Fad diets are barely a fad anymore. You open up an article online or a newspaper if you happen to be visiting a museum and some new crazy diet is being described. Plant based, because sports types say it is good for recover. Meat based, because butchers don’t like people eating nothing but vegetables. Cut out the carbs….eat nothing but carbs. Have white rice but only on a day that doesn’t end with a ‘y’. The list goes on and on.
I’m here to tell you about a new Fad Diet, one that very few people seem talk about. See the problem with all other diets is that you have to basically cut out something. No meat, or less meat. No bread, despite how that would make it impossible to have a rasher sambo. Cakes have to be avoided…for some insane reason. Pretty much the golden rule of all popular diets is to stop enjoying food.
I know there is probably some valid reason behind it…but dammit I like food.
Anyroad this new diet I am here to tell you about? Kids!
Now, I’m not saying you need to go wandering into the forest and build yourself a gingerbread house in the hope that some kids get lost because their breadcrumbs are being eaten. Mainly because who could afford to build their own bespoke house in Ireland these days? Unless the forest you had in mind was one of those fantastic ones were money grew on the trees.
No, what I am saying is having kids is the best way to lose weight and I am not even touching on the part about how breast feeding burns off loads of calories. This is a diet that applies to parents from all walks of gender.
It is really simple to do. You simply attempt to eat a normal sized meals, ones you have eaten your entire life, in sight of your little bundles of joy. Then, without any prompting, training or instructing, the kids will fill in the rest.
Take, for example, your average yogurt pot. Me, I am a big fan of hazelnut yogurts. I have been since my Nan (the grandmother on me mammy’s side) would get them for me as a treat back in the day. So now they regularly get picked up in the shop. There is about ten teaspoons in each pot, a perfect snack amount if I am being honest. Unless you happen to eat one in front of our two littles. Then those ten spoonfuls have to be doled out among three mouths. Now, I’m no Messiah so that pot doesn’t magically start making more tasty goodness and of course I shared with the kids.
Greedy little shits.
But that’s just a small example of how kids help you lose weight. If they are around you when you are eating then they reduce the size of your portions pretty damn quick. This creates a calorie intake deficit (see, there is even science in this) and you start to lose weight. Want to lose more weight? Increase the number of kids you have around you when you are trying to eat.
There also doesn’t seem to be a way to combat this. Unlike normal diets when you can have a ‘cheat day’ and go off menu, the Kid Diet ensures that cheat days don’t work. For you see in order to cheat you need to eat and if the kids are around they will want what you are eating.
Even trying different eating methods won’t help you. Such as a family dinner time when you all eat at the table together. Forget about it. What will happen here is the kids will want to eat what is on your plate first, even though it is the same food on their plate, or they will wolf down there own food and then come looking for seconds from your plate. Which, of course, a loving parent will give them because the kids are growing but still the little savages are like bottomless pits.
This very morning, before I sat down to type up this little rambling, I even tried two new tricks. I got their breakfast ready first and while they were eating it I set about making my own breakfast (a white pudding sandwich with a good cup of coffee). Right as my breakfast was done the two littles had finished all of their grub. I could sense them looking at me…like wolves waiting for their prey to let down their guard. But I am a hunter-gather somewhere in my family tree…I was ready for them.
Out popped two apples for them to munch on.
The offerings were accepted, the tiny pagan gods appeased.
I finished making my breakfast, poured out the coffee, and went over to the table to have my meal. I swear to Dagda two little heads appeared out of nowhere on either side of me. Drooling at the sight of my food.
“Did you finish your apples?”
“Shop,” the youngest said.
“We don’t have them anymore, daddy,” replied the eldest.
They kept eyeballing my food. I cut the sambo in half, then halved one of the halves. Without even being asked to, little hands swooped in like mutant vultures and grabbed the quarters. Delighted with life they both ran off, munching happily. I wasted no time in devouring my own half of breakfast before they returned.
They always return.
But why had my new tactic to bring in a cheat day to the Kid Diet (a cheat day in this instance being a day you get to eat all your own food yourself) failed this time. As I sipped at my coffee, which thankfully both kids know they will never get to drink so they don’t bother asking about it, I watched the two littles finish their ill-begotten gains. When I saw that I had been outsmarted my two tiny chess masters. Once they had finished the sandwiches, checking my plate with a sneaky glance to ensure there was no more to be stolen, they walked over to a duplo box. Taking off the lid the youngest reached inside, pulled out an untouched apple, and handed it to his sister before reaching in and taking out his own apple.
I had been played, hustled by the two cutest con-artists in the land.
While the weight just continued to fall right off me.
Parenting Pobal 