The reason I am sharing this rather embarrassing and very long list of things I have tried over the years is because I feel like the general philosophy around losing weight is that it should be fast and easy.
I felt this constant pressure to lose the weight and was surrounded by people and media that made me believe I just wasn’t trying hard enough. I have always wanted to have my cake– lose my weight quickly— and be thin– and stay thin–too. It just didn’t work. This has been a journey, not a destination.
Here is a list of all of the diets that I have tried:
- Medi-Fast – 5 x 100 calorie shakes (7th Grade –my P.E. teacher would watch me to make sure I didn’t pass out when we ran the mile).
- Slim-Fast – 2 shakes, a sensible meal (8th Grade –still felt burned out from the medi-fast starvation diet so didn’t stick with it long)
- Jenny Craig – weekly check-ins and weigh-ins, a lot of pre-packaged low cal food (end of 9th grade)
- Phen-Fen and Atkins combined (freshman year of college – biggest weight-loss)
- Fit for Life
- Body for Life
- The Zone
- South Beach
- Raw Food
- Weight Watchers
- HCG (lost weight, felt sick the whole time, and gained it all back)
Here is a list of some of the self-help seminars and therapies to pull apart how I “do life” :
- Talk Therapy
- NLP (Nuero-Linguistic Programming)
- EMDR
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Hypnosis
- Acupuncture
- Landmark Education (www.landmarkeducation.com)
- PSI Seminars (www.psiseminars.com)
- PAX (www.understandmen.com)
- Momentum Education (www.momentumseminars.com)
- Overeaters Anonymous (www.oa.org)
- Roller Skating Diagnostic* (https://karlwolfe.com/posts/trivan-third-skating-diagnostic-with-karl-wolfe/)
- True Body Intelligence
- Reike (https://www.yourhealingmatrix.com/)
- Agape (www.agapelive.com)
*this was the funniest thing describing it to my friends “you did what?” “i went rollerblading and this guy filmed me and talked to me to see where i am stuck in my life. that makes sense, right?” my best friend said “no.”
Books I have read that helped me:
- Good to Great by Jim Collins ( favorite book ever!!)
- Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (if you like audiobooks, beware, his voice makes me fall asleep
- Dry by Augusten Bouroughs
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad
- The Artist’s Way
- A Separate Peace
Note: it’s not a mistake that these are not diet books. They didn’t help me. Read about organizational models, systems-thinking and change management.