Me at 220-240 ish. My All time heaviest. I think I was pregnant at the time, but not THAT far along - LMBO (or I needed to, at least - hehehe). I'm the one with the kid, not the Winnie the Pooh character - hehehe. I only weight 186 when I started the diet, so this pic isn't really a true BEFORE picture, but you get the idea.
Me after the diet - I weight 140 lbs!!!! Those are a size 6 jeans - Who would have though???
Below is a compilation of emails over the months about my diet. It just keeps growing and growing as more people respond with more question. But, here it is, in all its glory - LMBO! Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll try and help :)
Let me see if I can answer some questions.
What do we eat:
The first 12 weeks, it's VERY regimented. No deviations whatsoever. If you can wrap your head around that, and stick to the diet, you'll have GREAT success. You can do anything for 12 weeks, right?!!!
There's a list of approved foods to pick from each day. There's a list of approved meats, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, and such. Then, they tell you for each meal how much of each to eat. I really liked how regimented it was. I didn't have to worry about what to eat. Or when to eat. I just ate what was on my paper. No thinking about food, or worrying about what to eat. I used to care so much about food. I'd think about it all the time. I'd even dream about it (I know, pathetic, right?!!).
Here's some examples of the types of foods that we eat.
Meats:
any lean beef
chicken (white only)
turkey (white only)
tuna (in can or fresh)
several types of fish
game (buffalo, deer, etc.)
(1 time a day) cheese - mozzarella or cream cheese (fat free only) - (feta one time a week)
yogurt is an option at one meal also (6 oz of fat free, plain)
Vegetables:
celery
cucumbers
green peppers (no red, yellow, or orange)
califlour (no broccoli)
mushrooms
lettuce
spinach
cabbage
onions (35 grams per meal)
tomatoes (no cherry) (35 grams per meal)
OPtional food (yeah, of COURSE I'm gonna take te optional food - LMBO!)
Fruits: (3 per day)
Cantelope
oranges - 200 grams
apples - 200 grams
kiwi
um, more, but those are the ones that I actually ate on this plan.
saltine crackers - 12 (but you can't eat any more than 4 at a time - so 4, 3x a day)
after you do your blood work, they send you your packet, that shows what foods you can eat (apparently, they may be different for each person, but my hubby Captain America's and mine were the same foods). The also include at portions list. Captain Americas and mine were different, but only by a few grams.
For example, it would give you 3 meals a day, with 3-4 different options for each of the meals. You can put meal 1 as bkfast, lunch or dinner. Same with meal 2 and 3. But you can't have meal 2, 2 times that day. make sense? You need to have a meal 1, 2, and 3.
You have to eat your main meals 5 hours apart. I eat at 7, 12, and 5. I find that works well for me. My body EXPECTS food at those times, and if I am late, my tummy lets me know :)
Ok, lets take meal one, for example. my meal one says choose ONE of the following options: ( i can't remember the exact numbers, but these are close)
40 grams of cheese w/ 100 g of vegetables
OR
1 egg w/ 100 g. of vegetables
OR
80 g fish w/ 100 g of vegetables
OR
6 oz plain non fat yogurt.
I pick the yogurt. I add splenda (artifical sweetener). I dice up 200 grams of apple, and add that in.
OR for lunch:
70 g cheese w/ 100 g veggies
or
105 g. chicken w/ 115 g veggies
or
100 g beef w/ 110 g veggies
or
110 g fish w/ 115 g veggies
you just pick one. I like to eat 70 grams of mozzarella cheese with 100 g of sliced cucumbers. Salads are also good. I just REALLY like cheese.
Dinner is very similar.
I eat my first (optional) fruit at b-fast, then another one at 3:00, and one at 7:00pm. I eat my crackers at 10am, 2pm, and dinner.
For dinner, I like to make stir fries. I LOVE the beef option. I use onions, green peppers, mushrooms, sometimes cabbage, tomatoes. Dice them all up, and saute. I LOVE to sautee in Diet Sprite, or Diet Coke. Yummy! You can add natural spices, just no spice blends with things like salt or starches in it. So basic spices are good (curry is AWESOME as long as it doesn't have starch).
Vinegars are good too, for salads or cooking. Basic ones (balsamic, apple, red wine, etc). About 2 tbsp per day.
Also, if it isn't on the list, don't eat it :) Period.
You can have 3 sodas a day. Diet Sprite and Diet Coke/ Pepsi are approved. those are the ones that they tested on the diet, and they don't cause problems.
I know that after my hubby started the diet, he no longer had cronic heart burn. My back aches went totally away. I used to have leg cramps, and they totally went away. My headaches are even better. It clears up a TON of medical problems. My DH always thought that he had asthma. He went on the diet, and lost weight, and no more asthma problems. Amazing! We wasted TONS of money over the years. All he needed to do was lose weight, and get healthy.
Oh yea, you can have sugar free gum, too. I think like 4 sticks a day. That helps a lot too. And you're supposed to drink TONS of water. the more you drink, the better.
It says not to exercise until after the inital diet. I started exercising when I started re-feed. I wanted to know how much I could eat while jogging as my exercise. I plan on continuing with the jogging long term, so it worked well for me. But, I would recomment NOT exercising while on the inital 12 week part. You'll put yourself into a TOO big of calorie defecet.
Hmmmm, did my grocery bill go up? I think that I spent less money, actually. The meat is probably the most expensive part. Well, the apples too. It's 3 big apples a day. But, if you take the meat, and cut it up into your portion sizes, and freeze it, you can buy big packages, and store it for later. Also, it's Thanksgiving time, so buy a GIANT turkey, and carve it up before you cook it. Measure out a TON of baggies of turkey, and you'll have WEEKS of meals.
Oh yea, I should mention that you need to buy a REALLY good scale for the food. We bought one at Wal-Mart for about $30. OK, so it's not REALLY good, but it's not one of those cheap $5 ones either - LOL! It's REALLY important to measure everything you eat. You need to know EXACTLY how much you eat. the more exact you are, the faster/better you'll loose weight.
I know for me, paying ALL that money for the program helped me stick to it. I knew that if I was gonna pay that much, I sure wasn't gonna let it go to waste.
It SO helps to have a partner that is willing to do it with you. Just don't tell anyone I did it - heheh. Sometimes it's hard to stick to the plan if people around you aren't. But, I'm proud to say, thta I didn't cheat ONCE during the WHOLE process. Woohoo for me!!!
Hmmmm, what else. I think I've written a small novel - hehehe. Seeing the results definitely helped with staying dedicated to the program.
Oh yeah, the best course would be not to eat out. But, sometimes that's a necessity. My DH had to eat out all the time on the plan. He went to subway, and got a chicken salad. The portion of chicken they use is comparable to the diet. Not exact, but close. Then, just get the veggies from the diet plan. After you eat a few salads at home, you can estimate how much that would be at subway. I told him that he should just go to subway one day, and order a salad, using his best guess. Then, he should bring it home, and weigh it out. Then, he'd know for sure next time what it should look like. But, he didn't. Oh well, it was a good plan anyway - hehehe.
All the major fast food places have salads. Even ordering a side salad, and a plain chicken breast would work. My McDonlads here in Florence will let you do that. Some will, and some won't. Just be sure to pick out anything that you're not supposed to eat (like the carrots and cherry tomatoes in McDonalds side salads.) Remember, exactness!
OK, i think that's all for now. If you have any other questions, just let me know. I've pointed TONS of people to this diet, but as of yet, no one has done it. Maybe you will be my first recruit. It's SO awesome that I think that EVERYONE should do it - hehehe.
take care
bethany :)
ADDED on 1/16/09
Yeah, we really enjoyed this diet, and I'm SO glad that I found it. Lets see if I can answer your questions:
When did you start the diet: May 2008 - Starting Weight 186 lbs. Started Re-feed on October 10th, weighing 143 lbs, finished 2 weeks later at 140.
Current weight : 149, after eating practically everything I wanted for a month. I'm working on getting back on my diet. I feel nasty from the extra 9 lbs, and know that it will come off VERY fast when I do the original diet again, but the stress of the move is almost more than I can handle - lol. When Captain America and I get established in our home again, we're both doing the original diet till we reach our target goal again, then re-doing the re-feed.
The good thing is, I KNOW that this program works. All I need to do is follow it. I've done it in the past.
Did you lose all of your 100 lbs on this diet? No, I'd done slim-fast in the past, and various other diets. at one point, I got down to 160, for about 2 years. But I went back up to 190's again.
How hard is it to keep the weight off since I've reached my goal? Well, I started to answer this above, but I'll continue it here. I really liked the foods on the diet. Maybe not at first, but I really do like them. I can eat apples and yogurt EVERY day for breakfast, and not get bored. And the re-feed was great too. You have a lot of choices as to what to eat, but here are some of my favorites. Cheese and cucumbers and a piece of fruit, and some carrots was the PERFECT lunch for me. The snacks were great (a piece of bread and a banana), and even dinner was great (more meet, more veggies than on the original diet, plus a small starch). I think my biggest problem was living at my parents house. They have food that's not on the diet, and I'm not in charge of the food choices. When we get back on our own, I'll control what foods come into the house, so I won't have to worry about wanting to grab something that I shouldn't have. KWIM?
So, while I may be up 9 or 10 lbs from my low goal, I KNOW that I can get it off easily. With my other diets, I'd be SO upset if I gained this much weight over Christmas, and be at a loss as to what to do next. I still have all my original tools to help me.
As for eating out and desserts and such, I'm doing too much right now. But again, in my NORMAL life (not living at my parents house), we don't eat out that often. Maybe once a week or less. And I think eating THAT way would be fine on the re-feed. And the re-feed actually had you eat a small cookie on one day. So theoretically, you could eat a small cookie everyday and be fine. Granted, it was a plain cookie, but you get the idea.
I guess my thought is that I'm not a naturally thin person. I'll always struggle with my weight. Like an alcoholic. they're never curred. And I've come to accept that I'll always struggle with my weight. I always need to gurad against it. As long as I realize this, I can manage my weight. I can do the steps it takes to lose the weight, and keep it off.
I'd encourage you to do it. I LOVED the program. I'm not gonna say that it's easy at first. It was REALLY hard. But I had my hubby helping me. And I really wanted it for myself. It was frustrating at times, because he lost the weight SO much faster than I did. Men - sigh - LMBO! But I did have steady weight loss. Get a calendar, and chart your progress. I know they said on the diet plan, only weigh yourself once a month, but we did it daily, and wrote the lbs in on the calendar, which hung on the bathroom wall. It was a motivation for me.
Anyway, let me know if you have any questions, and keep me posted on your diet.
Take care :)
