Lauren B. Lentini

After hours of research on every diet I could google, I’ve reached one conclusion: They’re all the same. Every last fad diet comes down to the same core principles.

“Eat less, move more.”

Whether you’re calorie-counting, carb-cutting, keto-ing or cooking like a caveman, your goal is to eat less of something. And very few diets don’t suggest some form of exercise. The differences are just details.

My darling husband insists that I don’t need to follow a diet plan to lose weight, but I wanted to find myself a set of rules. “Everything in moderation” tends to turn into a slippery slope for me. I realized somewhere along the way that what I was looking for was to gamify my food. If you can’t eat the fun foods, you can at least make the process of eating healthy more interesting, right? Since I came up empty in my searches for a diet that was designed ground-up for vegetarians, I settled on a game of 21 Day Fix.

21 Day Fix has a cute color-coded system for each food group, and it’s all about balance, portion control, and planning. It comes with a set of colorful measuring cups/containers (or you can buy a knockoff version for $5 like I did). There’s a list of foods that goes into each container. Using a formula based on your weight, you calculate how many times you should fill up each of those containers each day. Add in a 30-minute workout, and you’re winning! Er, losing.

Figuring out how to fit all the containers into the three meals and three snacks that the program prescribes is a high-level strategy game. But it’s forcing me to think about nutrients in a way I haven’t ever done before. (Turns out I don’t eat a lot of protein.) Planning out a whole day’s worth of food the night before is novel, as well, and really helpful in terms of curbing cravings. I hope to expand that to thinking about a whole week’s worth of food at once, before I even go grocery shopping.

Since I’m still following my “depth” principles, and eating by container already requires a number of significant changes to my lifestyle, I’m not going to focus on the exercise piece just yet. It is sloooowly getting warmer out, and I hope to take more walks with the boys, so I’ll be getting a little bit of the “move more” aspect in there anyway. I also got a standing desk at work, so that oughta help. (I burn calories by fidgeting.) Hopefully this will go well enough that I’ll continue it next month (the “21 Day” part refers to how long it takes to change a habit, not how long the diet is supposed to last) and add in the workouts then.

I’m three days into this now, and it’s going pretty well. I’m not doing everything 100% perfectly; I’ve got some “house rules,” if you will. But I’m making big changes and feeling good about them.

I have a bunch of dinner recipes loaded in Cozi (of course), so I start my plan for the day–in a spreadsheet, because I’m a dork–based on what I’m making for dinner. With some small changes, I can still buy my usual veggie sandwich for lunch, but eventually I want to start packing lunch at home. And I’m finally making use of my trusty smoothie blender–I put in all the ingredients the night before and stick it in the fridge, then I add ice in the morning and blend while I’m making my coffee (without creamer).

Eating snacks at certain times takes “do I feel hungry?” out of the equation, and I’m hilariously bad at answering that question honestly. It may be my imagination, but I think the added protein in my diet is giving me more energy. Even washing my containers has benefits–it gives me an excuse to go to the kitchen and step away from my desk for a few minutes without adding empty calories to my day. I do feel like I’m spending my whole night in the kitchen at times, but I hope I can learn to plan ahead and knock some of that work out over the weekend.

Speaking of weekends, it will be interesting to see how I manage those. Weekends are where most of my good habits go to die, but I’m determined.

Here’s hoping I still feel as positive about this after 18 more days…

For SEO purposes, here’s my munchkin with some food–a pizza crust my mom gave him when I wasn’t looking!