BARRY ESTABROOK

 Our YMCA had a current copy of EATING WELL on the FREE shelf and so I snagged it. I loved this article so much I read it 3x. https://www.eatingwell.com/article/7882440/i-tried-every-diet-ever-to-lose-weight-heres-what-happened/

I decided to examine the way I have always eaten and tweak that or, if need be, hack away at it. That meant eliminating or drastically reducing the “usual suspects” in my diet. From my stint at Weight Watchers, I knew that sugary foods are a huge contributor to obesity for many. A lot of my fellow WWers found that pounds started falling off once they controlled their sweet tooth. I have whatever the opposite of a sweet tooth is, so sugar wasn’t my problem. On the other hand, I had plenty of weaknesses that were keeping me plump. I love bread, especially the white sourdough variety. So I virtually eliminated it from my diet. For similar reasons, pasta became a rare treat, rather than a weeknight standby. Beans, I found, filled the pasta void and also made satisfying substitutions (with fewer calories) in meals that would have once included a slab of meat. I quit alcohol completely because it was easier for me to abstain than to carefully monitor what I drank. And the pounds began disappearing painlessly. Your list of suspects will no doubt differ. But if you find them and attack them, you, too, could lose weight—your way.

In retrospect, I learned a lot from the diets I unsuccessfully endured. Thanks to Ornish, I added a few tasty vegetarian recipes to my repertoire. South Beach taught me that fiber—lots of it—was a nearly zero-calorie way to feel full and satisfied. For the same reason, I now buy olive oil, a Mediterranean diet cornerstone, in institutional-sized bottles and deploy it liberally in vegetable main courses. Keeping track of “points” at WW showed me that my cheese snacking habit inevitably pushed me over my daily allotment.

On that fateful day at the doctor’s that started me on this journey, I weighed 238 pounds. Now I’m 212. My blood pressure tumbled from an unhealthy 164 over 86 to an ideal 112 over 62. My cholesterol levels are now normal. No one would call me svelte. I’m still very much a work in progress, but as surveys of members of the Weight Control Registry show, keeping the pounds off becomes more effortless over time as the habits required to maintain your weight become automatic. That strikes me as being pretty much the opposite of requiring willpower.

BARRY ESTABROOK is a three-time James Beard Award–winning journalist. His book Just Eat: One Reporter’s Quest for a Weight-Loss Regimen That Works comes out in February.