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There’s a lot of it, mind you, but I sifted through the mediocre and the meh to find the truly, outrageously horrible and it can’t be topped. Not by a skinny friend, your mother nor even an out-of-touch wellness blogger.
The article is called ’50 things to do instead of snacking’ and there’s not a single thing on that list that I’d rather do that digging into a bag of chips.
The suggestions range from terrible to awful; from ‘Imagine the new healthier you’ to ‘Rearrange some furniture’. INSTEAD OF SNACKING.
Other gems included ‘Make a list of your Top Ten Reasons to Lose Weight’ and ‘Balance your chequebook.’ YOU WANT ME TO STOP SNACKING AND ALSO DO MATHS?!
Surely that’s illegal! A dangerous, lethal combination of elements like that can only lead to severe hanger (hanger: hungry and angry).
These suggestions are so ludicrously bad that it actually made me against my will buy Nik Naks so I could munch on something while contemplating what I would actually do to stop snacking.
The answer, naturally, to anyone living in 2015, is to try the Tim Noakes diet. ‘You’ll feel so fresh and full from all the natural fats you won’t want to snack!’ I’ve heard time and time again. Like vegans, the worst things about Bantingers is the incessant need to talk about Banting (though vegans talk about veganing).
I eat a whole packet of kettle corn and you don’t see ME talking about it to everyone that’ll listen, but then again I guess I’m not living proof that Tim Noakes is today’s food Jesus.
Anyway.
I was a Banting enthusiast once – three glorious days of smug self-righteousness while smarmily adding cream to everything. ‘No, it’s GOOD for you’, I’d explain, ‘Tim Noakes SAID so’. My brief and exhilarating journey on the Banting Bandwagon started after I’d gained a few months of ‘I just moved to Joburg and don’t have a gym yet OKAY’ weight.
Eventually, El Boyfriendo got a bit tired of me sadly poking my stomach the whole time and mournfully comparing myself to the Michelin Man and suggested we try out the latest diet trend (or should I say cult?): the Tim Noakes diet. Though I briefly contemplated throttling him with the liquorice I was eating, in the end I realised he might have a point and we could both afford to lose our ‘there’s more of me to love’ weight.
If, somehow, you’ve missed what the Tim Noakes diet is about, let me fill you in. There are two basic rules.
1) CARBS ARE THE DEVIL. You know when you heard other things were the devil? They were wrong. It was carbs the whole time! Everything wrong with the world can be linked back to carbs.
2) FATS ARE SO, SO DELICIOUSLY GOOD. AND ALSO AWESOME. AND REALLY QUITE GREAT ACTUALLY. If something is low fat, throw it away right now. If something is high fat, add more fat to it.
Despite these rather simple rules, El Boyfriendo and I managed to mess it up. Our first mistake, I guess, was reading zero literature on the diet and patching up what we remembered from eating out with Banting friends to various bits of information we inhaled online. Somehow, we ended up eating mostly fruit (channelling Mean Girls: ‘IS FRUIT A CARB?’), and accidentally crashed on the third day with sushi. We threw in the towel that night.
But, as I keep telling myself, and anyone that’ll stay still long enough to listen, a high fat diet just doesn’t work for me. Carbs are like that bad boyfriend I keep breaking up with… and getting back together with too. It’s not an unhealthy cycle, it’s more of a salsa. SALSA AND TORTILLAS.
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