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About this iReport
- Posted September 8, 2012 by
- atwitsendcom Follow
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Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
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52 diets in one year
It began in early April 2011, when I realized that I was the heaviest I’ve been in my life, a depressing 218 pounds. While I had been overweight for basically my entire adult life, my weight usually hovered around 205. But when I reached 218, I decided something needed to change.
In the past, when I’ve attempted diets, I mostly tried to stay away from desserts and fatty foods. I did the Body for Life diet when it first became popular. I tried a poorly understood (by me) low-carb diet once, in which I consumed only meat, and nothing else. And for a long time, I increased my daily exercise in the hopes that burning more calories would be enough lose weight or at least maintain it. (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.) But every diet proved too difficult to maintain. After a few weeks of Body for Life, for example, I became so bored with my food options that I eventually melted down and ate junk food for several days, just to get some variety.
I decided it wasn’t likely I’d be able to sustain any one diet for an extended amount of time. I figured I could make a week, but with any more than that I'd just run into problems. Therefore I decided somewhat arbitrarily that I would try the gluten-free diet for 6 days. During that diet, as you will see from the entry, I consumed a lot of candy instead of flour. This was not exactly productive. I followed it up with a sugar-free diet. It wasn’t until the third week that I tried what most people would consider to be a “real” diet (calorie counting). It was after completing that diet that I started to form an idea of continuing the ‘different diet every week.’
I got into this to lose weight. Some people supported me, but a lot of people were against it For some, I suspect the idea of a thinner version of me was scary. I am not really sure why, since the chances of me eating them decreased significantly once I started losing weight. (There is, to my knowledge, no “cannibal” diet.) Some of my friends and family worried that such radical changes in my diet from week to week would prove to be unhealthy. I discovered that, as passionate as people can be about religion and politics, they are even more passionate about what they feel is the "one and true diet." Anytime I chose a diet which didn't fit their preferred diet I had to listen to an extension lecture on the merits of their diet.
Added to that was the ever present criticism of only following the diet for 6 days. Was 6 days long enough to get results? Yes, over half of the time. A lot of people will tell you that their diet requires a minimum of number of days greater than 6. "It takes at least four weeks to see results." Well, then, your diet isn't for me. Sometimes they were right and sometimes they weren’t. I lost weight on 28 diets, gained weight on 18, and had 6 diets which were neutral.
Some of the diets were conventional and others were just crazy. I took diet suggestions from family, friends, coworkers, and whatever I could find on the internet. I ended up trying and often learning to appreciate foods from cultures previously unknown to me, at least in a culinary sense. Alternatively, I had some diets which I would not recommend to anyone (Bran Muffin Diet anyone?). Some of the diets I wasn’t able to complete, sometimes I had a lack of motivation, other times the diet affected me in such a way that it was not possible to continue.
In the past, when I’ve attempted diets, I mostly tried to stay away from desserts and fatty foods. I did the Body for Life diet when it first became popular. I tried a poorly understood (by me) low-carb diet once, in which I consumed only meat, and nothing else. And for a long time, I increased my daily exercise in the hopes that burning more calories would be enough lose weight or at least maintain it. (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.) But every diet proved too difficult to maintain. After a few weeks of Body for Life, for example, I became so bored with my food options that I eventually melted down and ate junk food for several days, just to get some variety.
I decided it wasn’t likely I’d be able to sustain any one diet for an extended amount of time. I figured I could make a week, but with any more than that I'd just run into problems. Therefore I decided somewhat arbitrarily that I would try the gluten-free diet for 6 days. During that diet, as you will see from the entry, I consumed a lot of candy instead of flour. This was not exactly productive. I followed it up with a sugar-free diet. It wasn’t until the third week that I tried what most people would consider to be a “real” diet (calorie counting). It was after completing that diet that I started to form an idea of continuing the ‘different diet every week.’
I got into this to lose weight. Some people supported me, but a lot of people were against it For some, I suspect the idea of a thinner version of me was scary. I am not really sure why, since the chances of me eating them decreased significantly once I started losing weight. (There is, to my knowledge, no “cannibal” diet.) Some of my friends and family worried that such radical changes in my diet from week to week would prove to be unhealthy. I discovered that, as passionate as people can be about religion and politics, they are even more passionate about what they feel is the "one and true diet." Anytime I chose a diet which didn't fit their preferred diet I had to listen to an extension lecture on the merits of their diet.
Added to that was the ever present criticism of only following the diet for 6 days. Was 6 days long enough to get results? Yes, over half of the time. A lot of people will tell you that their diet requires a minimum of number of days greater than 6. "It takes at least four weeks to see results." Well, then, your diet isn't for me. Sometimes they were right and sometimes they weren’t. I lost weight on 28 diets, gained weight on 18, and had 6 diets which were neutral.
Some of the diets were conventional and others were just crazy. I took diet suggestions from family, friends, coworkers, and whatever I could find on the internet. I ended up trying and often learning to appreciate foods from cultures previously unknown to me, at least in a culinary sense. Alternatively, I had some diets which I would not recommend to anyone (Bran Muffin Diet anyone?). Some of the diets I wasn’t able to complete, sometimes I had a lack of motivation, other times the diet affected me in such a way that it was not possible to continue.
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