Lettuce for Breakfast

Everyone has a basic value that determines how they react and behave.  It’s at the core of every decision they make, and is hopefully the quality they will be remembered for.  Here is mine:  I don’t eat lettuce for breakfast.

Seriously, I don’t care what country you live in, what religion you are, or how strict your diet is, you do not eat lettuce for breakfast!  It’s just wrong on so many levels.  It offers nothing of value to the meal, it has no flavor, no nutrients, and no color.  I mean what is the point of eating the stuff?

And why is it that whenever you’re on a diet you have to eat lettuce at every meal, till you’d rather run into the wall screaming.  When did lettuce become the icon of healthy eating?  Who decided it was the magic food around which all diets should revolve?  Why is it we have to torture ourselves with this poor excuse for a vegetable and what is so flippin great about it?  It’s not like it is so delicious and satisfying that you don’t feel the need to eat anything else is it?

“Fill up on salad” is probably the biggest diet myth heard today.  Whoever wrote that (and I bet it wasn’t Shakespeare) is laughing all the way to the bank.  There is nothing filling about a few pieces of insipid green, water filled, fiber strands.  In fact there’s hardly even any fiber or carbs in it, so what the heck am I actually eating?   It tastes like a poor cousin of grass, and goes slimy the instant it touches anything hot. 

 The reality is, we use lettuce to hide the fact we’re eating nothing.  Too familiar a sight is the overweight dieter at a social gathering with loaded plate of lettuce adamant they are ‘stuffed’, saying “yes I tried the beef”, while frantically looking under the lawn clippings on their plate for the sliver of protein allowed on the latest craze diet to attack their common sense.  For at least saving us from having to tell Miss ‘none of your business’ that we are trying again to lose weight, I give lettuce it’s due.

Self trickery is another common use for lettuce of course, whereby the plate loaded with salad is supposed to make us think we’re eating a lot while our rumbling tummy protests otherwise.  Give us some credit!   Today’s consumer is smart enough to realize that not only will eating a whole paddock of lettuce make them choke and gag, it will NOT under any circumstance make them feel full.  It will only make them hate lettuce even more! 

Surely it’s better to have nothing on the side than to stuff salad sown your throat like a participant in some kind of hideous Fear Factor challenge.  In fact, having to eat a whole lettuce would be enough to make me walk away from the prize.  It’s just not worth it.  Everyone has a limit and that’s mine.  Live cockroaches? – sure, boiled pig rectum? – no worries, moldy fish milkshake? –  make mine a double!  But eating a whole lettuce – forget it!  There are some things I just won’t do.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh, probably even fanatical, but no fancy recipe or special dressing is going to change my mind.   I don’t eat lettuce for breakfast.

No, I'm not Pregnant!

That’s it.  I can’t take it any more – I am just going to make a t-shirt that says “no I’m not pregnant – just fat”.  I’m sure it would save both “Miss Nosey-pants” and me a lot of embarrassment.

 The first few times I was asked this evil, wicked, straight-from-the-pit-of-hell question I was completely confused and shocked in a naïve innocent way, never of course thinking I was actually big enough for people to think I was pregnant.  After a while and having been asked more than once in the same day, I learnt to graciously brush over it so the (rude) questioner didn’t feel bad.  After yet a few more times I started saying “no I’m not due, but I’ll never wear this top again!”.  I mean, why should I be the only one who’s embarrassed? 

Of course you can always say you are due in 4 weeks, but only if you’re sure you won’t be seeing that person ever again.  I found this answer good for people on a bus, in another town, with distant forgetful aunties, and in the checkout line.   However, after many more of these embarrassing encounters, and now just flipping sick of it, I have learned to put a surprised, and devastated look on my face and say  “No, I’m not pregnant, just fat!”.  There’s no quicker way to shut a rude person up.

For the record, and as a sound piece of advice – DO NOT, under any circumstance ask a big woman, or in fact any woman, when she is due unless you are absolutely, totally, 150 percent, willing to bet large sums of money, can see the head crowning certain that she is pregnant.  Just don’t do it.  It’s none of your business anyway!  If she wanted you to know she was pregnant she would have called you, or sent one of those ‘I’m having a baby, come to party where you can give me presents, and smell chocolate in a diaper’ cards.

I mean it’s right up there with saying “man, have you lost weight?  Last time we met you  were a whale and now you look great, you must have lost a ton!”  to someone who just bought a better fitting pair of jeans.  Don’t do it!

This whole pregnant look is a major downside of being one who seems to just get bigger and bigger around the waist.  You know the type – slim legs, slender ankles, no boobs, and a tummy that’s surely holding a set of quintuplets.  Forget apple or pear shaped – I'm talking rat shaped, with a huge body and tiny legs that can’t possibly support that girth can they?  Of course I don’t have the tail, but since turning thirty I definitely have a ‘whiskers’ issue, which left unchecked could reach walrus proportions. – Please God never let my eyesight go!

I can never decide if this rat shaped body is easier or harder than the other body type which can be identified as having a flat tummy, enormous boobs which make all shirts hang nicely, and thighs and butts that make wearing pants not only difficult, but just a really bad idea.   I obviously can’t wear skirts for the same reason, and a whole lot of other reasons which might include it being mistaken for a tent in which a whole village could take shelter.

One of my friends has this other body shape, which means although we are the same ‘size’, we can never wear each others clothes, and she never gets asked if she is pregnant.  My pants have to be huge to fit around my waist, then hang baggy off my thighs, and she can’t get them over her hips but needs a piece of rope to hold them in to her waist.   Perhaps if I was rich enough to have them taylor made I’d have the perfect pair of pants, but until then I’ll just keep pretending I purposely chose, and am loving this ‘hammer-time’ look.

One thing I’ve learned for sure is this; whatever I hate about my body, someone else wants, and whatever I wish I had, someone else hates.  We are all different, unique, handmade, one-of-a-kind creations, and every inch of us is loved by the same God who placed the stars in the sky.  For that reason alone we can boldly face the world with a smile that will overshadow any rat-like body or baby bearing hips.

So for now and until the next time I hear “so when are you due?” I’ll try to remember to smile, smile, smile, - maybe then she won’t notice when I smack her one!