Other Scenes

Editors’ Note: This week’s Other Scenes is written by Maryanne Raphael and appeared originally in the UPS paper Other Scenes, published by John Wilcock.

WHAT’S A 4-LETTER WORD BEGINNING WITH F? If your answer to the above question was food, you’d probably rather eat greasy fried chicken than low-calorie cock or pussy, and chances are you’re overweight and could profit from the following reducing hints.

1. Don’t smoke grass before meals. It can open your appetite and lead to overeating.

2. Start your day with a good breakfast. It’ll step up your metabolism. Make breakfast or lunch your heaviest meal so you’ll have a chance to burn up food during the day.

3. Mash up an extra ripe banana and mix it with skim milk to use on cereal and you won’t need sugar.

4. Build each meal around a high protein food such as eggs, lean meat, fish, cottage cheese or poultry.

5. Start meals with a drink of water, then salad or bouillon or an orange or grapefruit to cut your appetite. Never begin a meal with bread.

6. Beware of canned meats. Besides tasting dull, they’re loaded with fat. Make your own stew, hash, chili, soup and you’ll save 2 to 3 times the calories.

7. When eaten with meat, fish or chicken, a potato or slice of bread helps fill you up but a second boosts calories without satisfying much hunger.

8. Buy yourself a low calorie cookbook and learn to cook a variety of nonfattening foods. Experiment with unfamiliar low calorie dishes and try less fattening ways of cooking your favorites.

9. When cooking from a regular cookbook, use less fat than the recipe calls for and replace regular milk with skim milk.

10. Use stiffly beaten egg whites to replace flour in muffins, cakes and cookies.

11. Avoid too many fats, sweets, poor quality baked goods. Don’t have fattening foods such as doughnuts, chocolate or potato chips in the house.

12. Be careful of hidden calories. Don’t eat fried foods except on special occasions.

13. Instead of cooking vegetables with butter or fat, use a bouillon cube or herbs and spices such as onions, garlic, cumin, celery salt, paprika, basil, marjoram, thyme, oregano, saffron, curry, horseradish.

14. Use lemon juice or vinegar on salads.

15. Keep radishes, cucumbers, raw cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and celery all prepared in plain view in your refrigerator for quick snacks.

16. Drink unsweetened fruit juice, vegetable juice or skim milk instead of soft drinks or hot chocolate. Tomato juice is more filling and less fattening than most other juices.

17. Make mild shakes with skim milk. Use 2 tablespoons of flavoring (vanilla, banana, maple, rum or caramel) a dash of cinnamon, ginger or nutmeg and 2 tablespoons of dry skim milk and 1 pint liquid skim milk.

18. Have sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds or butterless popcorn with garlic salt instead of greasy nuts.

19. Very ripe fruits can replace pastries and rich deserts. If you do buy canned fruits, make sure they’re packed in their own juice or water with no sugar. If you can’t find these, wash the fruit and throw away the syrup.

20. When you serve fruit cup or berries, sprinkle them with unsweetened pineapple, apple or orange juice.

21. If you must have sweets, suck a life saver or lollipop. They’re less fattening than chocolate candy and they last longer.

22. Make open faced sandwiches and use mustard (5 calories per teaspoon) instead of mayonnaise (37 calories per teaspoon).

23. If you have noodles, macaroni or spaghetti, use a small amount of sauce that you make yourself with tomatoes, onions and peppers, and lean meat.

24. Buy a frying pan with nonstick finish to scramble eggs or pan-fry meats with little or no fat.

25. Let food cool before using butter or margarine and you’ll use less.

26. Trim fat from meat, and remember that the skin is the most fattening part of turkey or chicken.

27. Eat slowly, chew each bite as many times as possible and you’ll find you eat less.

28. Hunger tends to strike in the late afternoon, so have a quick snack between 4 and 5 to avoid overeating at dinner.

29. When you feel hungry between meals, have a drink of water. We often mistake thirst for hunger.

30. Never eat anything, no matter how appetizing when you’re not hungry.

31. Never eat food just to avoid wasting it.

32. Watch what you drink. It’s easy to drink as many calories as you eat. Beer and wine are less fattening than most other alcoholic drinks.

33. Talk at meals. The more you talk the less you eat.

34. Try eating 6 small meals-a day and chances are you’ll stop overeating and get used to eating less at each meal.

35. Try fasting for a few days at the beginning of a diet to help train your stomach and appetite to get full on less.

36.- Keep active. Buy a dog and walk him.

37. Beware of foods marked dietetic that don’t state calorie content. Some are very fattening.

38. If you serve fattening food to non-dieters, serve something you don’t like.

39. In a restaurant, tell the waitress not to bring gravy and order a la carte so you won’t be tempted to have dessert because it comes with the meal.

40. Fuck as often as possible. Not only is it a cure for boredom which often leads to overeating, but it’s good exercise and most people use about 600 calories worth of energy.

41. And here’s good news for overweight chicks who dig their lover’s sperm, but are afraid of those excess calories. Sperm is the perfect diet food, high in protein, low in calories and it comes in such a groovy container.