Maria Shriver, an American Journalist, Kennedy family author and former wife of former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, has a great line to describe her diet.  She says she basically, “shuts her mouth.”  That’s pretty crisp and to the point, wouldn’t you say?

From this and other clues, we can intuit she uses some form of the portion control calorie counting diet.  The portion control diet allows you to eat just about anything you want, but limit your portions to control your calorie intake. 

Other clues indicate she is a believer in exercise.  So she uses the portion control and exercise diet, a fairly common diet for most.  And no doubt her former husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, believes in the exercise thing too, (chuckle).

Many people successfully diet this way.  The disadvantage is that it requires some pretty good discipline to stick to it.  And Maria would probably agree with that.  She says she doesn’t have any real diet secrets and “… I struggle all year long.  I can go up and down five pounds easily.”

Maria gets into the emotional connection with food, and I think rightfully so.  She says, “We, as people, tend to make an emotional connection to food. This is a huge vice in society.

She feels people often focus on protein content and carbohydrates and, of course, exercise. While she thinks exercise is “absolutely important,” she feels people tend to overeat because they don’t feel loved. She thinks many people feel misunderstood, and that someone who feels love, often has a lot less issues with food.

Maria watches her weight with the old undersized clothes trick.  This way she can tell when they begin to feel uncomfortably tight that she needs to cut back on her portions and calories, and maybe hit the exercise trail a bit harder.

And part of her solution for society at large?  She is the Creative Marketing Director for Lovin’ Scoopful ice cream.  It has 1/2 the fat and 1/3 fewer calories than other premium ice creams. And it’s made with an all-natural base that comes from cows not treated with growth hormone.

The ice cream has a Facebook application called “What Ice Cream Flavor Are You?”
Also, it was developed to support a good cause; the Special Olympics, because 25% of its profits are donated to the Special Olympics and other causes.

Now that’s an emotional connection to diet we can all get behind, don’t you think.  Maybe I’ll practice her “shut my mouth” thing later.

Have a great day – J. Daniel