One of my readers (Yippee! I have readers! 🙂) asked “how do you do it?”  I can only assume that he/she meant how do you do the “I Love Food Diet”.

I  am not a doctor nor do I hold any advanced degrees on diet, nutrition or health. I do NOT claim to be an expert on exercise or fitness. I never studied nutrition nor do I possess any expertise on the functioning of the human body whatsoever.

I am however, a relatively intelligent person who is fed up (no pun intended), with the contradictory and confusing information out there regarding food and exercise. (read my  post:” The Experts don’t know their A** from their Artichoke” for further frustrating diet info).

I was a good girl. I did what they told us to do. I ate right and I exercised. I sweated to the oldies with Richard Simmons. I somercized with Suzanne Somers. I shaked my bootie  with Kim Kardashian’s Ultimate Butt Body Sculpt. I spent hours at the gym every day for 2 years straight. I ate oatmeal with fresh fruit every morning, had a healthy salad for lunch and a sensible meal for dinner. I did it. I played by all the rules and you know what…..the rules SUCK!

Not only did I NOT lose weight, I actually gained a few pounds. Sure, I was fit and toned, sure all this exercise was good for my  heart, sure all the healthy food I was eating was full of vitamins, yadda, yadda, yadda. But was I skinny? NOOOOOOOOOO. Dont even start telling me that muscles weigh more than fat. I was not that muscular and I remained that fat.

Then I read a discouraging article about the long-term success rate of  keeping the weight off. According to a 2005 symposium titled, “Science Based Solutions to Obesity, What are the roles of Academia, Government Industry and HealthCare” by Rena Wing and Suzanne Phelan, the success rates of long-term weight loss maintenance is RIDICULOUSLY low, only 2-20%!!!

Soooooo, let me get this straight, even if we forego all food and subsist on Wasa crackers and water until we achieve x-ray status and work out until we cough up a lung, the chances of us KEEPING it all off is less than getting hit by a car.

With that “encouraging” statistic in mind, I decided that I needed to devise a better way. A regime where we can eat what we want, whenever we want, as much as we want and lose weight AND KEEP IT OFF.

So, what exactly is the I LOVE FOOD DIET????

•  It is a diet rich in foods we LOVE – cheese, beef, chicken, pork, all seafood, green vegetables, berries, nuts, cream, butter.
• Eat these low carb foods all day, every day, whenever you want and as much as you want (obviously within reason). 
• Try and avoid heavy carbs (pasta, rice, bread and potatoes)
• If you are going to cheat and eat carbs, try to eat them early in the day so you have the rest of the day to burn them off.
• Alcohol is OK as long as you avoid all sugary mixers and juices.
• Have fun. Remember this is the I LOVE Food Diet, not the I FEAR Food Diet.

This “diet” is a work in progress and obviously needs to be fine tuned and perfected but its been working for me. Its been almost 3 weeks and I have lost almost 10 pounds effortlessly,without slaving away at the gym, without subsisting on cardboard wafers or tofu, but by eating real food, drinking real alcohol and having a real good time.  Try it. What do you have to lose, except a few pounds.

Chow for now.