I'd like to take credit for this one, but it's all him. My husband and I were sitting on the sofa in front of the fire eating delicious soup (hey!  look what you people did!  you inspired me to make my own soup stock) and discussing the fact that my new diet isn't hard enough.

That's right, it's not hard enough.

I have a food diary I kept for the week before I started my diet. At that time, I was eating an average of 2300 calories a day. That was, interestingly enough, almost exactly the calories required to maintain my current weight at my height and weight and exercise level. And that's what I was doing, maintaining my weight. Unfortunately for me, that weight was far too fat.

Looking at my food diary, I could see that almost all the food I was eating was junk food - fats and simple carbs. Not only was I eating junk food, but a lot of it. I was eating so much junk that it was exhausting keeping track of it to write it down. And yet, out of all this food, I wasn't getting any nutrition. I hardly ever ate fresh fruits or vegetables. I wasn't anywhere near meeting the daily recommendation for fiber - everything I ate was processed to the point of containing nothing but empty starches. The only dairy I ever ate came from ice cream or fatty cheese.

So I decided to try the following tactic:  at first, I wouldn't worry about how many calories I was eating, I would just eat more nutrient-dense foods. Then, after I had weaned myself off the sugar and fried food, I would look again at how many calories I was eating, and cut back. I figured I would cut back to around 1600 until I reached my goal weight, then ease up to 2000, which is the maintainence weight for my goal weight.

I started cutting out junk foods on January 8th. Kept it up for a while. Didn't count calories, only stepped on a scale once a week when I visited my mother's house. I lost 20 pounds the first month;  I haven't been to her house this past week or the week before, because I've had a sinus infection, but my clothes continue to feel looser and looser.

I figured it was about time to take stock and see how many calories I've been eating now that I've replaced the junk food with fresh, homemade meals. So, this past week I started keeping a diary of my new food choices.

Let's look at Thursday. This past Thursday I pigged out. I stuffed myself literally all day - three full meals plus two substantial snacks. First meal (which in our nocturnal household is the big meal of the day) was red sauce made with fresh veggies over spaghetti squash instead of pasta and a grilled flounder on top. Dessert was a big bowl of yogurt and blackberries with ground flaxseed. Second meal was some lentil pottage and raviolis. Third meal, green tea, an orange, and half a turkey sandwich with fresh spinach, plus a square of dark chocolate. Then a late snack of sardines.

I was afraid to tally this up, since I felt like I'd done nothing but eat all day. I even ate to the point of feeling stuffed.  But if you add it up it's only 1470 calories. That's the magic of picking and choosing. Giant plate of spaghetti at my mom's house, half a loaf of garlic bread soaked in butter, half a pound of ground beef, two cups of pasta?  Probably over a thousand calories. My sauce over squash with 3 ounces of flounder? Fewer than three hundred. Mine has all kinds of good stuff in it, lycopene-rich roasted red peppers, heart-healthy omega 3's. And I enjoyed mine more!

Then there's Friday. On Friday I was sick and went to bed early, which means I skipped a meal. I drank some grapefruit juice and ate a roasted chicken thigh with brown rice and broccoli for my first meal. Had a banana and a square of dark chocolate with skim milk for a snack. Then ate some leftover pasta sauce and flounder from the day before. The damage?  Only a thousand calories.

Saturday, 1410. Sunday, 1435.

I'm in the unexpected position of needing to eat MORE than I feel like eating!  It's so easy once I got rid of of the crazy cravings that came from my insulin levels spiking and crashing every time I drank a soda, stopped craving salty things like french fries and potato chips to balance all the sweet stuff, and ate only 6 ounces of red meat a week instead of 12 at each sitting.

"This is too easy," I was telling my husband."This doesn't even feel like a diet."

"You could hit yourself every time you take a bite," he said. 

And it struck me, hey, what a great idea!  I could make millions.  The Flagellation Diet would feed into women's sense of guilt surrounding food choices. It would slow them down and make them chew more thoroughly. It would make them REALLY THINK ABOUT every bite and whether it was worth it.

The Flagellation Diet, after all, is what I was raised on.  It's based on the theory that what hurts must be good for you. The antibacterial that stings like a son-of-a-bitch is the one that works best. You know the Listerine is doing its job because the inside of your mouth feels flayed. Even more than that, the Flagellation Diet is based on the theory that everyone at the table of life gets to enjoy life but me, and that makes me better than you.

The problem with this is the same as the problem with real flagellants, those unfortunate medieval monks who thought that beating themselves would end the plague.  It doesn't work that way. Rat catchers and sanitation engineers or possibly microbial evolution cured the plague. Flagellants didn't. I can't say for sure, but I imagine that God looks down on flagellants with infinite pity and maybe a little frustration. God, after all, loves his children, even the stupid ones. We're supposed to be increasing the amount of joy in the world, not decreasing it.

Which is why I guess I'm never going to be the billionaire author of The Flagellation Diet:  Beating your way to a better You. I'm just going to keep eating good food and not eating bad food. It's working pretty well so far.