Abs Start in the Kitchen

In late summer, my husband and I started a new diet called the Belly Fat Cure. One of the baseball moms lost 30 pounds doing the diet only - no exercise - and the change was noticeable. Belly fat is unfortunately my problem. I don't know if you know this but you can have a butt the size of an aircraft carrier and be relatively healthy. But fat around your belly is a killer. It's basically fat surrounding your vital organs, the ones you need to live. And in the end, your vitals need some breathing room or they will suffocate.

So my husband and I both started this diet because we both have the same body type. Thin legs and belly fat. Much less than me in his case, but some. The diet is a modified Atkins plan. You can have small amounts of carbs and sugars but it's pretty limited. For example, you can have 15g of sugar per day. My oh so healthy greek yogurt with fruit was 17g. By breakfast, I'd had my entire day's allotment of sugars.

You can however eat sausage, eggs, and use half and half in your coffee. No fake sugars though. That was eye opening. No blue or pink or yellow ones. Instead we use something called stevia. It's a "natural" diet sugar if there is such a thing. Stevia has also come under scrutiny but so far has not been shown to cause cancer in lab animals. We have to drink these sodas called Zevia that you can only buy at Whole Foods for a mere $5 per six pack. Obviously we are drinking limited amounts of Zevia.

By the way, I am still planning to walk into Whole Foods and ask for Velveeta.

My husband has obviously lost weight on this diet. His pants are too loose, he has to cinch his belt tighter. I, on the other hand, seem to have lost weight in my ass area. As I've said before I already have my Uncle David's ass, sliding downhill as it were. That's okay, I'm fine with having a smallish butt, BUT I thought I was going to lose major belly fat. That's what the book said. In that department I've seen less change and I am definitely not cured. I have noticed some improvements like my arms seem to be shrinking? But I still have a belly and it's staring at me like, "What the heck? How much more stevia do I have to endure?"

My husband works at a digital advertising agency. One of the big ones. I've only seen the place from a distance. But I'm guessing it's pretty hip and cool and sleek, etc. The atmosphere at work is like the show Entourage except my husband is in his 40's, not his 30's. And this agency is in Connecticut, not LA. Still everyone who works there must be glib, wear metrosexual clothes, be proficient in snark. Knowing flash or HTML is on the list too but not as high as glib.

One of the men who works with my husband is an MMA guy in training. He's twenty-something, single and on a mission to be buff. He's already there by the way - as far as I can tell. But he wants to be more buff. He wants an 8-pack or a 12-pack, as many visible ab muscles as a human being can have. My husband has conferred with him about our diet and exercise - I'm not exercising at all so that was a very short convo. And joy of joys, the MMA guy has agreed to put together a workout program that won't require us to go to the gym!

I'm picturing us befriending the local butcher so we can punch meat before sunrise.

My excuse for not working out has been I don't have time to make it to the gym. And what a beautiful excuse it's been. I've used it for about a year now. Coincidentally around the same amount of time it took me to grow this belly that I now need to cure.

On vacation this week, I'm showing off my belly. I used to hide it from the sun. Then I started traveling and I noticed how many people outside of the US just let it all hang out. Sometimes the women are topless and their bellies and boobs become one big area. That's my plan now. Let it all hang out. Every once in a while I'll say something in the limited German I remember from sixth grade to pretend I'm not from here, and it's okay for me to wear a bikini with my belly on display.

Haben Sie einen krankenschwester? Was machten Sie? (Do you have a nurse? What are you making / doing?)

Wait. Sorry I got distracted again. Okay so coming full circle back to the name of this blog, Abs Start in the Kitchen. As we were sitting by the pool this week I asked my husband what his MMA friend would say about my belly. And he said, "Abs start in the kitchen."

And then my husband said, "I bet you're going to write a blog about this, aren't you?" And he was right.