Hello, My Name Is Kristen and I've Lost 8 Lbs. on the Construction Diet

{Is it possible to patent a diet?}

Kristen's Construction Program for Weight Loss

1. Buy an itty bitty house - preferably a cozy house with only one family room. No basement or bonus rooms. When purchasing this house, limit your offspring to either one or none.

2. Make certain that your itty bitty house has no garage.

3. Multiply and replenish the earth.

4. Allow your children to grow, take up more space, and accumulate throngs of toys through birthdays, Christmases, and potty training successes.

5. Multiply and replenish the earth some more.

6. Stuff every nook and cranny of your itty bitty house with the necessities of life. Practice shuffling piles of papers from one place to another. Organize one area only to find out that you've caused more clutter in another area. Enjoy and relish this ongoing game. Be creative in your endeavors to keep the recommended amount of food storage - behind entertainment centers, under beds, packed under desk areas in the kitchen (try and hide this behind a cute curtain and count how many times you have to straighten that d#$@ curtain each day). Store a lovely blue water barrel in your front coat closet.

7. Calculate how much square footage you have per person. (Ours was roughly 300 - 316.)

8. Realize that, as much as they love you, your teenager(s) don't want to be with you every minute of everyday and that their friends don't want to either. Notice that when these said teenagers have friends over, everyone else (including yourself) is exiled to their rooms for the afternoon or evening. (This exile is always by choice...not by force. But how much teenage foolery can you handle?) You will question yourself about how you ever decided to buy that itty bitty house with only one family room (and no basement or bonus room). This is normal.

9. Wait 6.5 years and then be blessed with one more multiplying and replenishing. Be faced with the challenge of housing 3 boys in one bedroom. Enjoy 2 years of no sleeping because when the baby cries, he needs to be moved away from his sleeping brothers. Learn to sleep in a diagonal position in your queen sized bed so that that small bundle of sleepless energy doesn't smack you in the forehead all night.

10. Decide a house addition is in order.

11. If you decide to be your own contractor, you can count on at least 2 - 3 times the weight loss of hiring someone to do it for you. Since we opted to hire that out, my weight loss is slightly less but I have kept my full head of hair (no need to rip it out). The choice is yours.

12. Orchestrate in your imaginative mind, what would happen if your sons found some mysterious bones during excavation. Paint an elaborate mental picture that if bones were found, could they possibly be the remains of one of the wives of the polygamist who built the home? Watch too many episodes of CSI to try and figure out how such a situation might be handled.

13. For kicks, have a wind storm blow down some walls.

14. During daily walk throughs, try and keep your toddler out of the sawdust. Then try and keep the sawdust from getting tracked into the existing house.

15. Get some exercise by getting your groove on.

16. Do a few projects yourself. I chose to paint my kitchen cabinets, 2 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms. I'm hoping to still lose a few more pounds by painting the new pantry and kitchen dining area. Consuming fumes rather than real food is a surefire way to get the weight off. The brain cells that are killed in this process just add to your overall reduction in size.

17. For optimal weight loss benefit, bathroom projects are key.

18. To change unhealthy cravings and addictions to certain foods, take the targeted food into a bathroom in the middle of remodeling.

19. Try to enjoy your above mentioned food amidst the sights and smells of the bathroom makeover. Need a little more intensity? Closely examine the toilet seal on the floor and imagine its years of use.

20. Mmmmmm............

21. Plant yourself on the toilet that now resides in the shower and finish your good eats. If this doesn't ensure the food aversion you're looking for, I don't know what will.

DISCLAIMER:

Results will vary from person to person. While the construction diet did work for me, there were also side effects that included:

Bags under my eyes

Dark circles under my eyes

Irritability

Insomnia

Sudden outbursts of unexplained tears

Headaches

Bad Hair Days

Frequent outbreaks of cereal for dinner

Mood Swings

White trash tendencies