While the rest of the Western world is baking muffins, chomping on triskets, and sucking on popsicles, I’m at home gnawing on a boiled egg. It’s not because I particularly love eggs. It’s just that I’m on a low-carb diet, which is the one thing I know works. I have to start running to hasten the effects of weight loss because I can’t stand eating tortillas that taste like cardboard.
All our kids eat is carbohydrates, wrapped in bar form, or rolled into the size of a cereal pellet, or hardened into the shape of pasta. I bake it and toast it and wallow in it, and yet I can’t eat a bite. Our pantry really is a diabetic nightmare. Oatmeal. Buttery crackers. Muffin Mix. Cookies. Oh, the cookies. Sometimes I peek around the onion soup mix to see if the chocolate chips are still there, waiting for me to come to my senses. They are sitting there on the top shelf like a stoic friend, patient and still.
The worst is breakfast. After a week of eating scrambled eggs, or peanut butter on a flatbread, or a processed low-carb bar, you’re a little tapped out. I went online to try and find low-carb breakfast ideas. It was packed with helpful information, like “why do you have to eat sweets for breakfast? Try tuna!” and the always helpful “if you get sick of eggs, just add extra cheese.” There were fifteen recipes for frittatas and a mock pancake recipe made from cottage cheese. One recommended left over pork chops.
I don’t know about you, but when I get out of bed in the morning, after scrubbing away stale breath and sipping on hot coffee, all I can think of is tuna. And pork chops. And cottage cheese pancakes with no syrup. Stop it. My mouth is watering.
This is why no one can stay on a low-carb diet forever. There has to be some wiggle room. I punched down the bread dough I was making this afternoon (now that I quit my job I declared Monday “Bake Day.” I’ve also declared Wednesday Spa Day and Friday Drinking-and-Gambling Day, so it all evens out), and realized I’d never eat a bite. Who bakes bread and then fails to eat one single bite?
People who need to lose ten pounds. That’s who. They are over in the corner with a bad attitude eating a handful of almonds and a cheese stick. Don’t go near those people. They are bound to crack. Or pass out. Or start stuffing tortilla chips down their pie hole whilst laughing eerily.
Soon, I’ll ease those lovely carbs back into my life. Until then, I’ll just be here. Quietly eating pork chops for breakfast but dreaming of thick, sweet oatmeal.
