As promised, I’m going to give away a one-month supply of Sensa, the amazing stuff that helped me lose 16 pounds in one month alone!

If you haven’t read my previous posts on this stuff, let me explain: Sensa is like no other diet I’ve ever been on. That’s because it isn’t a diet; it’s simply a box of flavor crystals that you sprinkle on your food. Based on the impact of tastants — substances which stimulate the taste buds and therefore enhance feelings of satiety — Sensa allows you to eat the food you already like. You simply feel full faster, and that translates into consuming less calories in the long run.

But, hey, I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me. So, either order Sensa yourself (using ROCKETXL as the coupon code to receive 15% off your order and free ground shipping), or enter my contest.

It’s simple, really:

Write a post about this contest and link this entry. (Be sure to use the Trackback URI so I know you’re linking!) In your post, explain the reasons you want to lose weight, and why you think other diets and exercise programs have failed you so far. Finally, explain why a diet based on simply adding extra flavor to your food sounds appealing to you!

I’ll pick a random winner from the entries to receive the one-month supply of Sensa, which includes two boxes of the flavor crystals along with a DVD explaining how Sensa works.

The contest deadline is January 20, with the winner announced sometime that week.

Good luck!

Did you resolve to lose weight this year? Then you’ll want to be sure to visit this blog over the weekend, when I’ll be launching a contest with a prize that can help you reach your weight loss goal: a one-month supply of Sensa, the stuff I can’t stop raving about.

Don’t want to wait? Then order yours today and use coupon code ROCKETXL to receive 15% off your order (no minimum) along with free ground shipping!

Although I forgot to mention it here, I flew down to Austin on Tuesday to be with my mother following her hernia surgery. Ordinarily, that kind of travel spells disaster for my efforts to diet and exercise. Not this time, however.

First thing I did upon arriving at her house: stand on her scale. (This isn’t as callous as it sounds: she was recovering in the hospital and didn’t feel up to visitors.) Granted, her scale was kinder than mine by a couple of pounds, but I figured it gave me a good baseline by which to weigh myself for the rest of the visit.

Second thing I did: drive to the grocery store. Since I have Celiac disease, and can’t eat gluten in any form, dieting can get extra tricky. If I get too hungry, but don’t have healthy yet gluten-free foods on hand, it’s too tempting to reach for potato chips, cheese or some other calorie-laden quick fix.

To prevent that, I bought a variety of salad fixings and fruit, brown rice and a carton of egg whites. (My one splurge was a small package of tortilla chips just in case I found myself dying for something to crunch besides my own knuckles.) After an hour in the kitchen I had several small salads fixed, wrapped and ready-to-eat in the fridge. Ditto with sliced fruit and brown rice. By the time I got her home, I was confident I’d not only be able to stick to my diet but would be able to feed her something more healthy than the take-out food she usually lives on.

I’ve started both mornings that I’ve been here by exercising for a half-hour in front of her TV. Nothing spectacular, mind you: some jogging in place, push-ups (the girl kind), squats and lunges, some dumbbell work and, of course, crunches. Lots and lots of crunches. So many, in fact, that at one point my mother wondered aloud whether she could’ve avoided hernia surgery had she been better about exercising her abdominals. (Answer: well, duh.)

And, of course, I’ve continued to sprinkle Sensa on all of my food without fail.

So now that I head home tomorrow morning, I figured I’d stand on her scale one more time before bedtime. You know, just to see if I’ve been a good girl on my diet or not.

Baby, I must’ve been extra good, because somehow I’ve lost another 2 pounds while I’ve been here. Sure hope my scale agrees when I get home!

Previously I’d written about tastants, substances which stimulate the taste buds and thus lead to greater satiety but lower calorie consumption. Now, thanks to the folks at Sensa, I’m getting to put that theory to the test.

Sensa, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, may very well be the best thing to happen to dieting. (Read on to find how well it’s been working for me!) Starting from the principle that weight loss involves retraining the biological urge to overeat, the tastants in Sensa turn your nose and tongue into diet aids. Simply put, after you sprinkle the stuff on your food you’ll find yourself feeling full faster. Much faster, in my experience.

So what’s my experience been so far? I’ve lost 11 pounds in the past 13 days. Eleven pounds — gone just like that. Yes, I’ve been exercising but not rigorously: I do the treadmill for 20-30 minutes per day and use free weights every other day.

Have I been dieting? Yes, and no. I’ve been making smart food choices: egg white and veggie omelets for breakfast, salads with vinaigrette for lunch, a small dinner eaten early without snacking later. But — and this is the strange part — they’ve been easy choices to make. A salad actually fills me up so I’m not still hungry (and prone to temptation) afterward.

In fact, for the first time in years I can say that I’m not constantly thinking about food. That’s quite an accomplishment for someone whose previous favorite entertainment was coming up with new recipes for my newsletter (and the forthcoming cookbook).

In other words, I am a BIG fan of this stuff (though one who’s getting smaller every day). Since I have a 2-month supply, you can expect to be reading about my progress. Heck, I’ll even post a before/after photo in December so you can see how well it’s worked (and so I can gloat).

Want to try it yourself? Order yours today and use ROCKETXL as the coupon code to receive 15% off your order (no minumum) and free ground shipping.

Until my diagnosis of Celiac disease — which means I can’t eat gluten in any form — I’d been toying with the idea of diet food delivery again. I’ve tried it in the past and have to admit that I loved the experience. Having UPS show up weekly with a dry-ice filled box of breakfasts, lunches and dinners made dieting such a simple matter. With a husband and son content to live on pizza, PB&J’s and McDonald’s, prepackaged diet foods liberated me from the kitchen. They also cut down on dish washing, one of my very least favorite chores.

Unfortunately, I’d made the mistake of not doing much research before signing up for the program I followed. Based on Kirstie Alley’s results, I went with Jenny’s program… and a glance at Kirstie these days tells me she encountered the same problem that I did. The food was disappointing, the servings were minuscule, and, ultimately, I learned very little about portion control. When I finally ran out of food (and money), I gorged on everything in sight. I was that hungry.

Since then, I’ve checked into other diet delivery food programs, including Nutrisystem reviews. The Grand Daddy of dieting programs has been helping people lose weight for over 35 years. Throughout that time they’ve kept their program current with nutritional research. For instance, they recognize that men and women not only need different calories but do better losing weight with different foods. As a result, they offer both male and female programs.

Nutrisystem even offers diet plans for vegetarians and patients with diabetes. I know quite a few people who’ve had great success with their plan, and all of them have raved about the abundance of food… something I definitely did not experience with Jenny. With their OmegaSol blend of heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acids and a regular dose of natural fiber, dieters not only feel full on fewer calories but they don’t find themselves battling the cravings that derails so many diet plans. Unfortunately, despite their program’s numerous offerings they don’t have a gluten-free option.

So I checked out Medifast diet reviews in the hopes they might offer that alternative. Like Nutrisystem, Medifast has been around for years and has a proven track record. Oh, you won’t see celebrities like Kirstie advertising for them: they don’t need it. The program, as I know from friends who’ve followed it, works great and helps people lose weight more quickly than other diet delivery services. That’s the best form of advertising around, if you ask me.

Medifast’s principle of eating little meals throughout the day works perfectly for those who, like me, don’t want to get stuck eating a different meal than what they prepare for their family. Five meals a day are Medifast meals and one is a “lean and green” meal you prepare yourself using a balance of lean protein and green vegetables. (Presumably you won’t be serving your family high-calorie foods that would tempt you.) Although they don’t offer gender-based diet plans or vegetarian alternatives, they do offer three different packages depending on how much variety you want and how quickly you want to lose weight. Unfortunately, they don’t have a gluten-free program, either.

It’s frustrating, I’ll tell ya: I know these programs both work. After glancing over their prices, I know that even with the frozen pizzas and PB&J’s my husband and son would be eating we’d still save money on groceries. I know I love their convenience and variety, and I particularly like the thought of how simple they make meal-preparation. But until someone comes up with a gluten-free program I, like the 2 million other celiac patients (and the approximately 3 million undiagnosed people) still have to diet the hard way. Which, in my case, seems to mean: not very well at all.

Last night while scrolling through program guide the title of one show on BBC America caught my eye: Super Skinny Me. Obviously, it’s a play on the now-infamous documentary ‘Super Size Me’ which chronicled one man’s month of living on nothing but food from McDonald’s, including every “super size” serving offered to him.

Only the BBC documentary works in reverse: two reporters seek to slim down to a U.S. size 0 (yes, zero) within five weeks by trying numerous extreme weight loss techniques, including food deprivation and over-exercising. Both women began the experiment at normal weight, apparently free of eating disorders. Five weeks later, that wasn’t true of either anymore.

Although both women lost 14 pounds each, only one of them reached the size 0 they’d both been aiming for. (Size 0, they explained, is currently the ‘dream size’ in Hollywood… it is also the same size of jeans that an 8-year-old girl would wear.) The woman who reached the goal was glad to go off the extreme diet, and two weeks later had re-gained 7 pounds… something which she was glad for, having decided that the super skinny look felt unhealthy.

The other woman? Well, she won’t be able to celebrate having reached size 0 but, instead, will be dealing with eating disorders triggered by the 5-week experiment. Evidently, the mental mindset required to pursue that kind of drastic weight loss in that short period rekindled psychological issues from her teenage years when she’d been overweight and miserable.

I must confess to being appalled that the show claimed it was trying to prove the dangers of extreme dieting while carefully documenting, almost in a how-to fashion, how each woman managed to lose so much weight in such a short period. Oh, sure, one of the women got teary as she described how “awful” she felt for girls who seem to celebrate their bony, super skinny frames… and yet that same woman threw a party to celebrate having reached size 0 at the end of the trial.

I’m not sorry to learn this show is over: as far as I’m concerned it was just one more way of continuing to promote size 0 as desirable, one more way to encourage women to deprive themselves until their bodies resemble those of prepubescent girls. The sad thing isn’t that one reporter whose eating disorders were triggered by the experiment — she, at least, got counseling throughout the process and had finally recognized, by the end of the show, that the whole pursuit of size 0 was “a crazy game” that negatively affected her health.

No, it’s the women and girls who watched that show and didn’t receive the counseling that I worry about, because you just know there are plenty of viewers who are now following the same methods the reporters used in their extreme weight loss experiments. Only, unlike those reporters, there won’t be anyone watching them day-to-day to stop them when it gets out of control.

At my husband’s request, I’m not going to be trying that Cabbage Soup diet until the weather warms up. He’s got a point: being cooped up in the house with the smell of cooked cabbage (and the GI symptoms that can produce) is pretty much anyone’s idea of hell. Which means I either need to look into hotel deals or wait and, well, I’m quite skilled at postponing anything diet-related.

Then, yesterday afternoon one commercial after another came on TV pitching Alli diet pills as the cure to all diet problems, which made it really difficult to enjoy the jalapeño and bacon cheeseburger my husband made for our lunch. But it did remind me that I’d had a little success with Alli over the summer, so why not give it another try?

After all, I have everything I need already to get started: a spare bottle of pills and six brand-new pairs of dark-colored sweat pants thanks to a sale at Wal-Mart. Anyone who’s taken Alli in the past knows that dark-colored pants are absolutely essential to dealing with the possible “unwanted treatment effects” including bowel changes.

Bowel changes. Notice how they phrase that? It means stuff will be happening the likes of which you could never have imagined. It’ll be like a daily Dean Koontz novel inside your underwear.

If you wear underwear, that is.

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The cabbage soup diet (also known as the Dolly Parton diet for some reason) seems like it’s been around forever.

A couple of women over on the Fox health blog have been giving it a shot, though, and by day 7 each of them had lost five pounds. Oh, sure, with fad diets like the cabbage soup plan there’s always the risk of regaining every pound lost the instant you go back to eating “real food”, but that’s not what happened to these women:

After the seven days on the Cabbage Soup Diet we have both lost five pounds — and as a result we are keeping better track of what we are eating, when we are eating and why and how it is prepared. There are more fruits and vegetables in our diet, lower carbohydrate intake, less sugar and more exercise. I have personally lost another four pounds keeping this healthy lifestyle.

I’d love to tell you about my success on it, but I’ve never stuck with it for longer than one day because — as I’ve since discovered — I was doing it all wrong. I thought the point was to eat the soup, tons of soup and nothing but the soup for seven straight days. Turns out, there are quite a few other foods you get to eat, too.

Now, I happen to love cooked cabbage. I’m a pretty big vegetable fan in general, for that matter. But I have a hard time going for more than five days without meat. As I’ve since discovered, following the cabbage soup diet doesn’t require that.

So below the fold, for those who are curious, is the cabbage soup recipe along with the daily foods that are allowed. If you try it, let me know how it goes. You just might inspire me to give it a shot, too!

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Oh, sure, it’s only 6°F outside my window right now, but I can sense that Spring is in the air.

How can I be so sure? All I need to do is glance at the huge amount of diet-related email hitting my InBox that promise things like: “Eat all you want and lose 10 lbs. in 5 days !” (which, it turns out, is possible if you eat nothing but air) or “Lose weight while you sleep” (the first requirement for which involves consuming nothing but celery and water when you’re awake).

So naturally I’m a bit skeptical of the email I received from Prevention magazine promising that I can eat chocolate and still lose weight.

How? The diet essentially seeks to affect cortisol production.

Chronic stress produces cortisol which, in turn, interferes with dopamine and serotonin levels. These are known as the “feel-good” neurotransmitters, but since chronic stress keeps people from processing them correctly their brains demand something else to help them feel good. Some people turn to illicit drugs, others to alcohol and still others to food, especially sugary or fatty foods.

So, according to the article, regularly consuming foods rich in mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFAS) and stress relief can speed fat loss because the MUFAs deliver pleasure-producing fats, thereby shutting down cycle of cortisol production and pleasure-seeking that leads to overeating.

Sounds great, right? Who wouldn’t like a diet that encourages you to eat oils, nuts and seeds, avocados, olives and chocolate?

Of course, it’s not just about adding these foods to what you’re already eating. The program involves eating four times a day, 400 calories per meal, with each meal containing a specific amount of one of the MUFAs. There’s also a 4-day “jumpstart” during which you drink what they call “Sassy Water” (water with lemon and ginger) and smoothies four times a day. After that, it’s a 1,600 calorie a day plan.

But does it work? The Rachel Ray show recently aired an episode featuring women who dropped significant amounts of weight in as little as 30 days, simply by following the program. Mary Anne Sheshock followed the diet and told ABC’s Good Morning America that she lost 47 pounds in 5 months.

That all sounds good to me, but I know darned well I fall off of diets rather quickly if they don’t produce results. I need motivation, and ordinarily I look to my scale for that. But then I tried the flat belly virtual belly flattener to see what I’d look like after losing 5, 10, 15 or even 20 pounds.

No, I won’t share the photo with you but I will say that I’m giving serious thought to buying their book which comes with a free 3-month online program, too.

Yeah, I looked that good.

Some of you may have experienced what I found myself doing just the other night: I plunked down in front of my computer with a bag of potato chips to eat while reading email. Twenty minutes later I reached for another chip and… they were all gone. Where did they go? I didn’t remember eating it that much. In fact, I couldn’t have because I was still hungry

I hate to admit it, but that very same thing happens to me far more often than I’d like. Does it sound familiar to you, too?

The solution, according to one woman, doesn’t involve taking diet pills. It doesn’t even involve dieting at all. Instead, we need to put our brains to work to lose weight. That is: we need to eat “mindfully”, as Harvard Medical School instructor Jean Fain explains in her YouTube video, “Why a Twinkie?”.

Now, ordinarily there’s not much exciting about watching a grown woman eating a Twinkie while emoting happiness and pleasure, and between the shoddy video quality and Fain’s patronizing over-enunciation I felt like I was back in 8th grade trying not to snicker at a health class video.

But I kept watching, contemptuously, in part to find out just how long she was going to sit there silently eating that Twinkie. A full minute later, and only halfway through the Twinkie, she stopped. Did you get that? She didn’t even finish the thing. In my household that’s almost unheard of. Fain’s point, however, was that we can eat the foods we love and still lose weight if we’ll just eat mindfully.

So what’s mindful eating? Susan Albers’ book, Eating Mindfully: How to End Mindless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship with Food , describes it as consciously savoring your food:

…feeling the saltiness of each potato chip on your fingers when you pick it up. The taste of salt when you put the chip on your tongue. It’s listening to the loud crunch of each bite, and the noise that chewing makes in your head….”

Their other tips: make a celebration of it: if you’re going to eat, do nothing but eat. Eat slowly, free from mental distractions like the TV or computer. Wash your hands first like Mom told you to do. Sit down. Take small bites. Chew slowly. Give yourself permission to satisfy your hunger or cravings and to enjoy the taste while you do so.

Then eat every bite like it’s your first taste of that food… and might be your last.

You know, I think I may just give this a try. How about you?