The Denim Diet: Sixteen Simple Habits to Get You into Your Dream Pair of Jeans

AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

IN 1986, I WAS OBSESSED with Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. I was beyond moved when Duckie said to Andie, This is a really volcanic ensemble you’re wearing, it’s really marvelous! I wanted to be her so badly. I had the naturally red hair and everything. I desperately wanted to make pretty clothes out of thrift-shop rejects and date rich, Brat Pack boys from the right side of the tracks who wore cream-colored linen suits to school. Why couldn’t that be me?

I got a little sidetracked from my dream and got married and had kids instead, but in 2000, I went back to school and earned a second bachelor’s degree, in fashion design, hoping to embark on a career as a costume designer for film and television in the very un-Hollywoodlike city of Portland, Oregon. Oddly, I made it happen. Granted, I don’t work on big, expensive studio movies. I’ve worked on a few really bad independent films that went straight to video, but mostly I work on television commercials. And I’m not really a costume designer. I’m a wardrobe stylist, but close enough. After graduation, I landed at a small production company producing national commercials for what used to be Will Vinton Studios — think dancing California Raisins and talking M&M’s. No, I did not dress raisins or candy; we also did spots for Wrigley’s, Trident, and Hostess that had real actors in them.

I’ve styled the costumes for over a hundred commercials, including national spots for Toyota, Nike, Nickelodeon, and Blockbuster. I don’t watch TV (because I hate the commercials), but you’ve probably seen some of mine. I specialize in dressing soccer moms. The kids aren’t the only ones wearing a uniform. At least in TV land, soccer moms wear a blue, button-front, collared shirt with long sleeves (very neatly rolled up by yours truly) worn untucked over slightly faded jeans with barely worn tennis shoes. Sometimes I go a little crazy and layer the blue outer shirt with a pale yellow T-shirt underneath to polish off the look. Clearly, the wardrobe on a typical commercial isn’t all that exciting, but every once in a while, I travel to Los Angeles for something a little more fabulous, like the network image campaigns. You’ve seen them — those promo spots on TV with stars dressed in fancy designer clothing with their hands on their hips looking sultry or tough depending on the character they play. I’ve done quite a few of those, for House, Veronica Mars, Hell’s Kitchen, and other shows. The money sucks, but the food is awesome, and the clothes are unreal and a true pleasure to shop for on Rodeo Drive and at Neiman’s of Beverly Hills. Designer denim is my personal addiction.

For me, wardrobe has been a great motivator for maintaining my weight. I look forward to getting dressed and putting on my favorite jeans, a fitted vintage blouse, and a badass pair of boots. And when those jeans feel a little snug, I rein it back in. I see nothing wrong with a little vanity if it keeps you slender and trim. My so-called vanity has helped to prevent knee, hip, and back problems that many people my age suffer from and began to experience in their twenties and thirties often due to simply carrying around excess weight. I have never seen a chiropractor, a podiatrist, or an orthopedic physician, and I plan to keep it that way for as long as possible. Having said that, I would like to stress that overall health and not actual weight is where you should place your emphasis. That means that getting adequate exercise is a critical component to lifelong wellness (more on this in Item #13). Being slender and unfit is not what I would characterize as healthy. My love of fashion helps keep me on track, but what you’ll find in this book is a whole-body approach to being healthy.

THE DENIM DIARY

Due to a flight cancellation en route to a family holiday, I took an unplanned six-hour drive from Dallas to the Texas Panhandle. It was my first trip to Texas. Along the way, I saw numerous billboards for seventy-two-ounce steaks and a mind-blowing number of obese people. The road trip ended in Amarillo, where I stayed with friends and family. I couldn’t help but notice that nine out of ten restaurants were fast-food establishments with lines going around the block. A place called The Donut Stop (I’m fairly certain I counted seven of them) was a far more common sighting than a gym or anyone running or even walking. While visiting a store called Sheplers in search of the perfect pair of Wranglers, I came across a pair of jeans so large that I jokingly said to my friend that even the denim needed to go on a diet.

The lunch scene at the Cracker Barrel restaurant that same day made my jaw drop. I saw overflowing platefuls of greasy, fried, gravy-laden food being zealously devoured by patrons with bellies so large that they could barely reach the meal in front of them. What I saw was Fat America. For the rest of the afternoon, I took a lengthy but restless nap. Immediately upon waking up, I grabbed from my suitcase a blank journal that I’d purchased at the airport in Portland. Looking back, I think the fact that I bought a journal is more than a little odd because I’ve never journaled a day in my life. Back in high school, I kept a record of boys I kissed and what I was wearing at the time, but that’s as extensive as my diary-keeping efforts went. My brain was now on serious overdrive, and without a moment’s hesitation, I began to write the first draft of this manuscript. Within five days, it was finished and The Denim Diet was born. As you will discover later, it has actually been swirling around in my head for over twenty years; it just took a Texas-size kick in the ass for me to get pen to paper.

As I mentioned, I live in Portland, Oregon, and work in the film and television business. I’m surrounded by either ultraskinny, neurotic actresses or vegan, eco-centric, outdoor-sports enthusiasts who bike to work, snowboard all winter, windsurf all summer, and march the streets of Portland to prevent the likes of Wal-Mart and Target from taking hold within the urban growth boundary. Most assuredly, there are Portlanders who could stand to lose a few pounds, but I had to leave home to be reminded of just how fat this country really is. Texas was the birthplace of my moment of inspiration, but I in no way want to offend the kind folks that call it home. Admittedly, I’m off to an irreverent start, but the people I met there were incredibly hospitable and welcoming, and I am grateful for my time there. I assure you, I’ll lighten up. Let’s all lighten up.

I’ve had my share of years when I struggled with my weight. Twenty-two years ago, my jeans were six sizes larger than they are today, and I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on medication. We’re all in this together. With 142 million overweight or obese adult Americans, we as a society clearly do not understand how to eat healthily. Included in that figure are Americans with medical conditions such as thyroid disorders and other debilitating diseases that cause them to gain weight beyond their control. The comments and guidance in this book are not directed at those individuals, and I have the greatest sympathy for their health struggles. This book is for everyone else included in that staggering number — the overweight, obese, and morbidly obese people whose choices and habits have made us the fattest country in the world.

I believe we’re in this predicament because many Americans don’t know the basics of healthy eating or how to have a positive relationship with food. And that’s okay, because I do and I’m going to share what I know with you — the simple habits that helped me lose weight and keep it off for over twenty years without yo-yo dieting or starving myself. In the same way that many people struggle with diet and weight loss, I used to struggle with office organization — we all have weak areas, and that was one of mine. Maybe it should have been completely obvious to me how to keep my office organized, but until I had someone with a passion and an expertise in office organization train me on new habits and show me how to simplify my system, I kept failing over and over. I don’t go digging through my drawers to find a receipt anymore — mainly because the office tyrant took away my drawers, but also because I’ve developed new habits that prevent me from emptying my pockets and purse into a giant black hole. I knew my old system was inefficient and causing me a great deal of stress at tax time, but I wasn’t able to develop another system on my own that worked. Expert advice helped me change that. I hope that in a similar way, my insights into healthy eating will help you gain control of your weight. What I know is an easy and effortless solution to being fat, and I’ve spent twenty years sharing my simple philosophy with friends, family, a few Hollywood actors, and anyone else who would listen. I know how to lose the fat, keep it off, have tons of energy, eat plenty of food, do better by Mother Earth, and look and feel like the picture of health. What I’m about to share with you has worked flawlessly for me through postpregnancy, motherhood, divorce, turning forty, and countless dinner parties, weddings, Sunday brunches, and family vacations.

Before Joe, my literary agent, agreed to take me on as a client, he asked me a very important and fair question and one I hadn’t given much thought to. He asked, "Who are you, Kami, and why are you writing this book?" He was essentially saying, You’re no expert, you’re not a doctor, you’re not a dietician — why should anyone listen to you? I joke and say I have a PhD (Pretty Hot in Denim), but who I am is you. I’m a regular person who figured out long ago how to live my life in a healthy way and by doing so has managed to maintain an ideal, healthy body weight, easily and effortlessly. That’s the real secret: You don’t need to be a doctor or a registered dietician to figure it out. You can be you — just a regular person who wants to have a healthy, slim body that lasts for as long as possible. Don’t get me wrong — healthcare providers are an absolute necessity. Even though I don’t understand half of what they tell me, I call on them regularly. I also do my own research and read every available word about health and wellness and then apply my own experience, logic, and what my body tells me. Sometimes I get my facts, figures, and information from what I call the Journal of Commonsense Eating, an imaginary publication that I’ve been compiling in my head for the past twenty or so years. Now, in my very regular-person voice, I’m going to pass on to you all that I know and have learned, in the hope that you can benefit from my simple, no-nonsense approach to eating well to create a healthy, slim, and hopefully pain-free, disease-free, and long-lasting body. As a major bonus, if you follow what I’ve presented here, you will not only get into your dream pair of jeans; you will become a better steward of the Earth as a natural consequence of the habits, activities, and choices you’re making.

True to my Oregon roots, the philosophy in this book ties in beautifully with being and thinking green. You’ll learn how to easily and effortlessly lose weight, but in doing so, you’ll be able to feel good about lessening your impact on Earth’s energy and resources. Not that I wouldn’t, but I’m not jumping on the eco-bandwagon. My parents are two of the bandleaders. My mom designs and builds solar homes and is a pioneer of the green building movement. She’s practiced organic gardening since the seventies (long before it was popular), and I grew up living in her beautiful solar homes. My dad is currently working to install a thousand-acre wind farm on Montana land he inherited from his homesteading grandmother. Collectively, they harvest their own electricity through their goal net zero floating home (and sell the surplus to neighbors through the utility company), drive hybrids, grow organic vegetables and herbs on their rooftop garden, and open their home for solar and green tours on weekends. Mom and Dad are constantly in the news, most recently in a feature article in Wired magazine, and a documentary filmmaker is highlighting their efforts on his upcoming project. (No, it’s not Al Gore. It is a very talented someone, but the parents have given me a gag order, and I’m still somewhat of an obedient child.) I’ve been schooled on green — ironically, by the Grays. My parents have taught me that being lean works brilliantly with being green.

FRENCH FRIES, FRITOS,

AND THE FRESHMAN FIFTEEN

When it came to food, I used to get away with a lot. Flash back to twenty-eight years ago (I’m trying to make my story more dramatic just in case Ron Howard wants to make my book into a movie) when I was a freshman in high school and we had to count our daily calories as part of a health class assignment. Mine added up to four thousand calories a day on average. At the time, I thought that had to be fairly close to the recommended daily target since there wasn’t an ounce of fat on me.

Four years later, after my first semester at Arizona State University, that definitely wasn’t the case. The Sun Devils were a bunch of good-looking rich kids (many from Southern California) who had performed only slightly above average in high school and liked to party. By December, I was fat and I was a total misfit. Apparently, if you grew up in SoCal, you had some special gene that prevented you from getting fat. I sure didn’t have it. I came from Oregon, and the only other girl in my sorority to get fat like me was from Idaho. She became my best friend. Together we were Ore-Ida, and boy did we eat a lot of French fries.

When I went home for winter vacation, I heard comments like They must not require a P.E. class at your school and Looks like you’re not there for an MRS degree, like your dad said. That doesn’t stand for Masters of Really Skinny. That means my dad thought I went to college to find myself a husband and become somebody’s Mrs. The unsolicited commentary that irked me the most came from my uncle Jim: Back in my day, it was the freshman fifteen. Did that go up with college tuition? That’s a good one, Uncle Jim — a real knee-slapper! For those of you who don’t know, freshman fifteen refers to the number of pounds a typical college frosh can expect to gain. I was well beyond that, and worse, I mistakenly thought I was loved and adored unconditionally. Deep down I knew my family still loved me, but I was laying on the self-pity as thick as the butter and fake maple syrup on my Belgian waffles.

So I was a little round. A little doughy — kind of like a Belgian waffle, proving that you are, in fact, what you eat. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I thought it was beyond my control. I didn’t attribute it to all the fattening food I was eating: Flakey Jake ’s fried chicken sandwiches on giant white buns grilled with mystery grease, French fries drenched in thick orange cheddar-cheese sauce, and family-size bowls of fro-yo (aka frozen yogurt) with crumbled Heath bar topping. Without question, the increase in partying didn’t help matters, but it never dawned on me that my poor eating habits had finally caught up with me — habits like hitting the vending machines (endearingly referred to as Vendoland by me and my friends) in the dorm hall at midnight and eating as much junk food as I could afford with my saved-up laundry quarters. This usually meant I couldn’t wash my clothes that week, but they were getting too snug anyway. That didn’t stop me from being first in line when the dorm cafeteria served Fritos Con Carne every Wednesday night.

When I wasn’t eating at Vendoland, a sorority sister from South Dakota was my dining companion on many occasions. I’ll call her Miss South Dakota, since she could easily have been a beauty pageant winner. Miss South Dakota was thin. Not sickeningly thin. She looked amazing and was so damn pleasant and happy all the time. Looking back, I’m sure I completely grossed her out by what I ate, how much of it I ate, and how quickly I ate it. Wherever you are, Miss South Dakota, I sincerely apologize.

When Miss South Dakota went to Flakey Jake ’s, she ordered a plain turkey patty. All the extras come on the side at Flakey’s. She would load her base up with steamed broccoli, pinto beans, corn, garbanzo beans, tomatoes, and salsa. She made a giant mound of food. No bun. No mayonnaise. No melted cheese. I thought it was really weird and that maybe Miss South Dakota had some kind of rare disorder and couldn’t eat normal, tasty food. I was just too polite to ask her about it. Actually, that’s a lie — I was too busy licking my fingers and stuffing my fat face with grease and lard.

I’ve since learned that sweatpants make you look a lot fatter than a pair of jeans that are the right size for you, but back then, when it became abundantly clear that I would be dressing myself in only elastic-waisted shorts and sweatpants and tying a sweatshirt around my waist to cover my ever-expanding ass, the guy I was dating broke up with me. He said he just wanted to hang with the fellas and not have a girlfriend. Within a week, he was dating a superskinny sorority sister of mine from Hawaii who later became a swimsuit model.

By the end of my freshman year, I had gained some serious weight. Not only did I now have a big ass and an almost perfectly round face; my mood was becoming quite foul. I was also beginning to have trouble sleeping because it was uncomfortable to snooze on my stomach. After finals, I went back home to Oregon with my tail between my chubby legs. I spent the