Hi all, I am one of the "early adopters" from last fall, jumped on the diet from September 11th til mid-November and lost almost all of my last 10 lbs. Since then I've had trouble making the diet work, but I've learned some things. I'm a compulsive overeater, and I think my years of eating too much and getting way too much emotional payoff from food have probably really intensified the calorie-flavor connection for me. This makes it harder for the diet to work, especially since I am really good at eating when I'm not that hungry. Now that I understand Seth's theory, some things are starting to make sense; like why I generally lose on the first week of any diet and then not after that - it's the change in what I was eating. I have also lost weight (and my appetite) for more sustained periods during times in my life when I went cold turkey and gave up sugar.
Here's what is working for me now. 1) oil for most of the day and sugar water in the late afternoon when I start to feel foggy. I think switching between them helps me to not get too used to either one and start metabolizing it as real food. 2) crazy spicing is working beautifully. I am pushing the envelope by spicing foods in unfamiliar, experimental, and sometimes not very yummy ways. I am back to a state of "food indifference" that spells bliss, or at least easy dieting. My big revelation is 3) giving up artificial sweeteners, specifically Splenda. I had been relying on Splenda as my sugar methadone, until I realized I was climbing through every cabinet in the house trying to find the honey that I asked my husband to hide from me. Hmmm, cravings? Decided I'd bag the sweeteners, which I use too much of anyway, as part of my crazy spice / flavor variety experiment. My calories have fallen to around 1000 each day and I'm now one of those hateful "Oh I forgot to eat" kind of people. Ahhhh. I was gone for a while, but now I'm back.
