The winner of the Crazy Diet of the Week is the guy who switched to a diet of mostly baked beans and dropped 140 pounds in nine months.
Wow, you might say, and start stocking up on the B&Ms, but hold on
and let's look at this more closely. It turns out that prior to the
Mean Bean diet, the mechanic was eating insane amounts of calories
every day, to the tune of 8 pints of beer, packages of cookies and potato chips, and double-fisting the Mars bars every single day, on top of
his regular meals. Simply cutting out those snack items alone would
have eliminated significant calories from his diet and resulted in
weight loss due to his fairly active job as a mechanic and the fact
that it takes a lot of energy to cart around 420 pounds. The magic
formula for losing weight is as simple as expending 3,500 more calories
than you consume. Six cans of very filling vegetables (and
British-style baked beans are in a light tomato broth, unlike their
syrupy American cousins), chances are that you're definitely going to
lose some weight, even if it's just because you can't fit anything else
into your gut! And also, maybe you'll get scurvy! And drive away your
friends and coworkers with your powerful and noxious "Oh my god, did something die in here" farting! So, double bonus.
Like the Magic Cookie Diet,
for some reason, folks love to believe that there is just one certain
food or gimmick that is the answer to permanent weight loss. While some
weight loss gurus find that people are able to stick with diets better
if they restrict their choices or go with repeatable favorites, the
best and happiest nutrition plans involve lots of variety. And beans
are just too versatile to only eat them baked from a can. For instance,
I don't think I could bear living in a world without hummus. Besides,
how fun would life be if you knew that tomorrow and the next day and
the day after that and forever until you lose weight, you're going to
be stuck with the same single food again and again, be it canned beans
or the most delicious salad
in the world or fake chemical slurries that disguise themselves as
milkshakes? Decidedly not fun! So get out there and shake off the
miserable food that you've been forcing yourself to eat for sake of
counting calories. Life is too short and the food is just too good to think you have to live in a culinary gulag just because you want to cut some calories or eat right.
Related Links from Elastic Waist and SELF:
Beans, beans, the magical fruit diet
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Comments 1-2 of 2
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Posted by Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:31am PDT
Report AbuseThe problem is that nothing else works for me except eating the same thing day in and day out. Fiber One Cereal is my breakfast and lunch and the yoplait Fiber One yogurt is my snack an dinner is a variety of low-cal hungry-girl recipes (love that website). If I so much as stray slightly from this monotonous diet, I can assure you, I will gain weight...I feel doomed to eat cereal for the rest of my life!
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Posted by Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:56am PDT
Report AbuseI have found that even if you limit yourself to one type of thing you can find lots of varities. I for one love Lean Cuisines at lunch time. I make myself buy a few weeks worth at a time in many different varities and this helps to curb the "I need mexican food today! Let's go eat burritos the size of our heads!", instead I can grab any number of mexican dishes already prepared in a much easier for my body to handle portion size. I also alternate my breakfasts. Some days I have an apple with peanut butter mixed with honey and other days I have a yogurt (occasionally with a handful of cereal mixed in for crunch). Also if I keep the sweet goodies off my desk I tend to forget about them rather than crave them every 5 minutes so when I get my REAL sweet craving in the afternoon I can satisfy it without already having overindulged.
I don't know HOW I found the will to be stricter with myself but now that I'm seeing results I've found it's worked fabulously!
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