The First Day is the Hardest

Posted by Ed Levine, November 30, 2005 at 1:36 PM

The first day of a diet is always the hardest. Everything you think about food-wise seems so damned appealing. And for someone like me, who knows where almost every great morsel of food is in New York (and a lot of other places for that matter), it's almost unimaginably difficult to move about in my fair city and not duck into that great apple turnover place I just passed.

So yesterday was tough. Breakfast was cereal with 1% milk and Equal, and a fine Bartlett pear. Lunch was two small slices of multi-grain bread topped with egg salad, with a third slice of said bread with a measured tablespoon of peanut butter and a teaspoon of jam, and another pear.

I played squash after lunch, and according to my heart rate monitor, I expended 700 calories doing so. Not too shabby.

At 6:30 I went to a book party for Hidden Kitchens, the terrific book written by NPR's Kitchen Sisters, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson. There temptation was everywhere. Forget about all the passarounds that appeared every few seconds. There were mini-hamburgers made on a George Foreman Grill (which believe it or not plays a significant role in the book). Outside a food truck was doling out portions of pepper steak and jerk pork and curried chicken, macaroni and cheese and peas and rice.

So did I resist, knowing that I was going out to dinner after the party?

I did pretty well. I had one bite of one of the mini-burgers and a few bites of the jerk pork

and the pepper steak. It certainly could have been a lot worse.

At dinner at Onera, my favorite New York Upper West Side neighborhood restaurant, I avoided bread, dessert and just about every carb temptation I encountered.

I had some terrific raw fish preparations as an appetizer and then a delectable piece of swordfish flavored with orange, raisins and olives, surrounded by cauliflower.

All in all, I would say it was a fairly promising first diet day.

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Tags: Davia Nelson, diet, Kitchen Sisters, New York, New York City, Nikki Silva, NYC, Onera, Upper West Side