I return home and complete the form, which asks me whether I have a number of conditions including diabetes, kidney, heart or thyroid disease (no across the board, blessedly), when my last period was, what I tend to eat on a typical day, and what I weigh. That's not so easy to answer, as I have not stepped on the scale in literally years. I haul it out, find some of the bars on its digital display are missing, so that I can't tell whether I weigh 233 lbs., or 223. (The difference seems hugely important, somehow.)
It also asks how important the diet is to me, on a scale of 1 to 10. I mark 9, figuring that 10 is only for things that are ultimately important to me--my writing, my sons, life-and-death things.
Returning for my appointment, I am ushered into an elegant, dimly-lit waiting room, handed a folder full of information and told my coach will be busy for a few. What's in the folder very much matches what I've already learned from Melissa. Basically, for the first phase of the diet, you cut carbs massively so as to lose fat, but eat a lot of low-fat/low-carb protein to retain muscle--and in the process re-program your pancreas.
Quoting Dr. Tran Tien Chanh, who originated the program: "The cause of most weight issues in a modern society is insulin dysfunction. A diet grossly disproportionate in its share of saturated fats and sugars, such as in breads, cereals, muffins, cakes, pastries, pasta, pizza, rice, corn--very much like the North American diet--causes the pancreas to produce an overabundance of insulin, which stays in the system and puts the blood sugar level in a negative balance."
This over-production leads to low blood sugar, which produces sugar cravings and weight gain. But insulin is not only the sugar-regulating hormone. I quote further: "It is also the hormone that facilitates the transport of fat into the fat cells. Even worse, it locks the fat in the fat cell, preventing it from being used as a source of energy." In other words, you get trapped in a vicious circle that spirals your weight upwards.
From this, I understand how the diet works. But there is another blessing in it for me too. I can let go the idea that I had got to the weight I had by piggishness, laziness, selfishness or lack of will-power, and even less condemnatory reasons such as low self-esteem, insecurity or stress. I was simply raised to eat like a typical North American. My diet as an adult is essentially no different from my diet as a child: carbs for breakfast in the form of toast or porridge or pancakes, carbs for lunch in the form of sandwiches and fruit, and carbs for dinner as the rice or potato or corn that came with the meat and veg. It's just that, unlike some people, I didn't have the metabolism to not fall into the vicious circle. Comfort eating I could have done with lettuce.
They say a diet makes you feel better about yourself. This one's making me feel better about myself already, and I'm not even on it.
§
Jo-Ann, my coach, comes in and greets me after I've waited 20 minutes. She is whipcord slender with long copper-brown hair in enhanced waves, dark eyes and a cheerily professional manner. I tell her that I must go by 3:15 so as to be home before my sons are. She says, "No problem, I'll get you out of here by three."
Thus she must go through all the information at lightning speed. First thing she does is crosses out my "9" and replaces it with a "10". "What do you do with people who mark, say, 2 or 3?" I ask her, though I can't imagine it happens that often (why would they bother even filling out the form?) "Tell them they're not qualified for the program," she says. "They don't have to pay the consultation fee again. I tell them to come back when they're ready."
Jo-Ann whips down through my form, happy to see that I don't have the aforementioned conditions, and also that I drink 10-12 glasses of water a day (mostly in the form of mostly-decaf tea, gulped compulsively as I write). When she looks at my typical eating day, she does a graph, her artist's impression of my insulin level. "You're getting it up high in the morning, keeping it high all day and only letting it come down at night," she tells me. I will have to get some bloodwork done, she tells me, filling out and handing me a requisition form.
There is a weirdness or two. She personalizes insulin, talking about "him" creeping back up on you, "him" causing trouble, and so on. Also, when I look at the list of permitted meats and see lamb, which I love, is not on it, I ask her if it's allowed anyway, and she insists that veal is lamb, rather than the meat of young calves, as I am reasonably certain it is, and thus my question doesn't get answered. (Jo-Ann, if you're reading this, see here.) But these are trifling matters, nothing to throw me off.
After more rapid-fire education on how the diet works and how to work it, including Jo-Ann's own recipes for soups and other dishes, comes the most horrific moment: stepping on the weigh-scale. It shows 243. My home scale was flattering me, apparently worried that I might decide to go after it with a hammer in revenge. She also measures me around the chest, waist and hips, but doesn't tell me what those measurements are. Just as well; I don't want to know.
Then she asks me what my weight-loss goal is. "A hundred pounds," I tell her. I was originally thinking 80 or 90, but that was when I thought my scale was accurate.
"Whoa," she says. "Maybe we just want to make it getting you down to 200 first?"
"We'll get me down to 200, and then I'll just keep going," I said. "It's a hundred." I like big goals. I always have. They inspire me more than little ones. She accordingly marks it on my form.
At about three we head into Medispa's Ideal Protein pantry. Between her knowledge and my likes and dislikes, we pick out seven days' worth of supplies for me and slam-dunk them into an Ideal Protein shopping bag. Having told her I like a late-night snack with crunch, I gratefully receive a bag of IP cheesies and a bag of IP BBQ chips... not what I would consider typical diet foods. Liking eggs in the morning as a rule, I ask her to make it seven IP omelets, which she does. I also decide to try some soups and puddings and fruit drink mixes. From the supplement shelf she adds four bottles; you have to take them to replace the micronutrients you aren't going to get from the foods that are forbidden.
At 3:15, I am at Medispa's cash register. I get handed what is perhaps my most cogent motivator: a bill for $377.65.
§
I have, however, purposely recounted the appointment out of order, saving my favourite part for last.
When it comes time to set my goal, Jo-Ann asks me what my desired weight is, and I am not sure what to tell her. I weighed about 125 when I started studying karate in 1985, and almost instantly put on about 10 pounds of muscle, so I considered my "fighting weight" 135. Hence the hundred-pound goal. But I had not been quite svelte then.
"I wasn't even really slim when I was a teenager," I tell Jo-Ann. "I always had this little pot-belly. So I don't actually know what's possible."
She looks at me with a sparkle--or is it a spark?--in her eye.
"Anything is possible," she says.
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