For breakfast, I had a protein bomb -- pulled pork, quinoa salad, and Greek salad dripping with dressing and chunks of creamy, white feta cheese. For dinner yesterday, I munched on two sweet Italian sausages slathered with fried onions and peppers.
I love milk -- the fattening whole kind. If you give me olives, I will be a total slut.
Worried for my heart? Horrified at the innocent pigs who died for my meal, as well as the baby cows missing valuable milk? I was. Sometimes, I feared ending up red-faced and dead because of bacon. But since the beginning of this year, I have lost more than 20 pounds.
I'm a low-carber. I will kill animals in order to get thin.
It's not that I didn't try to be vegan. I wanted people like T. Colin Campbell and the denizens of the Huffington Post to like me. I hate killing as a matter of principle. I definitely think of murder when I see bloody meat. For a short time, I tried to subsist on veggies, brown rice and soy milk. Veganism looked gentle to me. I wanted to have clean innards, as well as a clear conscience. I wanted to live to 100.
But where was God when I had to buy porn-star bras? Or when I tried to flirt with a man, only to be rejected? I love being a black woman with curves, but my current shape left me envious of the small-breasted, small-hipped girls. Worse, I had to eat my healthy, saintly vegan diet all alone.
I wished that my metabolism wasn’t so anti-veggie. I wanted to be good to animals.
But try losing weight in the South Bronx, where "vegan" food like rice and beans give you big butts and no Sir-Mix-A-Lot. Try being good when you fear type-2 diabetes.
So recently I banned the starches, and started to eat cheese, chicken, fish, and lots of olives. My waist became smaller. I started to slim down in my face. I could slip into skinny jeans. I ate sausage to get slim -- and so far, I enjoy the results. I'm still chunky. I still have enough of a fat butt to incur the disdain of some insecure frat boy. I still envy the skinny girls. But when I eat a delicious meal of steamed shrimp and broccoli, I don't care.
Like everybody else, I still drink regular Pepsi on occasion. I don't feel guilty about it -- I'm not an Atkins fanatic who wants to ban all carbs everywhere. I believe that you can take low-carb too far. When I hear about extreme low-carbers who eat nothing but steak, eggs, and pork rinds, I think to myself that it is stupid. Fat is not water, unlike what some low-carb freaks tell you.
I believe that a variety of carbs and meat is the best way to eat. Sometimes, I will choose pasta over pork. Right now, I'm sipping coffee with cream and sugar. Not Splenda. Low-carb fanatics would recoil at the sugar, and vegans would hate me for ingesting milk that didn't come from my mom's breasts. I can't please the world. But as I plan to eat steak or tilapia or chunks of cheddar cheese, I imagine myself in a year, prancing about in my size-4 skater skirt. That would be freaking cool.
Some frat boy would probably hit on me, and I would confidently say no. I would enjoy attracting many guys, and enjoy having the power to reject them. That's the best part of being beautiful. It’s not the skinny legs, because beauty standards are not universal, and they can change. But in 2014 America, where slender bodies rule, I plan to enjoy the lack of self-consciousness.
Yes, I will eat meat to get that feeling. I wished that I could do it with with rice and beans and tofu. But you can't always be a friend to animals. Sometimes, you have to focus on the most dangerous animal of all: yourself.
