The Kelly Diet

Or

How a lazy-ass donut addict lost 71.5 lbs (so far).

I’ve been receiving lots of compliments on how much better I look since the weight loss. Which is nice. However, it's not something I’d normally mention because it seems like bragging, but I bring it up because the compliments are inevitably followed by this exchange:

Random Complimenter: “How much have you lost?”

Me: “71.5 lbs. so far and working on another 13 to go”

RC: “Wow! Ohmygoshhowdidyoudoitwhatplandidyoufollow? Tellmetellmetellme!”

Me: “Uh, well, y’see, my husband left me for another woman and…”

Awkard silence.

This keeps happening so I’ve started to think that maybe I need to come up with a better response. That’s tough, though because it’s not like I can just say “Weight Watchers” or “Atkins” or whatever. I've sort of made up my own thing as I’ve gone along and for whatever reason, it’s worked. Now, I don’t have anything against all those other diets. I’ve tried just about all of ‘em myself and many of them have good points. I think Weight Watchers teaches great portion control and how to keep a healthy balance in your diet. I think the low/no-carb Atkins philosophy has a point about an excess of carbs being a problem when dieting.

But the big thing I learned from all of these various regimens is that I COULDN’T STAY ON THEM SO THE WEIGHT CAME BACK.

Let me say that again.

I COULDN’T STAY ON THEM SO THE WEIGHT CAME BACK.

So, it became obvious that I needed to create a regimen that I would be able to stick to for life. Not only is yo-yo dieting bad for you (because we all know you never just gain back the amount you lost – you always gain 10-20 on top of that) but I was no longer willing to accept failure as an option.

Now, I’d love to say that I was immediately struck by a brilliant, inspired and complete diet plan which I put into action and followed religiously from the moment I thought of it.

Those of you that know me well should please stop laughing and pick yourselves up off the floor.

Didn’t quite happen that way. It’s been more of a process that’s evolved over the past year and a half. I thought I’d document it, though, because maybe someone else can find some or all of it useful.

And, okay, I’m a teensy weensy bit proud of my achievement, too.

Basically, I can boil my philosophy down to 3 steps (remember, I’m going for that pithy response for when people ask me questions that doesn't involve me saying "okay, first thing you do is get your husband to dump you for someone else" because call me crazy, but I don't think many women are going to be able to stick to THAT plan.)

STEP ONE: No More Denial.

STEP TWO: Change your eating habits (notice I didn’t say “eat less”).

STEP THREE: Exercise more.

Yeah, I know. Step 3 bites the big one, but there’s just no getting around it (see step one about no more denial). However, you don’t have to worry about it now because we’re going to put it off as long as possible. Something I’m sure we all excel it because, let’s be honest, if we were brimming-with-energy-go-getters-who-love-to-exercise-all-day-long, we wouldn’t need to lose weight in the first place, right?

I’ll break the steps down in more detail in future entries. I’m going to sprinkle this stuff in occasionally amongst other topics because life is NOT all about weight loss. I’ve got other good stuff coming up – bead pics, beach pics, a book review, etc.

KJ