The Twenty-One Gram Diet

MARCH 2020

I HAVE JUST FINISHED A question-and-answer session with a class of fourth graders. My cohosting duties on the Food Network’s Kids Baking Championship has made me popular with this age group, and I gave these kids permission to ask me anything. However, the first question—What four adjectives best describe you?—made me wish I hadn’t been so casual about the defining parameters.

Don’t laugh. The problem was that I momentarily couldn’t remember the difference between an adjective and an adverb.

That was lightweight stuff compared to when a girl asked what made me happy. Leave it to a kid to cut right to the chase.

I couldn’t say, “Well, shoot, I’ve been asking myself that same question for years, especially lately.” But I came close. I considered explaining that these things seemed to have changed depending on my age, whether I was nine years old like them, or in my twenties or thirties, or at my present age of sixty. However, as various answers came to mind, I realized that the things that make me happy, truly happy, haven’t changed at all over the years: a hug from my son, a grilled cheese sandwich on a rainy day, reading a good book, seeing one of my cats napping on the windowsill, pretty flowers, falling asleep outside while I am reading, the fresh air in spring and fall, a walk along the beach, laughing till I have to run to the bathroom . . .

If anything, I explained to the kids, the list hasn’t changed as much as it has expanded to include seeing my son in love, getting a surprise text from Ed, feeling healthy, learning a new tip or trick from one of my insanely talented chef friends . . . stuff like that.

Later, it crosses my mind that I didn’t say that being thin or weighing less makes me happy. It never entered my mind. How about that, huh? Food for thought, I think.

Years of dieting and cleansing and the like has left me hungry, and what I’m hungry for can’t be found in the refrigerator or pantry. What I want is for my soul to be fed with compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, and love. This is what I am talking about when I say that the joy I want to feel is not so much an end goal as it is a value and an intention that I have to realign with over and over again.

Joy is not going to come to me. I have to intentionally pursue it every day. I know I am repeating myself. But that’s what it takes. Constant reminding. Joy, happiness, and gratitude have to be pursued. They don’t automatically find us. We have to find them. I feel the same way about feeding my soul. I have to be intentional about it. Every day. The way I try to sit in the sun with a book for a few minutes or stare out at the vista from my kitchen window and marvel at the beauty of the mountains in the distance or literally stop to smell the roses. This is food for the soul. It’s necessary for my well-being. It’s something all of us need and crave, I think.

Where is this diet? Where is an easy-to-follow recipe for feeding our souls so our stomachs don’t constantly tell us that we’re hungry? How do we eat to feel good rather than eat so we don’t feel?

I have come up with a seven-day program to nourish the soul. It’s my Twenty-One Gram Diet.

At the moment we die, we supposedly weigh twenty-one grams less than we did when our heart was still pumping blood to our extremities and our bodies were still drawing breaths. The twenty-one grams is said to be the weight of our soul. This has helped me to arrive at a powerful realization: No matter how much weight I lose, I still feel heavy. But when my soul is nourished, I feel lighter no matter what the number is on the scale.

So have I and everybody else who has started a diet or a cleanse been going about this the wrong way? Have we been brainwashed into ignoring logic? Shouldn’t we be feeding our souls rather than trying to shrink our waistlines?

Consider this: Things that weigh ten pounds include a small dog, a mini microwave, a bowling ball, a large bag of sugar, a sack of potatoes, and three two-liter bottles of soda. Things that weigh one gram include a paper clip, a quarter teaspoon of sugar, a thumbtack, a piece of gum, any US bill. It should be easier to add a paper clip than lose a mini microwave.

This is not a replacement for morning affirmations, ten-minute sun salutations, breathing exercises, stretching, yoga, meditation, absorbing the energy from crystals, or spoiling yourself silly by starting your day with a delicious omelet if that’s what you are into. If you want to skip dessert or yell at or with Rachel Maddow, go ahead. I am not trying to interfere.

What I am suggesting is that you adopt this diet as an addition to your daily routine. Like you do when you take your vitamins, carve out at least a few minutes every day for this diet. You can spend more time on it if you have it, but keep in mind that the goal is to make sure your soul is full.

Day One: Permission

On the first day of the Twenty-One Gram Diet, give yourself permission to feel good and see all your good, wonderful, and positive qualities instead of focusing on the things you consider shortcomings, flaws, and imperfections. Give yourself permission to turn off the news and turn on something you enjoy. Give yourself permission to play your favorite music, take a walk, call a friend, read a good book or even a trashy magazine. Give yourself permission to step out of your comfort zone and do something crazy. Or give yourself permission to cozy up inside your comfort zone and chill. Give yourself permission to expand rather than contract.

Day Two: Compassion

On the second day, recognize the struggle and suffering you have endured for years. The battle to feel good about yourself and see yourself as unique and attractive and deserving of love and affection when you have spent years and maybe most of your life telling yourself that you are not worthy or a failure or labeling yourself as bad or fat or ugly or unlovable is real. The pain is real. Acknowledge it. Cry if you need to. Go back to the original source of the hurt. You may never have told anyone about it, but you know what it is. Or maybe you don’t know what it is, but the feeling is there. Replay it in your mind. See yourself. See the incident for what it was. Recognize that you have spent a lifetime judging yourself because of it. This judgment has influenced your behavior. It hasn’t just been unhealthy. It has also been unkind, unnecessary, and unproductive. Now say, “Enough already.” Going forward, treat yourself with compassion and understand that you aren’t perfect—and that nobody else is perfect, either. That’s what it means to be human. Everyone carries around some form of hurt and suffering. Take time to treat everyone the way you want to be treated: with compassion. And treat yourself that way, too.

Day Three: Forgiveness

I remember hearing Maya Angelou refer to forgiveness as a gift. “Forgive everybody,” she said. I know what she meant when she called it “one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.” To me, forgiveness is the way we shine light on the darkness. On day three, give yourself this gift. Forgive yourself. Allow yourself the grace of space. When you forgive, you free yourself from the anger, hurt, blame, foolishness, criticism, and stupidity that you carry around inside. By letting go, you actually feel lighter. I work at this, and I have experienced the lightness that comes from forgiving people, and especially from forgiving myself, so I keep working at it. Little by little, I chip away at that big wall of blame and hurt that has encircled me. It opens me up. It lets in the light. It gets rid of the darkness.

Day Four: Gratitude

On the fourth day, take time to stop and think about everything you have as opposed to everything you don’t have, starting with the miracle that we exist and the opportunity that this provides us to experience what I think is the best part of being human—giving and receiving love and affection. My role model is Betty White. I have never seen or met anyone more full of gratitude than my former Hot in Cleveland costar. She greets each day with an appreciation of everything she has been through and an enthusiasm for the day, including her two favorite indulgences, vodka and hot dogs. The woman literally glows. Take your cues from her. Be grateful for your health. Be grateful for having enough to eat and maybe, I hope, having some to share. Be grateful for having a home to keep you warm and safe. Be grateful for the chance to help someone else experience the same things. Think about the last time you laughed and loved. You’re smiling now. Everything else is gravy.

Day Five: Kindness

Remember the way you smiled the day before? On the fifth day, do something that puts that same kind of smile on someone else.

Day Six: Joy

On the sixth day, step outside—literally outside—and outside of yourself. Experience other people, the world, the universe. You will have to figure out the specifics for yourself, but that is what I try to do. I try to turn off everything in my head that says, Me, me, me; and if I truly make the effort and am lucky and alert, I will inevitably feel joy.

Day Seven: Love

If you make the effort on the previous six days, the seventh will be effortless. You will have added the weight of a paper clip and feel like you lost a mini microwave. Without having to do anything, love will find you. Love enters an open heart, and when you do this for six days, love will enter. And there’s a danger in this. Once in a while, you will feel hurt. But as I am learning, the love is there more often than not.

Disclaimer

I make no promises. I offer no before and after pictures as evidence that this diet will put you in a smaller dress size. But it will put you in a better frame of mind. It does me. While I am far from perfect and my days can suck just like anybody else’s, and I still hate sitting in front of my magnifying mirror when I pluck my eyebrows, I am learning that by intentionally practicing these values, one per day, I am usually able to treat myself better and love others more and open myself up to the possibility of experiencing joy immediately. In this moment. At this age. In this body.

That’s what I want to feel.