs, cold egg salad, steak, turkey legs, and chicken wings, ten days of vegetables and fruit is unheard of!  As always, it depends on the point of view.

As the tenth day begins to shed its sunlight, I can look back with pride and say that I did not intentionally eat anything that contains animal fat or protein.  I have no control over spiders that crawl into my mouth while I sleep.  It is not my fault if delicious, meaty spiders find my mouth to be as attractive as a gingerbread house is to a  German wood cutters child.  I have been to two restaurants and three business lunches and in every case I had no problem keeping perfect control over myself.  I have primarily eaten fresh, uncooked vegetables and fruits.  Some brown rice, whole wheat pita, and hummus were also occasionally mixed in.

The scale shows a 12 pound difference since I started.  Most of that came off in the first five days and I am hesitant to believe that it was burned fat that accounted for all the lost weight.  Instead, I believe that there is a lot to be said for the Roto-Rooter effect on my intestines.  It is possible that… um… bowel sweepings… could account for the extraordinary quantitative loss.  Twelve pounds is twelve pounds, though, so even if it was the result of getting a lot of hair cut off or a stomach flu, I would still be pleased.

Qualitatively, I can say that I feel like a new man.  I expected to feel better so this might be the result of a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.  I am bursting with energy.  My mental acuity is has improved noticeably.  For instance, I just used the word acuity.  Additionally, I have wished a horrible pox on less than half of the morning commuters that I normally cursed.  HALF!  Who am I, Gandhi?

I will also add that I have made my purchases as locally as possible- avoiding spring peas from Peru and citrus from Sacramento- and I even splurged on some of the organics that are available at Publix.  Despite that I am saving ridiculous amount of cash.  The 5.99/lb medium quality steak meal I used to have will now buy a day and a half’s worth of good food.

Ten days came and went.  Ten weeks and ten months will follow.  Around 88 pounds to burn.  Thanks for reading- it is nice to have someone to unload… um… bowel sweepings… on.

Day 7: USDA is Dead to Me

There, I’ve finally publicly renounced the people that brought us the four food groups. I have no desire to give them the tongue lashing they so richly deserve in this posting because I am still in a great mood after finding vegan pizza at the Winter Park Mellow Mushroom.

This is a real boon for me.  I am beyond excited that there are vegan options like pizza and spaghetti, and hamburgers.  However, these veggie versions of classic foods still make me uncomfortable.  I have spent so much energy avoiding carbohydrates that being faced with them now confuses my deeply held belief that carbs are bad.

This is highly reminiscent of the deeply held beliefs that I learned from Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons in the 80s: fats and oils are bad and Jazzersise is fun.  Half of this set of beliefs was really hard to overcome when low carb diets became the reality.

Jazzercise will never die.

I believe that dietary conversions are like their religious counterparts.  Leaving the comfort zone found with one all powerful deity and taking the leap to a new religion can take some adjusting.  It took a while, but I am getting used to the new prayers and sacrament.  This belief system is new in practice for me, but the foundation has been solidifying for decades.  I plan to outline my commandments and share my dietary rituals in the future but my time is running out because ‘Thou Shalt Compost Waste and Bring Forth Bounty From the Soil’ is a weekend sacrament that I still have to complete.  If all goes well, I will be making my own divine vegan pizza from the garden in no time.  Mmmmm…  heavenly.

Day 5: Coffee Snobbing

Day four and five have been nice and calm.  The near panic has subsided and I am on the verge of winning the mental game.  I still drive by Publix and simultaneously picture the good steaks and imagine the smell of spicy unbreaded wings from their deli.  It happened twice today and I had the same reaction both times- years of training is hard to undo.  However, I must not be an old dog because for the most part I have learned this new trick pretty well.

Many years ago when acquiring a taste for coffee during my college internship, I held an opinion that I still hold today: there is no bad cup of coffee.  Originally, this was a necessary opinion to have because I had not figured out the grounds to water ratio.

I enjoy coffee at every safe temperature and with any amount of unsafe sugar and cream.  I could drink it black or white, hot or cold, but during the Atkins years, when left to my own devices I tended to indulge with lots of half and half and Splenda.  It was perfect for a low carb diet and it became part of my morning… and my mid-morning… and my post lunch dessert.  It gets worse, but I’ll spare you the details and the ellipses.  Suffice it to say I drank an enormous amount of liquid butter in my hot coffee over a long period of time.  This is terrifying in retrospect.  At the time it was justifiable based on results and easy to live with if I didn’t think about it too much.

For the last five days my coffee has been black or the mahogany color of coffee mixed with almond milk.  It could be easy to pine for my sweet, creamy mugs of coffee and complain about what I don’t have with this new lifestyle.  However, I am finding it more fun to embrace this old, robust friend that I have not seen in many years.  I loved coffee without crap in it, I just forgot that I did.

Today I visited the coffee shop Barnie’s in Winter Park.  $1.79 is less than I pay for a 7-11 coffee, but at Barney’s that’s all you pay for the personal blend drip special. The baristas allow you to select several bean types to grind together and then percolate the hot water through in the Brazilian drip style.  Today I had them grind a flavor called Christmas with a playfully flavored bean called Cupcake! It had a robust bouquet with a complexity and balance that you wont find in a convenience store.

I’ve come a long way from pork rinds and diet Pepsi and I think I like it. -277

Day 3: Learned Helplessness

Today was active enough to keep me focused on something besides the lack of bacon in my life.  The few times I found myself thinking about an upcoming meal or realizing that I was hungry, I didn’t feel helpless despair when I remembered I would not be having having a Bahama Mama for lunch. Instead, I experienced a very familiar reluctant acceptance.

I credit today’s tolerance of a plant based diet on the stellar self control I learned while following an Atkins-esque diet.  I will detail my dieting history in future posts, but for now I will just say that I have spectacular ‘all or nothing’ self control.  As long as I don’t try to trick myself into thinking that I can have something in moderation, I have a stainless steel will power.  I have contentedly sipped coffee while people around me gorged on nachos, ice cream and pizza bagels because I know that a bite leads to a plate which easily segues into a tray and eventually dieting damnation.  The self-control that I developed during that time seems well suited for this new lifestyle.  It is a version of learned helplessness that has my id hardly putting forth any effort to get what it wants.  Like an often kicked dog or George Castanza, my cravings have been beaten down by life and don’t have enough fight left in them to cause any real problems.  Now if I can just keep the ego and super-ego from getting involved, I’ll be set. -286

Day 2: I’ll Tell You What to Do With That Banana

OK ladies and gentleman, we have rocketed through the ‘honeymoon phase’ and entered the ‘attacking strangers and taking their meat phase.’

I always knew that this kind of a drastic U-turn would be a massive adjustment, but I just glossed over the actual effort that would be involved.  Atkins style dieting was great for weight loss, but it wasn’t easy.  I genuinely stayed at 10-20 carbs per day for months at a time and lost 10-20 pounds a month.  The effort of avoiding all breads, pastas, grains, potatoes and all things delicious and carby was intense.  However, I was always able to hide my frown behind a porterhouse steak or a rotisserie chicken.  It was hard to complain about not having french fries when I could eat bacon by the pound instead, but I still did.  The problem that I encountered today is that there are not a lot of good plant based pacifier foods to hide a frown behind.

I am also experiencing some actual withdrawal symptoms and I’m barely 48 hours away from sushi and steak.  My mouth is watering way more than it should just writing the word steak.  While cleaning a years worth of pictures and video out of my phone I came across several images of various meats sizzling over charcoal: sausages with chicken, T-bones with a roast, and pork in all of its glorious forms.  While reminiscing about the various grill-a-brations I didn’t weep openly.  Luckily I was surrounded by people eating lunch… and I was too busy controlling my urge to grab a ham sandwich and run away to carnivorous freedom.

Day 1: A Journey of 1000 Miles Begins with a Single Banana

In stark contrast to my six year on and off relationship with variations of the Atkins diet, today started off with fruit, and coffee lightened with almond milk.  I was immediately forced to face the fact that all the good intentions in the world do not change carnivorous habits automatically.  Obstacle one of the morning was a perfectly grilled ten dollar steak, sitting on a plate in the fridge begging to be cut up and cooked with cheese and an egg or three.  I only mention that it is a ten dollar steak to illustrate how tempting it was and to point out how much money we will be saving with a plant based diet as opposed to the uber-carnivorous Raptor diet.

It was a day of bananas, almonds, tangerines, all natural peanut butter and vegetable brown rice.  I didn’t mind the food at all, but I was reaching for a diet cola all day that was never there.  Tea and I are going to become very good friends.

New Life Eve

It is 9:03 on Saturday evening- the Ides of October- and as I listen to the Gators 2011 football team hang on valiantly against Auburn, I am feeling nervous anticipation about the new life I will be waking up to in the morning.  I’ve just finished most of a ridiculously expensive steak and some premium chicken from the charcoal grill.  The last two days have been a whirlwind of  sushi, french fries, tacos and doughnuts.  It is a combination ‘Carb Day’ from the old life, and a New Life Eve style splurge.

There will be plenty of time in the weeks ahead to discuss my fond meat memories from an Atkin’s low carb lifestyle, and the new frontier of a plant based lifestyle that is loosely described in the documentary Forks Over Knives.  Since Cinco de Mayo of this year, I have easily lost 5o pounds eating meat, cheese, and eggs, forsaking all breads, pasta, sugar, and other carbs.  Starting tomorrow I will be living a food for medicine lifestyle which is a sharp 180 degree turn with no animal protein at all.

I will add supporting video, photo, and other content during the life of this blog.  Please keep in mind that I know nothing at all and duplicating any of my personal lifestyle choices without consulting a doctor would be madness.