An open letter to the Slim Cleanse Company

Dear Slim Cleanse Company:

Allow me to congratulate you on your wonderful marketing campaign. Although I can’t speak for every woman my age, I can tell you that it effectively tapped into my insecure (and likely unrealistic) wish to totally rawk a bathing suit when I hit the pool this summer.

Your packaging claim that in just seven days this simple yet effective regime can gently purge my body of the unwanted toxins that cause midriff bloating is most seductive.

While I’ve only been using your product for two days, I must tell you that I think your copywriter may misunderstand the word ‘gentle.’ Unless, of course, by gentle s/he means that users of this product should like spending time in the bathroom and be able to bring their laptops into the bathroom if they want to get any work done.

Although I do so want to help you to achieve corporate success, I am sorry to advise you that I will be unable to complete your slim cleanse regime. I just don’t have the time or the toilet tissue budget to continue at this time and I’ll never get to the pool if I fall much further behind in my work.

Best of luck with your business.

~Dana McCauley

Sweet treats for dieters

Once a sweet tooth always a sweet tooth, I suppose. Although I’m trying to maintain my slim and trim new self, I do find it difficult to make the right choice when I get a hankering for something sweet. Cravings for Cluizel chocolate or Fat Witch brownies are only partially relieved by apple wedges or a yogurt. I have an aversion to the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners like aspartame so my sweet snacks, even the virtuous ones, need to be made with real sugar.

Although I’ll always love a decadent chocolate treat above all else, I have discovered a few better choices are that are satisfying and don’t leave me feeling like I’ve settled for second best.

Chimes Ginger Chews: Bonus points for coming in such a fab package, these all-natural, intensely flavoured confections are just 16 calories each. Each candy is individually wrapped, so you have to think twice before you pop a second one in your mouth.

Peek Freans Lifestyle Selections Cranberry Citrus Oat Crunch: Satisfyingly crisp and just sweet enough to cut the bitterness of coffee well, these cookies are less than 50 calories each.

Do you have a skinny sweet treat that you’d like to tell us about?

WTF Wednesdays

As regular readers here know, I recently slimmed down by 15 pounds and pledged to lose six additional pounds before spring. Although I plan to maintain my new shape, I also realize that mental health is as important as physical well-being and certainly much more important than physical beauty. (Although if I were to wrangle a tri-fecta of fabulousness by achieving all three qualities of physical health, mental health and gorgeousness, I’d see no shame in the accomplishment!)

February is a cold and dreary month here in central Canada and, to be honest, the lack of sunshine can lead to vitamin D deficiencies that aren’t good for a girl’s mood. Not good at all. Just last Wednesday I found myself feeling a little blue and with an overwhelming urge for cheese and champagne (bubbles make me happy), so I wasted no time at all and laid out a spread of yummy cheese and popped a cork of Lanson. Immediately I felt a wave of good feelings!

A moment or two later when my chef sprocket hubby came into the room (the pop of a champagne cork is like a dog whistle for that man!) I was happier still to welcome him to WTF Wednesday, my impromptu party thrown for no reason than to spread happiness.

So if you feel your new year’s resolve slipping away as the days in 2008 accumulate, take a break. We all deserve a WTF Wednesday. Just be sure it isn’t followed by a Debauchery Thursday and you’ll be just fine!

150-calorie breakfast

To lose weight, I follow a very low-calorie, low-fat regime. With only 1,000 calories per day to consume, I carefully choose every bite to ensure it delivers not only as much nutrition as possible, but also as much enjoyment as possible.

Breakfast is a difficult meal for me. I’m often rushed in the morning and, truth be told, scrambled egg whites with salsa get boring after a couple of weeks. When I was gaining weight, I often grabbed a tall latte and a blueberry-white chocolate scone from Starbucks on the way the work; however, that 560-calorie indulgence (100 for the latte, 460 for the scone) didn’t make my fat ass any smaller.

To find a breakfast option that’s easy and makes for a satisfying meal with less than 180 calories, I turned to a black coffee and bars. No, I didn’t drink martinis for breakfast — a dry vodka martini is about 210 calories so it exceeds my calorie criteria! I’m talking about meal replacement bars.

While shopping for breakfast bar options, I discovered that most energy bars are higher in calories than I wanted. Here’s a list of the bars that did fit my criteria. I tasted each one and recorded my impressions so that you don’t have to read as many labels or suffer through the bad breakfasts I endured:

Atkins Endulge: Coconut (40 g, 180 calories). Super sweet with a terrible artificial sweetener aftertaste that not only lingered for hours but also ruined the taste of my coffee.
Bottom line: Yuck!

PowerBar Pria: Chocolate Peanut Butter Crisp (45 g, 170 calories). Cloyingly sweet but satiated me for quite a while.
Bottom line: Not my favourite for morning but may be good for people who love sweets and miss them while dieting.

SlimFast Optima: Chewy Caramel Crunch (30 g, 130 calories): The caramel flavour is super fake and there’s a weird crystallized texture at the finish that isn’t appealing.
Bottom line: Better than most, but still not on par with an egg white scramble.

Dr. Bernstein Protein Bar: Coconut Almond (40 g , 150 calories): This bar goes very well with coffee and actually tastes darn good. The texture is dense and although the bars are small, it takes long enough to finish each one so you feel like you ate something.
Bottom line: My hands-down favourite. (Note: I also tried their Chocolate Peanut Crunch variety but didn’t like it as much as the Coconut Almond.) Have you tried any of the other flavours? If so, please comment below.

Check out an Almond Granola breakfast recipe for about 150 calories/serving and Oats Plus Porridge for 118 calories/serving at homemakers.com.

Have a low-cal breakfast tip you’d like to share? I’d love to hear it!

Feel free to insult me

There are occasions when an insult is a compliment. For instance, if you (or pretty much anyone) were to call me a “skinny bitch” I’d be flattered and add your name on my list of favourite people.

I’m not the first to recognize this fact. The authors of Skinny Bitch and Skinny Bitch in the Kitchen correctly recognized this fact and turned their knowledge into a successful book franchise.

What this example proves to me is that our culture has developed a rather strange connection to food. We love it and celebrate it with glossy cookbooks, $100+ restaurant meals and success stories such as the popular shows on Food Network Canada. Then, as evidenced by my blog posts so far this week, we spend just as much energy trying to avoid food and calories so that we can look and feel attractive.

The ultimate expression of this societal quirk was made obvious to me last autumn at the gala for the 2007 Toronto Art Fair. On opening night the convention centre was packed with stylish art lovers. Almost everyone in attendance was dressed fashionably and the group was generally thin and chic. Surprisingly, I found my dieting self (see Monday’s post) drooling not over the catered canapes on offer but over many of the paintings.Food was a very prominent theme at this art fair which needed a 300 page catalogue to showcase all the art on display. From the ubiquitous fruit pictures (among the best were 2-foot square canvasses featuring bigger than life apples for $9,000 each) to a minimalist painting of a single sprinkle-topped donut which sold for $12,000, it was obvious that not only do the culinary arts now extend out of the kitchen and into the artist’s studio but that there is a lot more money in selling pictures of donuts than the real thing!

You didn’t think I’d forget to mention today’s mystery letter, did you? I didn’t. It’s an L.