The Days of the Crash Diet Are Over

Growing up watching my mom diet I remember her pushing aside all of the foods she normally ate and liked and going on a crash diet. I remember her eating yucky cottage cheese and peaches for breakfast and hating it. I remember her making salads for lunch when I knew she hated lettuce; I remember her losing control at night and after a few days of that giving up.

Over the years, I remember doing my own crash diets. I was a bit smarter than my mom was at it, but not much smarter. I would start the day with a breakfast cereal like cheerios or raising bran, have a normal lunch and a light dinner. I would give up mid afternoon snacks like candy bars and starve myself until dinner. I could do this for about 2 weeks at a time before I began cheating on the weekends, and then eventually falling off the diet altogether. I also tried all the low carbohydrate fads that were supposed to make dieting tastier but eventually I had to have a piece of cake and gave up.

Popular belief over the years was that you would just suddenly start your new diet plan, which meant, "eating healthy" (what seemed like not eating at all), cold turkey. This was usually after a period of binging knowing what was to come.

Lately, diets seem to be taking a different approach.

Last week when I signed up for the Oprah Weight Loss Challenge and started the Bob diet plan, I found that the diet plan made recommendations that hardly seemed like dieting at all. Instead, it just requested I change one habit at a time. It even recommended not weighing myself for a month! (Fat chance)

I have decided I could not pay for that diet right now and switched to Spark people thanks to my friends recommendation, and once again, the start is slow and steady. The meal plan includes foods that are actually already in my pantry (for once) ... except for the asparagus! In addition it is asking me what I want to focus on for my beginning phase.