Many of you know I’ve been working on a cookbook for a while now. Since it will only contain dessert recipes, I’ve baked over a hundred and photographed them. Because of all those sweets lying around, I’ve eaten the finished products and sadly gained an extra fifteen pounds. I decided to take a break from the book and try to lose the additional weight.
Once I made my mind up to commit to it, I researched the internet to find the best diet to lose the most weight in the shortest amount of time.
It took a while to sort through all of those offered. I read the reviews and visited their chat sites. The South Beach Diet was the winner. It guaranteed you’d lose 9-15 pounds in two weeks! The teaser on the back of the book claimed…It’s not low fat. It’s not low carb. It teaches you how to eat the right fat and the right carbs. Sounded good to me, so I decided to put it to the test.
For those of you not familiar with the plan, it’s divided into three phases. Phase one lasts two weeks and is fairly stringent. You can’t even eat fruit during those fourteen days.
Phase two allows you to add some foods back that you’ve been doing without.
Phase three is the one you should follow for the rest of your life in order to maintain the smaller you.
I won’t list the menus for phase one, but I will tell you, it had things on it I don’t like. Tomato juice…yuck. Jello…yuck. Egg substitute…yuck. Plus, the hardest thing for me was giving up my Diet Dr. Peppers. By day two, my caffeine withdrawal was so bad, I was ready to troll for street drugs!! Oh my Lord. It was awful, I was in agony, but I was determined to prove this diet WOULDN’T work.
Here’s the breakdown of my progress of weight loss:
Day two—1 ½ pounds
Day three-3 pounds
Day four-no change
Day five-no change
Day six- 1 pound
Day seven-no change
Day eight- 1 pound
Day nine-1/2 pound
Day ten- ½ pound
Day eleven-1 ½ pounds
Day twelve-Gained ½ pound
Day thirteen-no change
Day fourteen-no change
SO, that was a total of 9 pounds in 14 days. (I lost that ½ pound I gained on day 15) I moved on to phase two and during that time, I lost seven more pounds for a total of 16 pounds. I’m happy with that amount. I still loosely follow the plan…basically no bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, sugar….for the most part. I LOVE bread, so that’s my weakness and I do eat a biscuit or roll here and there, but the next day I’m back at it.
The author, Arthur Agatston, M.D. recommends staying on phase two until you lose the amount you want, and then move to phase three. I basically stay on phase two and cheat when I get the chance!!
This took place last August, and I’m happy to say, I’ve managed to keep the weight off. However, I’m back to working on the book again, so I weigh daily and the minute I gain 2 pounds, I’m back on the diet.
So, if you want to lose some extra pounds or just avoid gaining, or lose a few to give you some play room for all the Valentine candy, I recommend this diet. It really lives up to its promises.
