CHAPTER 2: FOOD John has been on a diet now for four weeks and has already lost five kilos. His new diet is very strict, but he follows it extremely closely. For breakfast, he eats a small bowl of oatmeal cooked in the microwave with either water or milk. He also has a serving of fruit with his oatmeal, like a banana, strawberries, or a mango. And of course, what breakfast would be complete without a cup of coffee? For lunch, John prefers to eat a light meal to maximize his weight loss, so he usually has a spinach salad. On top of his salad, he puts carrots, onions, cucumbers, croutons, and nuts. Dressing tends to have a lot of calories, so he adds just a small dab. If the salad does not fill him up, he'll also eat some soup. Usually, it's tomato soup, as that is his favorite. For dinner, there are a few options available, depending on what he wants that night. He can have a pasta and vegetable mix cooked in olive oil and Italian spices. Or he can have rice and beans topped with a garlic and onion sauce. He can also have a Thai curry dish with kale and sweet potato. All choices require some cooking, but it's worth it in the end. All was going pretty well for John until the fifth week started. Like many of us, he works a stressful and demanding job, so there wasn't always enough time to prepare every meal. His energy started dropping, while his appetite and hunger started rising rapidly. Soon, the small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast became the large bowl of sugary cereal. And the black coffee was now drowned in a high calorie coffee creamer. The salad for lunch turned into fast food meals, since John was always running late for meetings. Originally, he was drinking water with this meal as well as every meal, but now it was soda. And dinner was just hopeless after a while. John would come home exhausted from work and could not bring himself to cook. Pizza, ice cream, french fries, and snacks were much easier choices and helped take his mind off all the anxiety. Several weeks later, he had regained all five kilos he had lost and even gained an additional five more kilos on top of that! The failure made John feel even worse. He vowed, for his next diet, that he would be even more strict and eat even less food. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize that the massive drop in calories is causing an equally massive dip in his energy levels and cravings for junk food. It would take many attempts before he finally learned that starting his diet with lots of healthy foods and slowly cutting down calories would be the wiser move.