Fact is, I really did lose 38 pounds. Then I found them again. And that, in a nutshell, is why one doesn’t do mostly liquid diets: because the instant you start back on solid food, the pounds reappear, seemingly overnight.

Which is not to say that I’ve given up trying to lose weight. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact: I’m working at it harder now than ever, only this time it doesn’t seem like work. See, this time I’m on Weight Watchers, and for the first time in my life I feel like I’m learning good eating habits. Most importantly (to my mind, at any rate), I’m not feeling constantly deprived. Unlike the Medifast diet I’d been on, I don’t have to fight my hunger urges and chew on my fingernails because I “can’t” have tempting foods. (I never did figure out the calorie count of fingernails.) In fact, if I want some potato chips I can have them… so long as I report the points and calculate it into my overall daily balance.

What a game-changer that is! No more feeling like ten potato chips just ruined my dieting efforts for the day — if not the entire week — and then going on a food binge because I’m angry with myself and tired of feeling deprived. Instead, I’ve been loading up on my fruits, veggies and scrambled egg whites throughout the day knowing that I want to save the majority of my Plus Points for our family dinner… and potato chips. Or a bowl of 94% fat-free popcorn. Or a glass of wine. In other words: this is a diet I can live with, and I love that!

Of course, now I wonder why I hadn’t tried Weight Watchers before. I think maybe it was because it just seemed so cliche. Also, I didn’t want to “do” meetings. But now that they’re doing an online only diet, I’m loving it! (Well, as much as anyone can love dieting, I guess.)

So now that I’m starting my third week of WW, it seems like a good time to reboot this blog. Hence the pretty new theme, and hence why I’m back to blogging here. As far as how often? Well, I plan to track my weekly progress and hope that by blogging here I’ll help myself stay accountable.

Now, to catch up:

WW Week #1: -3 pounds!
WW Week #1: -2.1 pounds!

I chose Sunday as my official weigh-in date to help myself stay on track over the weekend. So, if anyone’s reading this, I’ll see you Monday! In the meantime, here’s a great article on 9 surprising tips to break through a weight loss plateau. Considering the success of my first two weeks, and my past dieting history, I have a feeling I’m going to need those quite soon.

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I’m Bringing Chubby Back

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!

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Win a One-Month Supply Of Sensa!

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!

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Coming This Saturday: A Contest For All Of You Losers!

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!

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Have Willpower. Will Travel.

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.

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So Far, So Good With Sensa

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.

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Get Diet Food Delivered To Your Door

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.

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Don’t Super Skinny Me

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.

If you happen to have grown so fat that the waistband of your silky leopard print binkins can no longer be seen beneath the hanging flap of your lower abdomen, well, you might very well choose not to bother with the panties, anyway. That means dark pants in absorbent fabrics are even more essential.

So, what the heck, I figured. My husband and son were planning to be gone for the rest of the day, and after polishing off my son’s fries along with my hamburger I couldn’t imagine eating anything for dinner. Well, maybe just a little soup and some crackers… with cheese… if I got hungry. But certainly not the chili and chicken tamales I’d planned to make for dinner.

Now, while the makers of Alli seem to go to great lengths to remind users to take their pill with each meal, and to warn that consuming more than 15 grams of fat during the meal will result in those “unwanted treatment effects”, what they don’t tell you is that a pill taken at 4 p.m. will still cause the grease from the burger you ate at 11 a.m. to come blowing out your ass at unexpected moments.

(Which, incidentally, is precisely why you need those dark colored sweatpants. Or a baking sheet to sit on and some gullible old woman who’ll proclaim it as a religious miracle.)

Oh, I know, I know: how gross is that? But, look, I happen to be a rather smart person — certainly smarter than Pavlov’s dogs — it only took one change of pants before I realized it might behoove me to move a TV tray and my laptop into the bathroom for the next hour or two.

But if you think that was gross then you should just stop reading now, because you don’t want to hear how very awesome it can make a fat girl feel to see all those drops of taco grease-like blobs of fat swimming around in the toilet rather than sticking around to lodge permanently on her ass and thighs.

So, fine, I’m gross. But I also got to enjoy that jalapeño and bacon cheeseburger for half the fat calories, so there. Besides, it’s not like I popped a pill dipped in 24-k gold and filled with gold leaf and then went mining in my toilet.

Sheesh.

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Of Alli and My Ass

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!

Recipe: Cabbage Soup Diet

• 1 head cabbage, chopped
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 16-28 ounces low-sodium tomato juice
• 2 green peppers, cored and chopped
• 4 stalks celery, sliced
• 6 carrots, sliced
• 1 dry onion soup mix (optional)
• black pepper to taste

Soup directions

1. Place all ingredients in a large pot.

2. Fill with water to cover vegetables.

3. Bring to boil for 10 minutes.

4. Turn down heat, simmer until vegetables are tender.

Cabbage Soup Diet Instructions

Note: You can eat as much soup as you like every day. Also, you can drink as much water and calorie-free beverages as you want.

Ingredients

3 large onions
1 large green pepper
1 head celery
Half a dark green cabbage
Tin of chopped tomatoes
1 pack onion soup mix
3 vegetable stock cubes

Directions

1. Cut all vegetables into small pieces.
2. Put all ingredients, including vegetables, in a sauce pan.
3. Simmer until veggies are soft.

Diet (only these foods plus calorie-free liquids):

Day One: All-you-can-eat soup and fruit (but not bananas).

Day Two: All-you-can-eat soup and vegetables (cooked any way), plus a baked potato with a small amount of butter at dinner.

Day Three: Combine days 1 and 2 but skip the potato.

Day Four: All-you-can-eat soup and up to 8 bananas. Drink up to eight 8-oz. glasses of skim milk if you like.

Day Five: All-you-can-eat soup plus up to 20 oz. of beef, chicken or fish and as many as 6 tomatoes. You must drink eight 8-oz glasses of water to flush your system this day.

Day Six: Same as Day Five plus salad at dinner.

Day Seven: Still more soup plus brown rice, fresh vegetables and unsweetened fruit juice. (No potatoes).

Day Eight: Are you skinny yet?

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Lessons From The Cabbage Soup Diet

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.

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Good Fats And The Flat Belly Diet