The Green Bean Diet!!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

The last time I joined Weight Watchers I lasted four days on the diet.  I could have gone longer, but my family begged me to quit.  Apparently they did not like my attitude and they liked even less my comments about the food I was eating.  I get surly and mean when I am on a diet and I am just as likely to yell out, “eat this, buddy!” instead of “I love watching my calorie intake,” when someone asks me how my diet is going.  The whole concept of a diet makes me mad at my parents for giving me bad genes and at my kids for not understanding that losing the baby weight can take decades and they are mostly to blame for my fuller figure.  Usually when I diet on my own, the plan consists of starting on a Monday, so I have the weekend to eat anything I might miss on my diet, and usually is over by Wednesday when I declare it is not working and I will try again next Monday.  So far, I have not lost enough weight to market this plan, but I do enjoy the weekends.

 

Fudge and Vern got groomed the other day and I had high hopes that Vern would look less “fluffy” when I picked them up.  The grooming helped a little, but lately I have been noticing that he has put on a little weight. Fudge is built like Kelly Ripa and the only way I can tell them apart is Fudge doesn’t have a talk show where she sits around and talks about needing to watch her weight and feeling bloated, while wearing a size 0 dress.

Nothing irks me more than skinny people acting like they “get it” when all they would have to do is sneeze to make their optimum weight.  Vern, on the other hand, is at the stage now where he would need to cough up an actual lung to see that needle go down on the scale.  I feel for him because I know we are supposed to be able to find ribs, but that is going to require a “search team” for both of us.

 

Luckily, we have a plan that makes Vern happy.  With the cooler temperatures and the nearby campground closing soon, we can resume our long walks at the park.  We all love the drop in temperatures for just this reason and we have also devised some “wind sprint drills” for Vern.  Basically, John and I stand a good ways apart and have Vern run back and forth between the two of us. 

So far, he seems to think this is great fun and I hope he never has that light bulb moment when he stops and says to himself, “wait a minute….what is the point of all this running?” Right now, he runs with a smile on his face and sometimes wipes the smile right off my face when I see him barreling towards me at full speed.  Fudge gets to run these drills, too, but she always turns around to make sure Vern is not hot on her heels, because Vern has a tendency to not see objects in his path and plow right though them.  She also may do the “wind sprint drill” ONCE before seeming to declare it a no-go and just plain dumb. 

Oh sure, she comes, especially if she is attached to a long lead and has no choice, but she makes sure to walk as slowly as possible to express her extreme disinterest in the entire process.  The other glitch we recently experienced was Vern, my dog who almost always listens when off leash, decided that running to me was not as interesting as running over to the neighbor’s yard to check out their cat.  I was forced to run behind him screaming, “Vern, get back here!” and can only surmise that Vern was giving me a taste of my own exercise medicine.

 

In the hopes of helping Vern lose weight, I also decided to get tricky the other night and re-introduce him to green beans.  The last time I tried it, Fudge ate a few, but Vern left his untouched or had them in his mouth long enough to spit them out discreetly in some other location other than his food bowl in the kitchen.  I found them in several locations all around our house; some with my feet, in what I can only think was a silent protest against green beans by Vern.   Well, the other night, I decided to mix the green beans in with some chicken and sweet potato, which just happens to be two of Vern’s favorite things. In fact I have caught him humming…”chicken sans bone and potatoes au gratin, bright candy wrappers that my dad has forgotten, brown paper food bags tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things,” on several occasions.

 

John was thoroughly confused when he saw me cooking and even more so when I mixed it all up in two bowls.  First he said, “what is that new dish called?” and then when I said, “dog food,” he said, “thank goodness, I thought it was our anniversary or something!” There is something so sad about a man who would probably eat chicken, sweet potato, and green bean all mixed up in a bowl and think his wife’s cooking abilities have improved.  Well, I made a big deal out of the two bowls and let Fudge and Vern know they were eating like royalty and placed the bowls on the floor, even though John asked if he should set two more place settings for them at the dinner table.  Fudge started eating right away and pushed aside the green beans at first, but then decided to go back and eat them.  Vern, on the other hand, looked at the bowl like I would look at a bowl if someone had mixed ice cream and hot fudge with a broccoli topper and expected me to eat it.  He finally figured out he could work around the green beans to just eat the stuff he liked and that is exactly what he did and I have to believe that is what I would have done with my broccoli sundae. It also brought back fond memories of Hayley when she was very young and had to have a test that required she drink some barium.  The nurse made the mistake of telling her it tasted just like French fries and Hayley fell for it ONCE and put the stuff in her mouth and promptly spit it back out.  After that, no amount of cajoling or begging could get that child to take another sip and I am sure Vern would have done the same with a green bean shake.

 Vern's Bowl!

The thing I do not understand is Vern has never been a dog of discerning taste. He races into my car every day to see if he can find a Kleenex to eat.  He will drink out of the toilet if we forget to keep the lid down.  I have seen him eat mud and sticks. I had to throw a flowering pot out I had right outside my door, because I couldn’t get him to stop drinking from it.  I couldn’t get it through his head that the clean water dish was his drinking water and not the water that had pooled at the bottom of a potted plant.  Can anyone say giardia and the thought of following Vern around with a heavy duty Chinet paper plate was not something I felt I ever wanted to do. A bug on the floor is fair game to Vern, yet he draws the line at green beans. Go figure! The one food that could help him lose weight easily if he just would eat it. I also have to laugh because the night Vern would not eat all of his supper, John said, “I wonder if you put a little butter on the green beans, if that would help?” I could just see Karen’s face if I asked if butter was an acceptable kibble topper in the Food Group.

Sadly, I had to explain to John that butter was not often used when trying to lose weight, but I liked his train of thought and I told him I would hire him in a heartbeat to be my dietary coach.  Meanwhile, we are back to square one with Vern and have increased his exercise each day.  Like I tell him, we’ll get there, and it’s not our fault we are under tall for our weight.  Of course, when you are pushing 5’12” it gets a little hard to believe sometimes.

[Miss Ellie]

I love the part about finding the green beans all over the house...hilarious...and cute all at the same time!

[Ricki and Tara (doodle)]

Oh, these talented doodles!  Love how they are able to get the meal they want in spite of all of our plans! I'm lucky that Tara likes green beans because they really did help her lose weight.  She likes asparagus too maybe you can try that next? There must be a veggie out there somewhere with Vern's name on it!

[Bonnie and Kona]

Jane, Love the story of Murphy's aversion to new foods in his bowl. What a character!

[Bonnie and Kona]

I have to say that as much as I loved the blog, I LOVE the photo of Vern's Halloween costume. ROFL

(Kona is so food driven that he ate his green beans and lost 7 pounds. Sorry Vern.) 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Cyndi, I'm so glad you mentioned the "much less kibble" part, because that's the whole point of the green bean diet. Just eating green beans isn't going to cause a reduction in weight, lol. It's substituting a large portion of greenbeans for a smaller portion of the kibble that results in a reduction of calories without reducing the volume of food that helps them to lose weight. 

I'm glad it helped Tank.

[Cyndi, The Boys & Callie]

The vet said that although Tank was "big boned" (I love that phrase), 62 lbs was too much and he needed to be at 55.  We started green beans (canned, no salt) mixed with much less kibble than usual in the AM.  Sometime we sprinkle freeze dried chicken over it (that way it coats everything and he can't pick it out).  That, plus Beau runs like a horse and Tank chases him, and he was down to 55 lbs in about 6 months.  The other two are fine.  Sully is good at his weight and Beau is the only one in our family (two legs or four) with long slender legs.  He eats (and runs) like a horse and never gets overweight.  Sigh!

[Donna K & Quincy]

That looks to be about the right amount of butter for a serving of green beans. :>) Quincy does like green beans and he could use some time on the green bean diet as could his mom. Green bean diet, blech, sign me up when they invent a jelly bean diet, now there's a diet I could get on board with.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

He reminds me so much of Murph.  Whenever there is ANYTHING new mixed in with Murph's food he freaks out.  He will smell...then circle the dish several times.  Then he'll walk away and lie down for a while contemplating whether or not this "foreign substance" is poison.  After a few minutes he'll look and see that Guinness is about finished with his meal and he hasn't "keeled over"....so he'll re-approach the dish.  He then picks out every single "new thing", brings it over to the carpet by the front door and spits it out.  Eventually the "pile" of discarded food items will be sitting by the door and his dish will be empty. 

[Charlotte and Bo]

I'm the one who needs to be on the green bean diet. Bo could use to lose a pound or two but there is no vegetable that he will eat.  He might if I soaked them in gravy, but that's about as effective as butter:-)

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

Ugh, be careful of trying to "force" green beans on that scary dood, he may be a part of a gang.