My Big Fat Greek Yogurt Wedding

The title of this blog post is a fun mash-up of  the 2002 movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Greek yogurt. The latter of which, in case you've been living in a cave, is the "It" yogurt of the new millenium.

And that's saying a lot since non-Greek yogurt is the dairy equivalent of Extacy, judging by the TV commercials in which ordinary women moan with delight over what is essentially fruity sour cream. (Apparently adding the adjective Greek to yogurt makes it more special because it's thicker, has more protein and sounds European -- i.e., superior.)

For the record, I'm a fan of Greek yogurt as long as it's the plain, whole milk variety, like FAGE Total Classic.

You can do pretty much anything with Greek yogurt as you can with sour cream or regular yogurt, such as mix it with cooked cauliflower for cauliflower mash or spoon into a bowl with some nuts and berries for a high protein snack.

Mmm... Medifast cookie dough
Photo courtesy of Ashley Chanel Gonzales

If you're following the Medifast 5&1 Plan, a genius way to use Greek yogurt is to add it to the chocolate chip soft bake, which turns it into cookie dough. My Facebook friend Ashley Chanel Gonzales, who is also a TSFL health coach, posted the following recipe today:

Mix the soft bake and the yogurt and cool in the refrigerator for one hour.

Per Ashley, this counts as 1 MF replacement meal and almost half a daily serving of lean.

Another great thing to do with Greek yogurt is make salad dressing out of it. You can do this yourself or just buy one of the great tasting OPA dressings by Litehouse hanging out near the salad fixings at your better supermarkets. I love these dressings so much I even wrote poem about them.

Meanwhile, fans of My Big Fat Greek Wedding are in for a treat since its writer and lead actress Nia Vardalos announced she has written a sequel to that movie. Per Entertainment Weekly, "The film will follow up on Vardalos’ Toula as the revelation of a family secret and a 'bigger, fatter wedding' gathers the Portokalos family together for another go-around. John Corbett is also set to return as Toula’s husband, Ian."

Can't wait to watch this at home with a big salad and OPA dressing and Ashley's cookie dough for dessert.



More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest

Getting Off the Diet Merry-Go-Round for Good

Can Medifast keep you off
the diet merry-go-round
for good?

Today's guest blogger, Pat Cowan, is currently following the Medifast 5&1 Plan. Like many of us, Pat has been on the diet merry-go-round for most of her life; so she has a realistic fear of gaining some or all of her weight back once she reaches her goal.

Part of the appeal of Medifast for Pat is that the program provides clear guidelines for transitioning off the food plan and maintaining her weight loss forever. But the fear of regain is real.

In Pat's own words ...

We all know about regain. Some of us are using Medifast precisely to combat a regain. And the comments:  "I tried (name your diet program) -- it was okay but then I gained it all back and then some more."  Or, "the diet food was great but when I went back to my own food I gained weight again."

My thoughts are: "I'm terrified. I don't want (another) regain. I don't know what I'll be able to eat once weaned off the 5&1.  I can see today that if I stray, it costs me on the scale. Will my life be like that?  Every restaurant meal taking a toll the next morning?  Every party or family gathering a place to be wary of calories floating in the ether and implanting themselves firmly on my hips?"

Pat Cowan

I already figured out I can't eat "my own foods" (a.k.a., what got me into this mess in the first place). I already know how to tweak our favorite recipes to make them less fatty, less salty, more nutritious. I already know that I'll need to measure my protein until I can trust my eyes to portion correctly. I already know that certain foods are sadly gone forever except for a VERY select few times.

So what's my fear?  Well for one, what will my day look like?  I'll still have my normal breakfast (egg beaters).  I'll still have my snack bars at 10 and 3.  Lunch???  Now I do a hearty MF meal over spaghetti squash. I'm guessing I can make my own sauce -- ground turkey with Rao's -- measure it and calculate it and that'll be good. Tuna fish is a favorite and on a revolution roll will be fine.

That leaves dinner. I don't think we'll get to change it very much from what we're doing now for our lean and green.

And a brownie before bed, of course.

Is that how it's going to be?  Why am I so afraid of it?  We're already doing mostly everything anyway.   I wonder if these feelings are normal? Will I look back on these words next year and chuckle?

Your guess is as good as mine.

My thoughts: Like Pat, I was nervous that I might regain my weight after Medifast. I had been "successful" on so many diets -- from Weight Watchers to Jenny to Nutrisystem -- but gradually the pounds always reappeared... and then some. I am now one year post-Medifast and am still maintaining my ideal weight thanks to following the healthy habits I cultivated during my 5&1 weight loss phase and learning more about the fallacies of low-fat dieting and the role of refined carbohydrates in causing insulin resistance and fat retention.

So I'm placing my money on you, Pat. You've got this girl!




More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest

Are You an Abstainer or Moderator?

So I Kindled Gretchen Rubin's new book Better Than Before, which I recommend you read if you want to lose weight or cultivate healthier eating habits. It is loaded with great paradigms and strategies, like a cauliflower casserole loaded with bacon and melty cheese.

Do I have your attention now?

One of the concepts I love in Rubin's book is that some people can occasionally deviate from their healthy habits with no dire consequences while others must be 100% consistent.

Rubin labels these two groups of people as moderators and abstainers.

A moderator can eat one brownie once in a while.

If an abstainer eats that same brownie, she is likely to go back for seconds, thirds or ninths or resume eating brownies or other bakery treats every day.

One of the reasons why Medifast worked so well for me is that it forced me to be an abstainer while I was OP. Knowing that even one cupcake could throw me out of my mild state of ketosis and stall my weight loss was enough for me to say "No thank you."

Which is way different than a diet like Weight Watchers that permits you to eat anything you want as long as you don't exceed your max points.

The black and whiteness of abstaining from certain foods altogether worked way better for me since I didn't have to constantly summon my will power. I knew what I could eat and what I could not. I was not making a million micro decisions every day.

And my fat melted off like candle wax in less than four months.

What's interesting is I've noticed through my various Medifast Facebook groups that people who are abstainers like me do far better with the relatively rigid Medifast approach than those who frequently make exceptions and cheat on the 5&1 Plan. Medifast is like a child's coloring book with bold lines. If you insist on coloring outside those lines you'll end up with a picture that looks like this:

Instead of this:

Ironically, I am not a big rule follower, so the only way for me to be comfortable abstaining was to act like it was all my idea. Even though some bossy nutritiony people at Medifast created the diet rules, it was my decision to follow them. So I was only hurting myself if I rebelled since the diet police in Maryland would have no idea either way.

What's interesting is that most dietician types like to tell people it's okay to depart from one's healthy eating habits in moderation, but that doesn't work for everyone. If it did, we'd all look like this:

Except for the shiny skin part.

So if you're wondering if you're an abstainer or moderator, here's a quick diagnostic tool from Rubin's blog:

You’re a moderator if you…
– find that occasional indulgence heightens your pleasure–and strengthens your resolve
– get panicky at the thought of “never” getting or doing something

You’re an abstainer if you…
– have trouble stopping something once you’ve started
– aren’t tempted by things that you’ve decided are off-limits

More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest

Added Sugar, Nutrition Labels and Food Industry Foolishness

"Always underestimate the intelligence of the American consumer" -- processed food industry

One of the first thing low carbers look for on any processed food label is how much sugar is in the product.

We really don't care if it's added sugar or not since we're hyper aware that all sugar should be avoided when possible.

Waiter, there's a sugar in my soup!

That's why low carbers will pay triple the price to buy Rao's tomato sauce, which contains 3 grams of sugar in a half cup serving vs. 6 grams in Ragu. The sugar in Rao's is derived from the tomatoes and vegetables while Ragu adds extra sugar to make its sauce more palatable to American taste buds.

Sadly, most people really don't care how much sugar is in their food as long as it tastes good. Just like for years they didn't care how much fat was in their food until some "experts" with MDs and PhDs after their names told them it was healthier to eat Snackwells than bacon, eggs or butter.

Fortunately, however, the medical industrial complex is being challenged by rogue nutritionists, doctors and even Michelle Obama to reveal how much sugar they are dumping in our food supply.

The FDA is currently considering mandating food manufacturers to not only list how much sugar is in their foods, but also how much added sugar.

Not surprisingly, the processed food industry is protesting this label transparency because they don't want people to know they are contributing to an epidemic of diabetes and other chronic health conditions with all the sugar they are adding to our foods.

Prepare to have your intelligence insulted as you read some of their lame reasons for why it would be wrong to included added sugar on nutrition labels:

How the processed food industry views the average American

“Sugar and added sugar from an analytical perspective are the same. If chemically you can’t separate added sugar and natural sugar, the body can’t separate them, either.”

-- Kevin Myers, vice president of research and development for Hormel Foods

“In the survey, up to half of the people didn’t understand the difference [between added and total sugar] and in many cases were adding the numbers together.”

-- Kathy Weimer, senior fellow at General Mills’ Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition

"Such information could confuse consumers by taking their focus off of calories."

-- anonymous director of regulatory affairs of The Campbell Soup Co.

Though I would love to rebut these arguments, clearly all the Mevacor and Glipizide I'm taking has turned my mind to maple & brown sugar oatmeal. It's a wonder I can even muster the brain power to tie my shoes.

For the record, however, most Americans are more than cool with knowing how much sugar is added to their food, based on a study conducted by the Center for Quantitative Obesity Research at Montclair State University published in Obesity.

The new study found most adults (63%) believe including added sugars labeling will be helpful and relatively few (18%) believe it will be confusing. People who believe it will be helpful give wanting to know, health, and concerns about sugars as their primary reasons.
Those who say it will be confusing give either not knowing or not caring about added sugars as their primary reasons.
- See more at: http://conscienhealth.org/2014/11/consumers-say-duh-added-sugars-labeling-will-be-helpful/#sthash.0id1sriu.dpuf

The new study found most adults (63%) believe including added sugars labeling will be helpful and relatively few (18%) believe it will be confusing. People who believe it will be helpful give wanting to know, health, and concerns about sugars as their primary reasons.
Those who say it will be confusing give either not knowing or not caring about added sugars as their primary reasons.
- See more at: http://conscienhealth.org/2014/11/consumers-say-duh-added-sugars-labeling-will-be-helpful/#sthash.0id1sriu.dpuf

The new study found most adults (63%) believe including added sugars labeling will be helpful and relatively few (18%) believe it will be confusing. People who believe it will be helpful give wanting to know, health, and concerns about sugars as their primary reasons.
Those who say it will be confusing give either not knowing or not caring about added sugars as their primary reasons.
- See more at: http://conscienhealth.org/2014/11/consumers-say-duh-added-sugars-labeling-will-be-helpful/#sthash.0id1sriu.dpuf

The new study found most adults (63%) believe including added sugars labeling will be helpful and relatively few (18%) believe it will be confusing. People who believe it will be helpful give wanting to know, health, and concerns about sugars as their primary reasons.

Those who say it will be confusing give either not knowing or not caring about added sugars as their primary reasons.

More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest

Medifast Stock Price Dips After Company Reports 2014 Revenues

How does a low-carb replacement meal diet company rationalize making less money than the year before without sugar coating the news?

It doesn't.

Medifast brought its cotton candy spin machine
to the company's 2014 Q4 conference call

Medifast net revenues decreased 12% to $285.3 million in fiscal year 2014, compared to $324.1 million in 2013.

On Thursday Medifast CEO Michael MacDonald spun the disappointing financial results like so much cotton candy, acting like it was part of the company's master plan.

Despite his optimism, many investors reacted to the news by dumping their Medifast stock, resulting in a 4.76% decline from the day before.

Worse, Medifast stock (ticker: MED) is down 17% from its all time high of $35.76 in May 2010.

The company's two main revenue channels -- Take Shape For Life and Medifast Direct -- saw revenues decline 10% and 24%, respectively.

Yet, despite the gloom and doom, Medifast may be heading in a better direction these days.

The company closed its corporate-owned Medifast Weight Control Centers in 2014 while retaining its more profitable franchised centers.

Now the Maryland-based company can focus more attention on its two most profitable channels, Take Shape for Life and Medifast Direct.

Since I used to be a Take Shape for Life health coach, I am pleased to see that more resources are going to be invested in this key area, which accounts for almost 75% of Medifast's total revenues.

Medifast President Meg Sheetz cited simplification and improved messaging as the division's two main strategies to resurrect TSFL:

While our initiatives include introducing new online coaching tools, changes in messaging alone can have a positive impact. One of our initial simplification efforts this year was our February incentive campaign, Each One, Reach One, which required a health coach to accomplish two simple tasks to teach behaviors that will help them grow. When sponsoring a new coach with a qualifying BeSlim Club order, we challenge that coach to immediately gain a new client who also places a qualifying BeSlim order.

It's easy to understand, we're very pleased that February was our strongest coach acquisition month since mid-2013. Our next delivery will be to transform our coach sign-up process into a single step allowing the coach to join and get started right away.

I still keep in touch with many TSFL health coaches and sympathize with the frustrations they've had in dealing with Medifast corporate.

For starters, the technological interface and coaching tools are glitchy and cumbersome. As a health coach, I couldn't use my primary email address because there was a hyphen in the domain name that confused the software.

And despite serving as a virtually free sales force for the company, the vast majority of TSFL health coaches are not always treated with the respect and gratitude they deserve for helping to make Medifast a household name.

When Medifast shuttered its remaining corporate centers in 2014, for instance, the company rewarded only a select few TSFL health coaches with the suddenly orphaned clients instead of sharing the wealth with more of its dedicated, hard-working coaches.

Sheetz said the TSFL branch of the company will make it clear to health coaches that the best way to earn commissions will be to enroll new health coaches instead of just taking on more new new clients.

I can tell you that just coming off of an incentive trip we had this past weekend, many of our leaders who spent a majority of last year really trying to move from high frontline volume into really building depth are actually feeling a turning point in their income right now.

The focus on recruiting new health coaches makes sense for the company since health coaches are like missionaries who spread the Gospel of Medifast to the masses.

Health coaches also prop up the company's bottom line since they are more likely to continue buying and using the product after losing their weight.

And from my personal observations, Medifast losers who become TSFL health coaches are more apt to maintain their ideal body weight since they must remain credible role models to their clients.

Though CEO Michael MacDonald bragged about 2014 being the biggest year for releasing new products, there were more misses than hits. Popcorn that costs more than Filet Mignon and chichi water infusers were both greeted with a big shrug. And though palatable and doable in a pinch, the Medifast Flavors of Home Lean & Green meals, such as Turkey Meatball Marinara, are not much better than army MRE.

So, yeah, Medifast has a ways to go to right the ship. Like halting price increases, introducing new tasty foods (like the gingerbread soft bake), overhauling the IT infrastructure and treating all TSFL health coaches with more respect.

And considering rival diet company Weight Watchers is new to the whole personal coaching thing, its recent TV commercials promote the coaching concept far more effectively than Medifast, whose recent TV commercials did not pass the DVR fast forward test.

Despite some of its recent bonehead moves, my fingers are still crossed that Medifast will succeed and stick around to help more people lose weight and gain healthy new habits. Given its renewed focus on the company's main selling channel TSFL, I'd bet my own money on a brighter future for Medifast in the coming year.



More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest

Gretchen Rubin's Habit Book: 'Loophole Spotting' and Healthy Eating Habits

Gretchen Rubin's 'Better Than Before' a Must Read

It's tax time and we're all looking for loopholes to save us money.

We like loopholes. Loopholes are good.

Well, not always.

In her upcoming book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, happiness expert Gretchen Rubin tackles the topic of habit formation; and one of her key concepts is using loopholes -- or lame excuses -- to resist making positive changes.

Rubin outlines ten categories of loopholes on her popular blog, all of which can be applied to weight loss and optimal health. I encourage you to read her original blog post, but for fun I'm going to focus on three of my favorite loopholes in the context of healthy habits.

False Choice Loophole

This popular loophole covers the either/or choices we pose to ourselves to avoid doing things we really don't want to do in the first place.

As in:

"I can't buy this, because then I couldn't afford that."

I may be expensive, but I'm worth it!

Or

“I can’t do this, because then I couldn't do that."

I remember telling myself once that $4 was too much to pay for a cantaloupe and was about to evict it from my shopping cart when I noticed I had a 12-pack of Diet Coke Zero sitting there that I could somehow afford.

We always find the money or time for things we really want, yet we tell ourselves we can't do something that is "good for us" by making it a binary choice between that and something more essential.

“This Doesn’t Count” Loophole.

Rubin defines this popular loophole as making "funny rules to exclude certain behavior." I think of it as the "I can cheat every day that ends with 'y'" loophole because pretty much every day presents us with a plausible reason to deviate from good eating habits.

Most of us have regular opportunities to eat at a restaurant, go to the movies, celebrate someone's birthday or, well... you get the picture. But that doesn't stop us from using these events as excuses to break our healthy eating rules under the pretext that "this is a special situation."

Which doesn't mean we can never make exceptions. If I found myself dining at a Michelin 3-star restaurant, I might eat some foods I typically avoid. But that would be a planned exception -- far different from using a common occurrence as an excuse to load up on empty calories.
 
Fake Self-Actualization Loophole.

I call this one the YOLO loophole, as in "You only live once." Which is true for most of us who are not Hindu or Shirley MacLaine.

YOLO is just the millennial version of the old 70's mantra, "If it feels good, do it." So we eat half a pizza because it's Friday night or binge watch OITNB instead of taking a walk or going to the gym.

Which reminds me of a great blog post in Psychology Today, in which the author reflects on an experience she had as a graduate student at an all-you-can-eat buffet:

With a mouth full of my second helping of something that looked like peach cobbler, I asked one of my dinner companions why she wasn't eating dessert. "It's free," I encouraged her. This was not one of my fellow clinical psychology students, but someone from one of the other programs on campus. Film History, or American Studies, or Urban Planning and Resource Allocation, something like that.

I don't remember her name now, but I recall that she dressed in gauzy clothing, a la Stevie Nicks.  And that she'd grown up in a family of Carnival entertainers, traveling around the country.  She was offbeat and interesting, and had perspectives that were different from those of the more practical psychology students.
And what she said to me at dinner that evening was something I carry with me even now. In the sing-song cadence of the Valley Girl speech still fairly common on campus at the time, she chirped "Oh, I decided a couple of years ago not to eat food that makes me feel bad."

Excerpted from Psychology Today

Like this wise young soul, most of us eventually figure out that maintaining healthy habits yields a more profound state of happiness than doing whatever feels good in the moment.


Can you relate to these three loopholes? There are seven more, which I encourage you to read about on Rubin's blog The important thing is to spot whatever loopholes you commonly use to sabotage yourself and then reject them.

Sounds a lot like Stop. Challenge. Choose. Right?



More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest

Should You Detox Before Starting Medifast?

After learning via one of my Facebook groups that the five franchise-owned Medifast centers in Arizona advise many of their clients to do a 7-day detox, I originally thought this blog post would be called something sensational like "Arizona Medifast Centers Go Rogue."

Mixing detox with Medifast sounded kind of fishy to me. So I decided to channel my inner Nancy Drew and investigate.

First I did a Google search and found a My Fitness Pal thread which outlined the 7-day detox:

Days 1&2: Pre-cleanse days eat 3-4 servings fruit, 3-4 servings veggies, & 3-4 servings whole grains plus 2 qts Smart waterxx

Days 3&4: Liquid cleanse days drink 2 qts Smart water plus 2 qts lemonade/maple syrup mixturexx

Days 5&6: Mini cleanse days eat 3-4 servings fruit, 3-4 servings veggies, 2 MF shakes, & 2 qts Smart waterxx

Day 7 -- Graduation day eat 3-4 servings fruit, 3-4 servings veggies, 3-4 servings whole grains, & 2 MF shakes plus 2 qts Smart water

Excerpted from My Fitness Pal forum

Then I contacted the Medifast corporate media relations department and one of the Arizona franchises. Not surprisingly, I heard back only from the franchise. In their defense, the Medifast public relations staff was probably too busy shopping on eBay or streaming House of Cards S3 responding to their millions of other media requests to reply to my email.

From my phone conversation with Holly Hodgson, manager of the Medifast Center.in Chandler, Arizona, I learned the five Medifast centers in Arizona are the only Medifast franchises that promote the detox program and that Medifast corporate fully condones the practice -- provided the centers do not promote the detox as being Medifast sanctioned and keep it separate from the Medifast program. Thus, the literature clients receive on the detox plan does not have the Medifast logo on it.

According to Hodgson, the Arizona centers recommend the 7-day Detox -- which includes four magical and profitable bottles of supplements they sell to the clients -- because they believe it is an effective way to quick start weight loss, crush cravings and detoxify the body before starting the Medifast 5&1 Plan.

Every three months, clients may have a detox do-over for another seven days to "rejuvenate" themselves and enjoy some otherwise forbidden foods, such as grains and fruit.

I asked Hodgson if there was any data to support whether the Arizona clients had better results than people who do the Medifast 5&1 Plan without the detox, and she told me no studies had been done to measure the effectiveness of this deviation from official Medifast.

Still, it turns out there is no scandal here. The state that does not do Daylight Savings Time or observe Martin Luther King's birthday does a funny form of Medifast. It's the Arizona way.

The bottom line is I really don't see a problem with the Arizona Medifast Centers detox plan, but I'm not completely sold on it either. Medifast 5&1 works great as is.

For people who are already scraping to find money in their budget for Medifast replacement meals, I still think the best deal is signing up with one of the Take Shape for Life Health coaches. These men and women have successfully lost weight on the Medifast 5&1 Plan and can provide guidance, support and motivation for no extra cost.

And with the recent Medifast food price increases, it is now cheaper to purchase Medifast replacement meals through a coach than through Medifast Direct.



More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest

Medifast Maintenance: Celebrating One Year of Carb Sobriety

"My name is Nancy and I am a carbohydrates addict."

If there were such a thing as Carboholics Anonymous, I could have been a charter member. Before losing 35 pounds on Medifast last year, it was as if chips, cookies, brownies, doughnuts, mall pretzels, bread, tortillas, pasta and other high carb foods contained invisible magnets that attracted me like cats to tuna fish.

For years I had been the victim of the low-fat diet craze and thought I was doing myself a big favor ordering my salad dressing on the side while feasting on the bread and potatoes that came with my entree.

I could kick myself now for thinking fat was the enemy instead of carbohydrates.

Happily, the Medifast 5&1 Plan made me go cold turkey on my carbohydrates addiction and I began to realize I didn't have to start every Mexican meal with chips or consume hamburgers with fluffy buns.

One year after reaching my ideal body weight on the Medifast Take Shape for Life program, I can happily say I have permanently changed my eating habits and maintained my weight loss.

Last night my husband and I went out for dinner to celebrate both our 10 year anniversary of meeting each other and my promotion at work. We went to our town's Tahoe Joe's, part of a small chain of woodsy steak houses that are designed to make you feel like you're in a mountain cabin.

My "diet" dinner. That's garlic butter
on the steak in case you wondered.

After studying the menu, we agreed to split an entree of two five-ounce petite filets wrapped with bacon and order clam chowder in addition to the salad that came with. When the bread arrived, I snubbed it like an ex-boyfriend and enjoyed the soup and salad, which we passed back and forth. I gave my husband the entire baked potato that came with our entree and was perfectly content to eat green beans and sauteed mushrooms with my steak. It was the perfect "diet" meal for me.

After dinner, I felt satisfied but not over-stuffed as I would have in the past if I had consumed all the starchy carbohydrates that came with my meal.

What's funny is that I did not feel a bit deprived saying "no" to the bread and potato because doing so gave me license to eat a delicious piece of steak and creamy blue cheese dressing without worrying that my jeans wouldn't zip the next day. And since I now know the link between saturated fat and cholesterol was all a big fat lie, I don't worry about dropping dead of a heart attack eating eggs, full-fat dairy and red meat.

Avoiding carbs has been a small price to pay for keeping my weight off since I now get to eat more protein and fat that keep me full and satisfied. These days I eat flavorful foods like almond butter, avocado, cheese and grass fed hamburgers wrapped in lettuce. I drink smoothies with cashew milk, coconut oil, strawberries, cocoa and chia seeds. I scrape the bread slices off my sandwich filling as if it were packaging that needs to be discarded. And I eat zoodles instead of noodles.

Small changes have kept me smaller, but it took a pattern interrupt to make these changes. If it hadn't been for Medifast, I may never have realized how easy it was to "just say no" to carbs.



More from Diet Skeptic:

Why I'm Addicted to Chia Seeds

Why Fat Head Pizza Is the Holy Grail of Low Carb Pizzas 

The Shocking Truth About Imported Olive Oil 

Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix 

Why WebMD Doesn't Want You to Get Well


Follow Nancy's board Low Carb Recipes on Pinterest