Going on a Diet

About five or six years ago, my husband and I decided to go a diet. Too many chips and too little exercise had resulted in too many pounds. They had crept up on us slowly. And before we knew it our clothes were too tight, his back was bothering him, and walking up a flight of stairs was becoming increasingly strenuous for me. Something had to be done. So together, we resolved to lose the extra weight. That Christmas, before consuming a large dinner with all the fixings and a few Christmas cookies, I opened a gift from my husband: The Flat Belly Diet Cookbook by Liz Vaccariello and Cynthia Sass. We started on New Year's Day.

The first 65 pages explain the diet and how it works. In a nutshell, you eat three 400-calorie meals and one 400-calorie snack each day, making sure that you have "a MUFA with every meal". "MUFAs" are monounsaturated fatty acids -- those good-for-you, plant-based fats found in things like olives, avocados, nuts, seeds, legumes, and -- get this -- chocolate! The book has many delicious recipes, as well as helpful information like serving sizes and calorie counts. The authors start you out with a four day anti-bloat jumpstart, which does take some willpower to stick with. But after those first four days, in which we lost a few pounds to start the momentum, the food we ate didn't leave us feeling deprived at all. In fact, it was quite delicious, and healthy to boot! We changed our eating habits completely, and our efforts were successful. My husband gradually lost over 50 pounds, and I lost 15. We both achieved a healthy weight and started walking several times a week. My clothes fit me again, my husband's back stopped hurting, and he bought a whole new wardrobe in a size he hadn't worn since before I knew him. 

Lately, however, we have been careless in our eating, and we haven't gone walking much lately. Sometimes life just happens. As a result, the pounds have begun to sneak up on us again. Just a few, but enough for us to notice. On Friday I got all the groceries I need for the four day jumpstart (pictured above), and today we started with day one, determined to get back on track. It won't take us long to reach our goals, and this time I know we can do it! 

Come back again  for a progress report!