The only diet that's had lasting success for me is the Weight Watchers plan. Quite simply, I think it's the measuring/looking up the calorie content/writing stuff down that keeps me on track. I can live with that kind or restriction. As in, I think I could keep that up indefinitely.

What I don't take too so well is having the types of food I can have restricted.

Right now, my big problem is getting my exercise back on track after being sidelined with the neuroma and the fibro flareup from hell.

I mean, who knew yellow onions were so evil? Did that twice in one month, and I might as well eat three big muffins every day for all the weight I can expect to lose.

What makes yellow onions so bad? (I have virtually no onion knowledge, since I try to avoid all of them.)

Priceline, baybee! Or, you know, stay with friends. But Priceline should get you under $100.

I've never used Priceline. Reviews please.

Welcome back, Seska. hugs internets - can't live without

DH is on low carb again. I should try it again. After being so thin for many decades I seem to now fail at finding a way to diet successfully. In my case it is a combo of eating too much, not exercising enough, being 55 and well past menopause. Stupid uncooperative body. Want to eat pizza and sit with my laptop and stay thin.

What makes yellow onions so bad? (I have virtually no onion knowledge, since I try to avoid all of them.)

I have absolutely no idea. I think, in reality, they are probably a smidge sweeter than red onions, but not actually truly evil. But I did not lose the promised weight on that diet, in spite of following it quite rigorously, aside from a couple instances of forgetting about the onion restrictions when eating out. The doctor's response to the lack of results was a very cheerful, "Well, that's ok!" Um, no, no it's not ok with me. It took me a couple years to realize the reason he thought it was so ok is that he was assuming I had cheated quite a bit, but hey, if the fat chick stuck to the diet enough to lose anything, that's ok.

It is a steampunk PARADISE

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

Of course, I'm assuming that somewhere there is an EVEN MORE AWESOMELY STEAMPUNK competing venue called The Tesla.

What makes yellow onions so bad? (I have virtually no onion knowledge, since I try to avoid all of them.)

I have absolutely no idea. I think, in reality, they are probably a smidge sweeter than red onions, but not actually truly evil. But I did not lose the promised weight on that diet, in spite of following it quite rigorously, aside from a couple instances of forgetting about the onion restrictions when eating out.

I'm very dubious that accidentally eating yellow onions would make a diet fail. I realize everyone's metabolism and reaction to different foods is going to vary, but -- onions???

That reminds me of a post I read (maybe on Shapely Prose) about a woman on WW who, when she had her weekly weigh-in, either lost no weight or possibly gained a little. The WW leader went over the woman's food diary with her, and upon seeing that the woman stuck to the plan diligently, EXCEPT for sucking on cough drops because she was sick, declared that it was the cough drops that made her not lose/gain weight that week.

Seriously. Cough drops. How freaking many would an adult human need to consume to affect weight? About a billion.

I think that losing weight is very difficult for a lot of people, and calling out things like "you ate the wrong color onion" or "well, you sucked on cough drops" as reasons for diet failure is really ridiculous. Plus it makes the person trying to lose weight feel like shit, like they just didn't try hard enough -- if they REALLY wanted to lose weight, they would know that cough drops are forbidden.

Seriously?

It's not the cough drops, and it's not the onions. Losing weight is just plain difficult.

It took me a couple years to realize the reason he thought it was so ok is that he was assuming I had cheated quite a bit, but hey, if the fat chick stuck to the diet enough to lose anything, that's ok.

Oh... that makes me seriously rageful. What a douchenozzle.

That's pretty annoying, WindSparrow. The idea that overweight people can stick to a diet or sensible food/exercise plan and still not lose weight shouldn't be that foreign to medical personnel. If it was easy to lose unwanted pounds, almost everyone would do it.

There's a blog for people who are heavier than the current standard, and how that can negatively affect their medical treatment here.

The reason most diets work is that when you are on a diet, you are paying more attention to what you eat, which leads to eating less. The specific rules of the actual diet in question are almost entirely irrelevant.

(Which is to say, you could go on an "all cough drops and yellow onions diet" and lose weight just as easily as a "no cough drops or yellow onions diet." The point is that people on diets think more about their food than people not on diets.)

[eta: Though, just in my personal opinion, I do not recommend anyone go on the all-cough-drops-and-yellow-onions diet. Leaving aside all nutritional concerns, I shudder to imagine what that would do to one's breathe.]

Like the part where he says that if your skin turns yellow from eating too many carrots and sweet potatoes, that's actually a good thing, and it's the people with non-yellow skin who are unhealthy. Um, no thanks.

That reminds me of an article I read a while back about a bunch of (seemingly cultish) people who were eating as little as possible (like consuming 600 calories a day) in the hopes that it would permit them to live to the age of 150 or something. One of the very visible side effects of "succeeding" on this plan was the orange skin thing.

As I don't care to live till 150 and as I love food and drink and the pleasures it brings me and as I am tired of wasting time berating myself for not having a different body, and as I know that something will kill me sometime, I like to stay away from the diets. At least since my last one.