The Las Vegas Detox Diet

Before I fall off the wagon and eat a whole coconut cream pie, I suppose I’ll explain why I am on a detox diet following my trip to Las Vegas.

Newsflash: Las Vegas is an astonishingly unhealthy place. In fact, if you truly hate yourself, just pack up your bags and move there right now, get a job in a casino and live in one of the teeny tiny concrete apartments on the edge of the desert where you can enjoy the sounds of cars whizzing by at all hours.

But I digress…

I truly enjoyed Angela’s company while in Vegas. She is one of those gals with a sunny, bright disposition who peppers her conversations with chuckles and laughs. She seems to find almost everything amusing. She’s also up for trying most anything in the way of fun or adventure. Here’s Angela:

The thing about Angela is that she prefers not to spend a lot of time or money in Vegas on silly things like food. She prefers to play poker while in Vegas. So with the exception of a proper sit-down dinner following our outing to Zumanity, my diet consisted mostly of coffee, sandwiches, croissants and, in my misguided bid for at least something approaching a healthy meal, a bizarre kind of boiled fish concoction with overly-steamed vegetables. THAT’S a meal that was donated right to the trash bin.

So, add to this culinary nightmare the bad casino air, light deprivation and noise pollution and you’re starting to get the picture of what I mean by unhealthy.

Sure, we got out and walked one morning. I wanted exercise and Angela, being the adventurer that she is, turned it into a walk with a purpose–hiking on foot from the Venetian to the Sahara where she recalled seeing an attraction where you could drive a Humvee over some obstacle course. Nevertheless, we did walk.

Still, I was feeling very out of sorts. I missed my garden. I missed the quiet. I missed my family and little dogs. I missed the fresh air. And I REALLY missed exercise. To walk in Vegas is to hike along the strip, which is like doing exercise in a gas chamber.

Then, here was the clincher.

I ran into Lady Diana. No, I’m not delusional. I’m talking about her wax image at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. (Thrifty Angela finagled us free tickets.)

See, although I wasn’t an official royalty watcher, I was always interested what Diana was wearing because we were always the same height and weight.

“Wow, she looks good,” I would tell myself, figuring that if she looked that good, I probably did too. Okay, it was perhaps some faulty logic, but there you have it.

Well, I hate to say it, but when I stood next to Diana, I had the startling realization that I could probably, maybe, perhaps not fit into that size 6 blue sequined gown she was wearing. Crap. When did that happen?

Well, so there you have it. Bad air. Bad food. No exercise. And then to realize I can’t wear the size 6 blue sequined gown. Not that I want to wear blue sequined gowns in the garden anyway, but I might want to dress up when I water the indoor plants or something–you know, just for a change of pace and to brighten my mood.

So, here we are at the Las Vegas Detox Diet. I invented it myself. (Okay, it’s mostly common sense.) It consists of:

– Drink a glass of water every single hour you’re awake, starting when you get up in the morning. Fizzy water doesn’t count because it usually has sodium, which defeats the purpose. I have found also that drinking this glass of water every hour reduces the hunger pangs.

– Eat ONLY fresh vegetables, fruits and small amounts of cheese and nuts. Avoid breads, pastas and other starchy foods.

– Avoid alcohol and large slabs of chocolate.

– Take a mega-vitamin.

– Drink green tea in the afternoon and evening (in addition to the water).

– Avoid snacks between meals.

– In addition, run (or walk if you have to) a full hour each day.

Now, I absolutely LOVE to run and really do try. It’s just that I-can’t-breathe-and-my-heart-is-going-to-pop feeling that I don’t really like. So I alternate running and walking. Walk north up the driveway. Run south down the driveway. Walk north up the driveway. Run south down the driveway. Do that twelve times and an hour is gone. It’s an important part of the Las Vegas Detox Diet, so don’t skip this part.

Don’t worry. This won’t become a blog about my quest to get into that size 6 blue sequined gown. But I might consider a series of gardening exercises–stretch while you weed, flower pot weight lifting, aerobic tilling–that kind of thing.

Ciao!