All right.
In my quest to drop the last of my leftover unhappy-marriage pudge, I have changed everything about my entire life. Well, pretty much. I enjoy my food, but it's completely different food. Few starches, minimal refined foods, almost no sweets, and I keep alcohol to a minimum. I walk for at least an hour every day, and once a week I hike for 2-3 hours.
For the last month or so I have been on what I call the "Bucket Guy" diet; for those who don't know the story of Bucket Guy (my spirit guide), the condensed version is that when I worked at Rejuvenation he appeared to me one day, carrying a bucket of beautiful old lighting that had been painted over, and looking for replacements. I suggested he have them restored instead, and he replied "Nah, I don't want to deal with it". This phrase was then repeated numerous times in response to almost every suggestion I made and every question I answered, and he finally departed my store for Home Depot. Full of hate and rage, I went upstairs to the break room and fumed at my co-workers for a few minutes about him, after which one guy said "Sounds like you don't want to deal with it".
And then I was enlightened.
Anyway, the Bucket Guy Diet is what happens when you know you have to eat, but you just don't give a flying fuck. You don't want to deal with it. Most people end up on this diet at some time in their life when they're either newly in love or newly heartbroken... you know the feeling. It's the diet where you get to the point where you just can't ignore your rumbling belly anymore, so you eat the first thing you find in the fridge or cabinet that doesn't need much prep but sounds like you have a possibility of actually swallowing it. People on this diet tend to live on a lot of crackers and peanut butter, or yogurt and cereal. Tinned fish and protein shakes have gone a long way for me.
Coincidentally, a very good friend of mine was also on this diet at the same time, and we were talking about how it is, while effective, sadly unsustainable. Eventually, if I keep living on tinned fish and protein shakes, my body is going to rebel in some very unpleasant ways, so I've devised an even better diet that still allows me to not really think about what I'm eating at all. My friend and I refined it over the course of a six-mile hike; we call it the Toaster Oven Diet.
Here's what this consists of.
You have three food groups; the fish group, the asparagus group, and the millet group.
You have a little container of cooked millet in the fridge at all times. Examples of things that fall into the millet group would be brown rice, quinoa, barley... you get the gist.
You put a little butter or grease in the bottom of a small baking pan, and on top of that you'll arrange some fish and asparagus, and a scoop of millet. Season with salt and pepper and maybe some lemon juice and garlic powder, then put it in the toaster oven and cook it for 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees. Then, you eat it. It's that simple!
A few other members of the fish food group are chicken, ham, and beef. These may require longer cooking times, so use your best judgment.
If your representative of the asparagus group is spinach or another leafy green, you should toss it in at the very end because it only needs a couple of minutes.
I find that I can cook a double portion of this in the morning, then have it for lunch as well as breakfast, and it's so easy that no matter how little I could give a crap about nutrition or my physical well-being that day, I can still eat in a way that is most likely not going to result in any severe nutritional deficiencies.
Happy heartbreak!
