I love food. There is rarely an hour that passes in my life when I'm not craving food or thinking about food. If I didn't care about what society thinks, or about living a full, happy and healthy life, I would probably weigh about 400 pounds. Fortunately (or unfortunately, however way you see it), I do care about these things. So I turn to diet and exercise whenever I realize I've gone overboard with my food addiction.
I've been on several diets in my lifetime. Some of these include:
- The 6 o' clock diet - Eating whatever you want before 6:00 pm and not eating anything after 6:00 pm.
- South Beach - Too complex for me to summarize here
- No-carb diet - This is basically the version of South Beach Phase 1 in which I delude myself that I can eat all the bacon and butter that I want.
- Nutrisystem - Pre-packaged, non-frozen, absolutely disgusting food
- Calorie counting
- Jenny Craig - A calorie-counting program supported by a consultant and pre-packaged food
Most of these have worked for me when I actually had the will-power to enforce them. Out of all these, the two that have really been successful are South Beach Phase 1 and Jenny Craig. I went on Jenny a couple of months ago in order to whip myself into shape for my upcoming wedding. The food was definitely decent (much, much better than Nutrisystem), and having to answer to a consultant every week was definitely helpful. I also loved not having to cook and do dishes all the time. However, I found that it was quite expensive, and also got to be pretty boring after awhile. It also wasn't helping me lose weight fast enough, since I went on several trips this summer and ruined my chance of losing weight slowly by vacation binge-eating. So I've switched back to South Beach Phase 1, which I've gone on about 3 times before. It's not working as fast as I'd hoped it would, but it still will be easier for me to pick dishes when I go out to dinner several times with my family and friends during the weeks leading to the wedding. Expect many posts regarding low-carb food from me this summer.
4:23 PM
danztilya
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2 comments:
The great thing about low-carb diets is that you CAN find something to eat wherever you go, and it almost always WILL be delicious. The problem for me is telling myself that going out to eat isn't a special occasion (unlike vacation) and that I don't need to eat potatoes or ice cream to have a satisfying meal.
I'd definitely be interested in hearing more about your experiences on each of these and what you like more about South Beach than no carbs at all.
Yeah I'd like to make a post about each of these eventually. Jenny will probably be next. I do love that when I'm on low-carb I can order delicious things when I'm out and not freak about about the fact that I have no way of finding out the caloric content (unless I'm at cheesecake factory, where the only low calorie way to go is eat a quarter of any of the meals).
I have problems being good when I'm out too, mostly if it's a new restaurant. I just feel terrible ordering a salad when I see interesting things I've never tried on the menu. I think for me after I successfully ignore the bread basket I'm ok.
I guess what I like about South Beach is that (theoretically) eventually you should be able to eat good carbs, and bad carbs once or twice a week when you get to the maintenance stage. It's also easier to have some variety in my weekly menus when I can have whole grain and fruit. Butter and bacon probably aren't the best things to have due to my high cholesterol levels as well... Honestly though, I've never actually MADE it to the maintenance stage of South Beach. I keep falling off the wagon after two weeks of Phase 2. So I'm not sure I should recommend South Beach since I really can only attest to the effectiveness of Phase 1. For going out to eat, I just choose low-carb plain and simple, because I really don't want to ask about reduced fat cheese and which entrees are cooked with olive oil when I'm at a restaurant.
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