A few years ago, I challenged myself to ride my bike 28 days on the Ladiga Trail in an effort to get into shape and lose weight. I published the challenge on Facebook, received a lot of support and encouragement, and although I accomplished the 28 days of riding part, I failed to lose any weight. Apparently, one also has to combine riding with a good diet in order for that to happen. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I could not eat a bunch of processed Little Debbie snack cakes, big bowls of pasta, fried breaded chicken and the like and still lose weight. (Those last two sentences are laced with sarcasm, just in case we have just met). While I stated in my most recent blog post that I cannot view my cycling as a means of exercise, or else I will not do it, I still expect results from all that movement, and I cannot obtain those results unless I find an eating plan I can live with and one that is portable, meaning I can adapt to wherever I find myself, whether on a trip, or dining with friends.
I am of the mindset that any diet works to lose weight, as long as it is nutritionally sound and is one that is practical for the long haul. I have been on them all, and have lost weight on all that I find I can stick with. The problem is that I don't find myself able to stick with any of them for a long period of time. Low carb used to be THE one I could go on and lost weight quickly, but I am 50 years old now, and when you only lost 11 pounds in over a month where you used to could lose 20, it loses its appeal. I still believe that I do better when I eliminate processed breads from my diets, and very little bread or grain at all, but to totally eliminate them is a bit radical, and impractical. I never want to be rude to a host when they serve beautiful sandwiches or a fantastic pasta salad. I refuse to do that because I know the love and care that goes into the preparation of the food. The appeal of low carb dieting is also that I get to eat full fat foods, such as cream cheese, mayo, sour cream, and my favorite....butter. With WW and other low fat, low cal diets, those goodies are looked upon as the worse possible offenders, and I refuse to believe that fat is the culprit. That leaves me with either refusing to diet and eating less of what I want any time I want it, or going back to what worked for me in the past couple of years and that is Robert Ferguson's Diet Free Life.
I started with this in 2010 (that long ago?) and lost almost 30 pounds before losing interest and allowing my old habits of poor planning to rear their ugly heads, and I gained it all back, plus a few extra. He calls this "diet free" and really, it can be and pretty much is, in that no food is off limits. You can actually have a piece of regular chocolate cake. You know, the kind with real sugar and white flour? It all boils down to eating the right foods at the right time, and in the right combination. The program he was first associated with was called Food Lovers Fat Loss and it is still in existence, but his association with them ended for various reasons that I never delved into. He says on his website that there is no other program like Diet Free Life, so I am interested in seeing how he tweaked his original program, and if there will be anything new to learn.
Unfortunately, I received an email yesterday from the account manager for DFL, and she said it will be up to 10 days before my program is shipped out, so what the heck am I going to do in meantime to keep myself from throwing all caution to the wind and eating everything in sight? I could continue to do the low carb thing, but I have a few social occasions coming up, and as I stated before, it is just not in my plan to reject food that someone took the time to prepare and lay out before me. I believe I will just eat like a normal human being, or as close to one as I can get, and continue to ride my bike in hopes that I will not balloon up to elephant size while waiting on the program to arrive. I know that one of his tenets is eating every 2-3 hours to begin regulating my metabolism, and since I do love to eat, that will not be a problem and I will eat something every 2-3 hours. I will try to eat the healthier stuff, but I won't stress out about it too much.
I hate that I am once again paying for a diet program, when I have spent so much money in the past on these things and have failed at each one obviously. If I had every penny I have ever spent on trying to lose weight, I could pay off all my debt and retire from my job. How is that for depressing?
Maybe this will be the last one. Maybe.
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