Yesterday was day one of our diet. I was going to wait until my six week postpartum period was over to start losing my pregnancy weight, but my ice cream, tortilla chips with queso, macaroni and cheese diet was starting to take me in the other direction. So we started a week early.
Having a baby is the quickest weight loss regime I’ve ever followed. I dropped ten pounds the first day, and fifteen by the end of the first week. Yesterday, when we started the diet, I was seventeen pounds down from my pregnancy weight. My goal is to lose the other thirteen pounds I gained, plus the ten left over from my last pregnancy, as well as the twenty-five extra I was already carrying from being “happily married” and ten more because I’ve always wanted to be thinner. I know you pulled out your calculator, but let me save you the button pushing: 58 pounds.
It’s hard for me to believe that I am 58 pounds overweight. I have two pregnancies as a partial excuse, but it’s clearly a lifestyle thing. Also, I make men fat. Every man who’s ever dated me has gained significant weight. Odie is no exception. During our courtship and engagement, he gained about ten to fifteen pounds, and he gained about twenty with the pregnancies. Like me, he tends to not lose weight while I’m breastfeeding, despite other people’s claims that it just “melts off.”
I chose The 17 Day Diet for us because Dr. Phil told me to. I am not a fan of Dr. Phil, but for some reason I feel compelled to do everything he tells me to. I’m admitting that to you because he tells me that I can’t change what I don’t acknowledge.
Like most books that promise weight loss short cuts, this one is full of crap. It is NOT a 17 day diet. It is a lifestyle change. It just comes in 17 day phases. The first cycle is called “Accelerate” and it lasts (wait for it) 17 days. That didn’t seem like a very long time until after I ate my first Atkins-y breakfast and realized that was it until snacktime. I’ve been eating an entire “Large size” Stouffer’s Mac and cheese for breakfast almost every day for a while, so my egg whites with spinach and carmelized onions and green tea was something of a letdown. Unsatisfying, you might say, if you were going for the Understatement of the Week Award. Unlike Atkins, I can’t smother everything with cheese and ranch dressing.
All four phases of this diet start with “A.” So far, I’d call this phase Atrocious. Appalling also comes to mind. How about abhorrent? Any of those will work.
Not because the good doctors (Phil and author Moreno) have a bad diet, but because ALL DIETS ARE BAD!
Well, except for my macaroni and cheese/tortilla chips with queso/ice cream diet. That one is glorious and sublime.
We’re eating tons and tons of vegetables, which I do not enjoy. I’m a vegetarian, so my “lean protein” options are boring and limited. I didn’t realize how much pleasure I was getting from food until yesterday morning when I ate that egg white scramble while watching “Breaking Bad” instead of my usual Waffle Cone Ice Cream.
Watching “The Next Food Network Star” (aka “The Next Person who will have a show on Food Network for five episodes and then fade into obscurity”) or “Chopped” or “Hell’s Kitchen” is now painful and masochistic.
Up until I got pregnant with Viva in August of 2008, I’d been on a diet continually since I was ten. Even though I gained over twenty pounds after getting married, if I’d truly let myself go unrestricted, I would have gained fifty. I put it on easily too. Just thinking about the key lime pie at my favorite restaurant will put me up about .6 lbs.
Some of you will be tempted to give me advice about this. Thank you in advance, but I’m doing this and this is the way I’m doing it. The good news is that The 17 Day Diet is all about making changes that you can sustain for life, thereby keeping the weight off for good. I will not have to permanently give up things I love. It’s just for 17 damn days that I have to eat the way I did yesterday and today. After that, there is another 17 day phase that looks easier. Phase 1 is Agonizing, but phase two promises to be merely Arduous.
Ack.
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