I can barely believe it, but I hit the twenty pound mark today. Total time: 70 days. Not bad. Not bad at all. And what did I do? I basically avoided the white foods.
Okay, so we all know that diets only work if you follow the rules. Therefore, the trick to successful dieting isn’t about the plan itself, or the foods, or the shopping, or anything except one thing: following the rules. If you stick to it, it will work.
Okay, so how do you stick to it? We all know that’s far easier said than done. The good news is I know the secret. The bad news is, you’re not going to like the answer.
In the 1991 film City Slickers, Mitch and Curly are out with the cattle one day. While talking, Curly tells Mitch that the secret to life is one thing. Mitch asks what this one thing is. Curly replies with a smile, “That’s what you have to find out.” It just so happens that Curly’s secret to happiness is also the key to successful dieting (and why you’re not going to like the answer): you have to figure it out for yourself. Basically you have two jobs to do:
- Find what works for you
- Find out what will make you stick to it through thick and through thicker.
Job #1 is the easy part. Job #2 is about a thousand times more difficult and unfortunately the one that no one else can help you with.
How did I drop twenty pounds in about two months? Job #1 was to avoid high glycemic foods. I was exceedingly worried about my blood sugar levels and cutting these out seemed simple enough. Job #2 followed from there. Plain and simple, it was fear. I was really worried about myself. Not just a cursory, “Oh I could lose a few pounds,” but seriously worried and that was enough to keep me on track. When I’d see some tempting food, like a bag of chips or bowl of ice cream, one part of me wanted to just throw the diet out and eat it all. What always stopped me was seeing a blood sugar reading superimposed over the food.
What a normal person would see:
What I would see:
Now that’s motivation. Anyway, that’s twenty pounds down: so far so good. All I need to do is just keep doing what I’m doing and not screw it up. For those of you keeping score at home, here’s the full chart:
