Stirring the Pot by Jenny McCarthy Read Free Book Online

going to blow him unless he eats all his broccoli.
    7. You use your spit to wipe something off a friend’s face.
    8. At the end of the day you’re wondering what letter brought the day to you.
    9. You wear a macaroni necklace out to dinner.
    10. You check your husband’s bum to be sure he wiped properly.

Nourish Your Soul
    I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and we liked our meals big in them parts. This was years before serving sizes and processed foods and calorie counting were a big part of the lexicon. Not in my family, anyway. Our test for a meal’s worth was portion size. Roadside diners always got high marks; I gained the nickname “Truck Driver” because of the way I could put away the mounds of food they served at their counters.
    Later in life, I gained something else: about eighty pounds in pregnancy. I read somewhere that the average weight of checked baggage is fifty pounds, and I can tell you it sure felt as though I was dragging around an extra suitcase or two—on my ass. My high-water mark was 211 pounds. It turned out that Evan’s adorable body only accounted for six of them. The other goop that was in there added up to another ten pounds; I left the hospital at 195.
    Evan didn’t mind my doughy body. He didn’tjudge. But producers judge and casting directors judge and magazine editors judge. I don’t care what some celebrities say about not paying attention to tabloid headlines—no one
wants
to see her ass or thigh magnified (with a circle or arrow making sure everyone sees the cellulite) on the cover of a magazine. If I was going to stay in show business, I obviously needed to get busy losing some weight.
    My mom had had success with Weight Watchers, so I decided to give it a whirl. The portion control portion of the program made sense to me, and I could get my limited brain bandwidth (babies suck the intelligence right out of you) around the point system. I also liked that they didn’t overdo the lecture about having to work out as well. I mean, one thing at a time, right? Weight Watchers worked for me. I lost all my baby weight. I even became a spokesperson for the program for a while. I can’t argue with the results, even if I often wanted to gnaw off my baby’s pudgy arm on days when I’d consumed all my allotted points by 2:00 p.m.
    I’ve also tried a lot of fad diets when I’ve had to get “red carpet ready” (how I loathe HD—a girl can’t get away with anything anymore!).I tend to do a juice cleanse in early January every year even if it seems to make me more toxic … to be around, anyway.
    On the first day of the cleanse my hunger is predictably persistent but low-grade. I think about food with great fondness; not being able to chew anything makes me a little blue. The second day I am a hangry bitch. For those of you not versed in diet-speak, “hangry” is hungry + angry. In other words, short-tempered, headachy, and
in no mood to deal with your shit
. Day three is supposed to bring me renewed energy and internal lightness, but all I feel is dizzy and disoriented. By day five I’m googling for pictures of food like a porn addict. Every year I swear I won’t do this again, but every year I do it anyway.
    More recently I’ve discovered something totally, mind-blowingly, life-alteringly revolutionary: vegetables fill my belly without making my butt big. I can eat them to my heart’s content and the only thing I might get is gassy.
    Not news to you? Well, when I was growing up, the potato was the only vegetable we ate regularly (fried, baked, mashed, and hashed), so you’ll have to forgive my awe and excitement over the variety now available in the produce aisle. With the range of color, shapes, and sizes, it’s like the bra and panty section in department stores. Vegetables like carrots and broccoli and peas are the equivalent of granny panties—familiar, comfortable, and easy to put on (the table). Artichokesand eggplant and fennel? More like silky lingerie—I