I had a brainstorm the other day for yet another trendy, get-rich scheme. I should publish a new diet book and I will base it on my 18-month-old’s eating habits. It would read something like this:
Day 1:
- Breakfast: handful of Cheerios. Bonus exercise – practice emptying the bowl out on the carpet, bend down and pick up food pieces and place them back in the bowl, then repeat.
- Snack: multi-grain Goldfish crackers. The snack that smiles back. Feel good about eating some smiling friends.
- Lunch: piece of multi-grain toast cut into quarters and dipped into organic blueberry yogurt. Make a note to smear 3/4 of the yogurt on your face and wall.
- Dinner: 15 fistfuls of homemade macaroni and cheese (you are justfied to have a large meal for dinner since your previous 2 meals were kind of light).
Day 2:
- Breakfast: a dozen grapes cut in half, and half a banana cut length-wise.
- Lunch: veggie dog on a bun with a touch of relish and ketchup. Make sure to smash half of it into the table and leave it there.
- Snack: bowl full of dried fruit pieces. Pick out the raisins and leave them under the TV. Jump up and down excitedly as your mother discovers them hours later.
- Dinner: potatoes and chicken and cucumber cut up into teeny-tiny pieces. Chew the chicken bits, get all the flavour out, then spit it out again. Eat ALL the cucumber and pick at the potatoes but then scream until you are excused from the dinner table and go run laps around the living room furniture.
- Snack: a bottle of warm 2% milk. Extra relaxation hint: enjoy drinking this while lying down in a warm bath. Heaven in a bottle.
*All meals to be enjoyed with room temperature filtered water. Sip very slowly through a very narrow straw.
You get the idea. I think if more people followed this diet regime they would be like my son: happy, healthy, muscular but not fat, and in the 90th percentile for growth….. Wait, that last point might not sit well with some people. If that’s the case, then just eliminate the snacks.