People are always telling me that I don’t need to lose weight.  I am frequently asked how I stay so slim.  First of all, I’m not that slim.  I’m just a regular sized person and I don’t think about dieting if I can help it.  Once people start talking about dieting, then you have to think about it, and you start thinking about denying yourself something, then you start to crave something.  The best thing to do is not think about dieting at all.  It just makes you think about food, and then you will want to pig out.  

As some of you may know, recently I was invited by a certain segment of  the dairy industry to attend a week-long all expenses-paid-conference on the topic of fat free cream cheese.  The invitation was an unsuccessful effort to change my negative opinion of fat free cream cheese.  Naturally, during the course of my trip, I was around some people who were dieting and talking about dieting, and the next thing you know, I started thinking about food, and the next thing I noticed was that my clothes seemed to be a bit more snug.

Right then I said to myself, ”Christine, you’ve been in pretty good shape without worrying about dieting.”  I decided that I needed to quit thinking about dieting and food, but it’s sort of like trying NOT to think about a pink elephant.   You weren’t going to think about a pink elephant, but if someone tells you NOT to think about it, you just can’t help thinking about it.

I had to get back to my old ways of not worrying about diets and food.  I used to eat when I was hungry, and not eat when I was not hungry, and not worry about it too much in between, but after being around this crowd of dieters, I was developing  cravings for food.  In particular, I was developing a craving for coconut sticky rice.  During the conference some of the more sensible attendees and I snuck out to a restaurant called Ruby Foo's and had, among other things, coconut sticky rice.   After being around the bunch of dieters at that conference, I felt as if I should be  constantly denying myself foods like coconut sticky rice.  I was starting to think about food at illogical times of the day. 

By this time, I was back home, 1,359.12 miles from Ruby Foo's.  I’m sure there is a place nearby that would serve  coconut sticky rice, but I made some myself after a trip to my trusty Oriental Market.  My coconut sticky rice was not nearly as good as it was at Ruby Foo's, but it did the trick.  I know that I can have a reasonable facsimile of coconut sticky rice if I want to, and when I’m finished writing this article, I don’t have to think about coconut sticky rice and that’s how it should be.