How To Get Through Dieting

So I went on a fruits-and-vegetables diet. Someone I know did well on it so I decided to give it a try. What a bust! I was hungry all the time. I consumed massive amounts of watermelon, cucumbers, smoothies which I made with oranges and pineapple. I found myself having to eat during all my waking hours. Didn't lose more than a pound. 

I had lunch yesterday with a friend who is always on one kind of diet or another and after we discussed these things I laughed and commented, "Do you realize we had this same conversation 30 years ago? But she's right in what she answered me, "Do you realize how much we'd weigh if we hadn't been dieting all these years?"  

  Atkins is my most successful diet, low carbs and high protein, but the trouble with Atkins is that it's so restrictive. All you can have is meat and eggs, and some vegetables but vegetables are limited to a total amount of 20 carbs a day and that's very hard to do, even ketchup has carbs. My friend is right now following Weight Watchers (again) but that wouldn't work for me because she has to eat small portions throughout the day and I just can't do that. I can't eat small portions of anything.

  Anyway, so yesterday I finished the fruits-and-vegetables diet and what a relief. It actually had gotten to the point where I'd lay in bed at night craving all the foods I wasn't allowed to eat. For some crazy reason, the last thing I was craving was potato salad. So I boiled two potatoes and five eggs and today I'm going to have potato salad.  

I guess my friend is right - if we hadn't been trying these diets all these years we'd be amazons by now. So I guess the message in all this is choose a diet, any diet, go on it for a couple weeks, then switch to another diet. Keep alternating the diets that work for you and don't demand that you stay on them forever. I think it's just as important to be able to do it without locking yourself in to one of them and suffer the cravings you're currently denying yourself.

Potato Salad:
  2 potatoes, washed
5 eggs (I like mine with a LOT of eggs, you can adjust to suit yourself)
a whole cucumber celery if you like it
a small onion handful of olives garlic salt,  or onion salt, or any salt pepper
mayonaise - a lot if you like it wet, a little if you want it dryer

Boil the potatoes and eggs
Put them in the refrigerator overnight
Next morning cut the potatoes into bite-sized chunks including the skins
Cut the eggs into bite-sized chunks
Dice the onions - if you only have large onions use only half of one
Add anythings else you like. Suggestions: mushrooms, bacon bits, tomato, diced sweet pepper, broccoli (YUK!!!), any other vegetable 
Mix it all up and enjoy

Smoothie: 
My smoothie tastes like Orange Julius at the mall
Into your blender mix: One whole large orange peeled, or two small ones
1/3 cup frozen pineapple chunks
1/2 small container of mixed berry Greek yogurt

Fill the blender with water up to 3/4
Blend 60 seconds, any less will give you unblended pineapple chunks
Drink with a large straw. The ones you get in the supermarket are too small, they'll load up with any pineapple that didn't get blended.

Enjoy!