Ready, set, go...jump start diet

While at my Mom's house last week, the topic of being a fatty came up, as it did several times. Mom and I are almost exactly the same size. Mom told me about a jump start diet she did last year. We decided to do it together over the next few weeks. I'm going back to Georgia in six weeks for a couple of days for my aunt's 75th birthday, a time for me to meet family I've never seen before. We decided to race to see who could lose more in 6 weeks. So, that seems like a nice length of time to lose 15 pounds or so. I hope, anyway.

Unfortunately, I've regained all but 5 pounds of the 30 I lost 2 years ago. So maybe this will be a way to get me back on track. The diet is one that doctor's give overweight patients going into surgery, to help them drop 15-20 pounds. I'll list it in brief below. The idea is to drink lots of water, avoid fried food, processed food and sweets. There is starchy food allowed only twice in the 7 day plan, meet only twice, and dairy once. You make up a huge pot of vegetable soup and eat that once or twice a day. The soup is made with cabbage, spring onion, celery, green pepper and diced tomatoes.

So, here it is, by the day: (veggies include all non-starchy varieties, prepared in a healthy fashion, as much raw as possible. Fruit excludes bananas, except on day 4. Starch only on day 2 and 7. )

1. soup, fruit
2. soup, veggies, baked potato with butter
3. soup, veggies, fruit
4. soup, 1-3 bananas, 1 serving yogurt or milk
5. soup, meat (chicken, beef or fish, cooked in a healthy fashion), fresh tomatoes (up to 6)
6. soup, meat, veggies
7. soup, veggies, fruit, 1 serving brown rice

So, I will do this for a week and see what happens. Although not appropriate or even do-able over the long term, it may be a good jump start to healthy, controlled eating.