By Tom Peeling,Cox News Service I graduated from a slim to a husky somewhere between first and fifth grades. I thought it was just a natural progression for my age. I didn't realize it meant I was growing out faster than growing up. I've lost 30-35 pounds by dieting three different times during the past 10 years or so. I've always put it back on within a year after losing it. Early last year, I was making daily trips to the hospital and nursing home for 10 weeks while my mother was ill, and eating fast food constantly to save time. Say all you want about fast-food joints serving salads now, but it's hard to eat them while driving. A burger and fries, that's a different story. The pounds were just piling on. After my mother's death, my clothes were feeling much too tight, so I stepped on the bathroom scale, and it hit slightly more than 230 pounds. I was the perfect weight for someone 6-feet-6. The problem is that I'm 5-feet-11. So I talked to my wife, and we decided it was dieting time again. She wanted to lose 10 pounds, and I wanted to lose that elusive 30-35 pounds again. We followed the same diet we had used before from a 1987 book, "The 35-Plus Diet for Women." There's a men's diet section in it, too. It's basically Weight Watchers without the points system. Ten weeks later, we took a hiatus for Thanksgiving and Christmas after she had lost 10 pounds and I had lost 23. We're in a holding pattern now. She's content where she is, but I want to lose another 10 or so. What's the secret? With both of us working, one son at home and one in college, plus various hobbies and organizations we belong to, there's little time for exercising. We walk occasionally, but not often. The secret, I believe, is no fried foods, virtually no fat and sugar in the diet, and lots of cooked and raw vegetables, plus fruit. We limit the amount of beans, potatoes and rice because of the carbohydrates, and we cook a lot of marinated chicken and pork on the grill, plus some occasional fish. We limit ourselves to two tablespoons of fat a day. That virtually eliminates any butter or margarine, and leaves only a small dab of salad dressing daily. Breakfast is usually a small bowl of bran flakes with raisins and low-fat milk. Lunch is a salad with a limited amount of dressing. Dinner is a piece of grilled meat, two vegetables (keeping away from high-starch ones like beans and corn), and some fresh or canned fruit. As for snacks, carrots and apples have become our best friends, with an occasional dozen or so pretzel sticks thrown in for good behavior. We've cheated more than we should during Christmas. Who could resist with nine kinds of homemade cookies in the house? But we're learning to eat in moderation. And the pants fit a whole lot better now. I've learned that french fries can still be eaten occasionally, but they're not a daily requirement. Tom Peeling writes for The Palm Beach Post.
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