The Food Happens Diet

I don't understand diets. Diets make people think about food MORE. Isn't that counterproductive?

If I'm trying to eat less, I'm pretty sure it's not going to help me to plan my shopping list, add up calories, think ahead about all of my meals, all of my snacks. What am I going to eat for every meal today? Diets generally suggest that when I have that meal, or even a snack, that I need to think about that snack and analyze that snack and evaluate that snack and record that snack.

There's an endless array of diet books out there, too. Books filled with food and ideas about food and the calories in food and the health benefits of food. Food, food, food. Wow, I'm getting really hungry now. I want to eat because I've now spent 50 percent of my day thinking about what I am supposed to eat and not supposed to eat. And reading about it. And talking about it. And writing in a journal about it, because I have to record everything about the food that I've read about and planned for and shopped for and prepared and actually eaten.

None of this makes sense to me. That's why I live by the following dietary philosophy: Food happens.

I actually wait until I am hungry, and then I think to myself: "I am hungry. I should eat something now." Then, if I am home, I will look in my refrigerator and I will eat whatever takes the least effort to prepare. If I am not home, I will purchase food from a food establishment that is somewhere nearby. I will then eat until I don't feel hungry, and I will go on to think about other things that have nothing to do with food, like all of the activities in the other 22 hours of my day.

Now some people might say, "But don't you ever have to cook? Like for other people? Like your family?" And to those "some people" who may or may not be my husband and children, I answer: "Define cook."

My family doesn't know how lucky they are, because I have done all of the not thinking about food for them so that they never have to go on a diet. You're welcome, family.