Waist Management

Mario Mendoza is not in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

And he never will be.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not a legend.

Nine years in the majors.

And he left with a cliche named after him.

The Mendoza Line.

It’s very simple.

Hit under .200 and you are below “The Mendoza Line”.

Many have been there.

Nobody likes being there. 

Kinda like being overweight.

Many of us are living there.

But nobody likes living there.

After eating everything in sight for three months in NYC, it’s been quite the struggle to get back to the old belt loop.

But enough is enough.

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to get back to my version of the Mendoza Line.

200 pounds.

And elastic ties call for desperate measures.

Enter The Atkins Diet.

Actually, re-enter The Atkins Diet.

Well not THE Atkins Diet.

It’s more like the third cousin of the Atkins Diet.

(Flashback Music)

In 2001, I spent nearly six months on the road.

It was a job that came with lots of benefits.

Including a gold membership to the craft services truck.

In those six months, I must’ve eaten 36 million M&Ms.

Really.

I don’t think I ever walked past that table without grabbing a handful.

Or two.

But did you know if you eat just one handful....

at a time....

M&Ms are really not that bad for you.

At least that’s what I must’ve been thinking.

By the end of that job, I had ballooned to 250 on the richter scale.

Now .250 in the Major Leagues gets you about five mill a year.

But 250 on the scale gets you a trip to the cardiologist.

Enter Senor Atkins.

Well sorta.

The Atkins Diet was the bomb-dizzle back then.

Thanks to the new fad, people were dropping more pounds than the London Stock Exchange.

But when I put this diet under my microscope, something smelled a little funny.

I had a hard time believing you could get “healthy” by eating as much bacon and cheese as you wanted.

So I made up my own rules.

Working off the premise of low to no carbs.

I eliminated four main ingredients from my daily life:

Bread

Potatoes

Rice 

Pasta.

Eliminated.

Gonzo.

Vamoose.

And NO CHEATING.

Well I saw results immediately.

Thanks to the new diet and doing yoga four days a week, three months later I had lost 30 pounds.  

Six months later I had lost 50 pounds.

All the way from about 250 to about 200.

At one point I think I got to 198.

But I was so excited, I down’d a pint of Haagen Dazs faster than you could spell Schmendoza Line.

I kept most of the weight off for several years but little-by-little I creeped back up that scale.

215.  218.  224.  230ish.

I probably made it 235 at one point.

Which at six feet tall is nothing to be bragging about.

But thanks to a steady diet of the elliptical machine the last few years, I made it back to the low 2’s.

Until I got to New York.

A city built on concrete.

And carbs.

Honestly I was lucky to get out of there alive.

And I was even luckier to get out of there under 300 pounds.

But the damage had been done.

A couple of weeks ago I jumped on a scale and saw something you’d rather see at a poker table.

Three of a kind.

2-2-2.

That’s when I decided it was time for an Atkins Reunion Tour.

And I was going to kick this baby off on February 7.

The day AFTER the Super Bowl.

Let’s give ourself a fighting chance.

Sure this diet presents some challenges.

But nothing I can’t handle.

For example, night one.

A school function at a local Italian restaurant.

Oh, I love Italian Food.

Who doesn’t.

The hot bread.

Angel Hair.

Uh-oh.

No problem.

While my family feasted on the never-ending bowls of pasta.

I dabbled in an antipasto salad.

The size of Texas.

And about 11 glasses of ice, cold, refreshing water.

Stay focused on the prize people.

The Mendoza Line.