Every failed diet I tried and the one that finally worked

Diet #1: The Detox

Some time in my early 20s I discovered a cute little coffee table style book on detoxing. Amid beautiful images of dried apricots and spas with wooden handles scrub brushes, the text detailed a 30 day plan for better health. This included eating only certain "pure foods" eliminating potentially "toxic foods" like soy, peanuts, wheat, corn, and myriad others.The idea of achieving some sort of level of purity was appealing at the time. I did feel slugglish and tired and a little food-crazed (read=devours whole plates of brownies in a single bound). It was nice to think that all I needed to do was purge the toxins out and I'd be all better and all squeaky clean inside.The partner I lived with at the time and I did the detox together. It was hard to be sure pure! It took an inordinate amount of willpower. The book didn't really outline how to handle feeling grumpy AF without destroying your relationship. We made it though! And on day 31 I need you to know exactly what we did: we bought and inhaled cupcakes. (Remember the gourmet cupcake trend of the late 2000s?)30 days of purity, 335 days of cupcakes. Hmm, what could go wrong? I was promised a new body if I cleansed!The problems:

• this detox was too harsh and limited too many foods
• there's not a whole lot of scientific evidence that people have hella (I lived in Berkeley, CA at the time. This is NorCal speak for "a lot of") food allergies that don't show up on allergy tests (I test negative for any/all allergies)
• There's no "pure" state of cleanliness our bodies magically get to. We rely on millions of bacteria in our gut, intestine, and colon to help us digest our food. It's a finely tuned and highly evolved system and it works really well to clean us out. The idea of "purity" is the same thing that lead us to eugenics in the early 20th century. It's a dangerous idea. It probably has it's origins in the Judea-Christian idea that humans are sinners and need to be redeemed of our inherent badness. We are not bad. We are not toxic. We do not need to detox to get to a level of purity. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make money by playing to your fears.
• the detox book we followed and all the subsequent ones I read never addressed my food addiction problem: the pain behind the eating

Diet #2: The Master Cleanse / Juice Cleanses

WHY DOES THIS STILL EXIST.If you are thinking about doing this one with maple syrup, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper, just stop.I tried this one in my early 20s and I felt so weak. I had to quit and eat so I could go to tennis practice and actually have enough energy to move my arms.The problems:

• see all notes above about the false notion that we need to flush toxins out and we'll be healed. It's a bogus idea.
• juice is bad for us because it's all the sugar of fruit without the fiber that makes us feel full. Read more in the NYTimes.

Diet #3: Ketogenic

This is eating mostly fat and very few carbohydrates. I'm not going to explain too much. Google it. It required me to OBSESSIVELY count my macros (protein, fat, carbs) EVERY DAY EVERY MOMENT.The body uses fat for energy instead of carbs. I did lose a lot of weight eating like this but I was also training for my first marathon so it could have been all the running I was doing.I had spreadsheets upon spreadsheets and every food that went in my mouth was precisely measured and added to excel.The problems:

• it made me anti-social. Want to join your coworkers for pizza or a beer on Friday? Nope! No one eats like this so you basically fit in only with the biohackers.
• low energy for workouts
• too too too obsessive for me and eventually I'd get tired of tracking and fall off the wagon

Diet #4: Rapid weight loss - protein only

This one I tried out of sheer curiosity. I was in health coaching school and thought, "let me try ALL THE WAYS of eating and see what works."The idea was that I would eat only protein and low-calorie veggies (think lettuce). Meals were low-fat cheese, chicken or fish, and greens.I bought the program online from a marketer (posing as a health guru) who promised big results. As a result, I was added to this marketer's email list. A few months later he emailed everyone on the list to say that the main industry he works in is porn. Lol! That was such a wake-up moment for me that you can't trust anyone on the internet! This guy producing pornographic videos also tryna tell people what to eat?! Ah hahaha. Watch out for marketers. They know how to take advantage of people and they're everywhere.The problems:

• low energy
• needing immediate results is a sort of sickness. Good things that last take time and diligent practice.

Diet #5: Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Body

I bought this book and was in awe of all his "hacks" for better health. Wow, he found all the secrets!It turns out he was really just trying to sell supplements. This is the snake oil salesman scam and it's as old as time. I bought the supplements he recommended and took them. I bought a lot of things that year of my late 20s! I was looking for the magic bullet cure.My wake-up call came when I was vacation in Jamaica and taking my supplment cocktail one morning and my dad said to me, "what are you taking?" I explained that they helped with weight loss. "Huh, why buy the pills? Why not just eat less food?" Lightbulb moment! I threw them all out and never looked back.The problems:

• health cannot really be "hacked" and that mindset keeps us sick. The best results have been when I slowed down and did less. Less obsessive exercising. Less eating. Less supplements. Less being a busy-body. We're all different and maybe you're a person that needs to do more--we're all on our own journey and this is mine. I just don't like this idea of finding the secret tricks and it hasn't worked for me. I call it "magic bullet" thinking.
• Always be wary of salesmen with health claims and supplements for sale. Check out book Do You Believe in Magic? Vitamins, Supplements, and All Things Natural: A Look Behind the Curtain
• what ever happened to simply asking ourselves, "how do I feel?"

I will say though, this book gave me a ton of great ideas and insights including the understanding that tracking helps us change habits. Tim Ferriss tells the story of a friend who lost weight just by tracking his weight daily. I do this practice and it works! It's the same as looking at our bank account balance daily. When we have the numbers, we make the best choices. When I know how much I weigh each day, I naturally and effortlessly eat better. The key is getting that number from a place of self-love and not criticism.

Diet #6: Extreme weight-lifting

This wasn't a diet as much as a weight lifting program. I paid $500 for a 3 month online program with a celebrity fitness trainer I know personally. I'm glad I tried it because it has helped me design my own online coaching programs but it didn't work for me. It was a lot of time at the gym and I wasn't in a place of self-love from which to tweak my body shape. It was more about needing to overcome my obvious failings. Nothing good can come from that place. From this place, adding workouts adds stress and more stress = more sickness and more injuries.The problems:

• The diet plan outlined in the program said something along the lines of "I don't care what you eat as long as it fits the macros." I now know that's TERRIBLE advice! We need a diversity of micro-nutrients for optimal health. We can't just eat whatever. We need to be conscious of eating nutrition foods to get everything our bodies need.
• Again, nothing to address the underlying emotional pain that leads to addictive eating.
• In this diet and the Ferriss suggestions, there's a "cheat day" of binge eating junk. It didn't seem like the right energy at the time and now that I feel the healthiest I've ever been I get it. When we're emotionally healed we don't need to cheat. We don't need to binge. We choose the best foods and eat them with loving care, each and every day. We don't need to use willpower 6 days a week and lose control one day a week. Real health is gentle and it's 7 days a week.

I gained everything I lost back in like a month. This did not work.

Diet #7: Quitting sugar

After watching new-age woo-woo coach Gabby Bernstein say "I quit sugar" I was like, "You can just quit sugar?!" I knew I had to try it.My start date was January 1st, 2016. I was newly 31 years old.I fully anticipated this diet to go the way of the other diets I'd tried.BUT THEN THE MIRACULOUS HAPPENED: I KEPT FEELING BETTER AND BETTER AND BETTER.This was not like all the other fad diets I'd tried. This was the thing I'd been looking for! Sugar! Sugar was the reason I felt like shit all the time, was addicted to food, felt tired in the afternoons, always thought about cookies, couldn't keep weight off, and on and on.Gah! It should have been obvious but it wasn't!Quitting sugar was both the hardest and easiest thing I've ever done. Hardest because it's in everything and was a big change. But easiest because after 8 to 10 weeks, it felt so good to feel so good."I have to tell everyone!" I thought.And so, after being sugar free for a year, losing over 15lbs, losing that afternoon brain slump, and finally looking at my addictive eating habits and getting the therapy and healing I needed, the Give Up Sugar For Good program was born. The first program launched January 1st, 2017.Since then I have coached about 100 people to quit or reduce sugar intake.I share all the best secrets I've learned through years of failing and failing (and failing!) diets. I've tried them all so you don't have to. I've distilled the very best teachings into a succinct 8-week program to help others find the radiant lasting health I have found, no supplements required.I'm not promising anything crazy or anything fast. There are no magic bullets. My approach is mindfulness based and we spend a lot of time on self-love and self-compassion. We heal the places that hurt and that are using sugar to feel better. This takes time and gentleness. It works. Participants feel better and learn habits that last a lifetime, not just for 30 days.It's not a cleanse. It's every day self-love. When we want the best for ourselves, we naturally choose the best foods.But there's a lot of programing in the way of offering ourselves that love or even knowing how we feel so we can eat foods that help us feel our best. I teach the skills needed for this change!The upcoming September 2018 program will be my 6th program. I offer them three times a year: January, May/June, and September.Read more and/or enroll here.Me before and after quitting sugar.