Health Secrets

I’m an idiot at losing weight. I’ve tried low carb diets, low fat diets, the grapefruit diet, the 3 day diet, juice fasting, attending meetings, and eating less than 1000 calories a day. I’ve read dozens of diet books and joined several health clubs where all I lost was my money. After 20 years of trying to lose weight the only thing about me that is lighter is my pocketbook so when I saw ads online for FatLoss4Idiots, I thought it might be the answer to losing my unwanted pounds.

After reading the sales page (it’s very convincing) I immediately gave my credit card a workout and paid $39 for the FatLoss4Idiots program and started reading (that was the special discounted price I paid at the time I signed up – that price may or may not still be valid).

The premise of the FatLoss4Idiots diet is that low fat diets, low carb diets, and low calorie diets don’t work. I can vouch for that. They promote a system of eating that changes your body in just 11 days. The technique they use is “calorie shifting.” That means the diet has a person eating different types of calories and meals on different days, shifting the menu around to trick the body’s metabolism and not let it go into the “starvation mode” that slows down and stops weight loss.

The diet is easy. It includes an online diet generator that I used to choose the foods I wanted to eat for 11 days from a pre-set list. After making my choices it took just a few seconds for my 11 day menu to print out.

I figured I could do it for 11 days, which is how long each cycle of the diet lasts. A person goes on the 11 day plan as many times as they need to with a few days off the diet in between each cycle.

I was so motivated about doing the FatLoss4Idiots diet that my husband decided he would do it with me. Here are our thoughts and our results.

My husband:
Weight Loss after 11 days: 7 pounds
What he liked: how easy the diet was. He said “I never had to worry about planning meals that would fit into my diet. My foods were all planned for me. I was told what to eat for each meal every day plus there wasn’t anything complicated to cook. It was simple plus it worked. I lost 7 pounds.”
What he didn’t like: “It got boring. Some of the foods I picked out I only got to have once during the 11 day period; others showed a lot – sometimes in more than one meal a day. For example, even though I like eggs and chose to have them on my food list, they were on my menu way too many times.”

Me:
Weight Loss after 11 days: 8 pounds
What I liked: I liked that I lost weight doing it.
What I didn’t like:
I didn’t like the weird combinations of food for some of my meals. One particular one that made me feel physically ill was when my meal was cashews and bacon strips. I really like bacon and I really like cashews but never want to eat them together as a meal again. It was yucky.

I also thought the food choices were too limited. The number of choices a person can pick to have on their menu plan is small, only 30. Plus, the choices themselves are pre-set meaning there several foods to choose from that I don’t like. What I hated the most though was how some foods I didn’t pick still showed up my menu plan. Why have me pick what I want to eat and then tell my fruit choices for a meal are fruits I didn’t pick and fruits I don’t like? That bothered me.

I was also hungry a lot. One of the keys to the diet is to only eat until satisfied, not full, which is a good strategy to always follow but there were times that I was hungry again in an hour and I was supposed to wait at least 2 ½ hours before having another meal. Some days I felt like I wanted to start chewing on my arm because I was so hungry. But to be fair, this may have been more of a symptom of me not yet having learned how to recognize when I was satisfied and instead having stopped eating when I was still hungry because I was afraid I would overeat.

And, like my husband, I got bored with my food choices. I missed bread the most. Other carb foods are, but not bread.

After we both took a 3 day break from the diet, my husband chose to not go on it for another 11 days because he had gained 4 of the 7 pounds he had lost back even though he didn’t think he overate during the 3 days he took a break from the diet.

I only gained 1 pound back during the three day rest period so I did another 11 day cycle. During the 2nd cycle I lost another 5 pounds.

I got pretty good results. I lost a total of 12 pounds in 25 days (factoring in the 1 pound I gained back and counting the rest days).

But even though I lost weight doing FatLosss4Idiots I couldn’t convince myself to do a third 11 day cycle even though I had more weight to lose. The diet just felt too restrictive to me.

Conclusions:
The FatLoss4Idiots diet does work.
It is easy. An ‘idiot’ can do it.
But, it’s also hard because of the limited food choices.
The diet also isn’t a “weight loss breakthrough.” Like any other diet, it tells a person to quit gorging themselves on crappy food and to make sure to drink enough water.

Is it worth the money? Sure. The program isn’t expensive and it’s a one-time fee. One a person pays for the materials they are theirs to keep. The diet handbook provided with the purchase of the FatLoss4Idiots diet plan provides a clear, concise, and easy to read reminder of how to follow healthy eating habits. That alone is worth the purchase price.