Back in the good old days, when I had a normal metabolism, I used to roll my eyes at my friends whenever they said they were going on a weird diet. It wasn’t like I was a stranger to weight loss. About a decade or so ago, over the course of a year, I lost 30 pounds on the American Diabetes Association diet, which is about as un-fad-like as you can possibly get. It’s so balanced, in terms of carbs and fat and protein, it’s practically a science project.
People would often ask me how I lost weight, but lose interest once I told them. No one wants to hear about how you miraculously lost 30 pounds in a year. Thirty pounds in a month? Yes. But that’s not what I had to offer. My friends, meanwhile, were all mainlining diet cookies or eating nothing but grapefruit and losing water weight, which they’d then gain right back as soon as they ate anything with more than two ingredients.
Nowadays, it’s all about juice fasting and paleo diets and gluten-free for non-celiacs. The difference is, now I’m not rolling my eyes. Now, in fact, I’m eager for any and all pseudoscience. And that’s because my thyroid crapped out a few years ago, and I haven’t been able to lose weight since.
OK, that’s not totally true: I’ve lost about twenty of the forty I put on. But it took two years. That’s slow, even for me. Also, it’s been awhile since I’ve lost. And there’s something extra-infuriating about being twenty pounds away from your goal for so long.
Weight Watchers and ADA, my two mainstays, didn’t work for me this time around, which isn’t weird. A lot of thyroid people have trouble on diets that aren’t designed for them. About the best luck I’ve had has been using Mary Shomon’s formula for calorie counting, and then logging everything I eat on my phone. Also, if I don’t exercise, like almost every day, I can forget about it.
But the problem with all of this is that it’s a lot of work. So I’m asking you: What oddball thing should I try next? Is it time to eat nothing but beetles and lettuce?
Image: Retro-housewife.com
Jennie Smash 
The Cabbage Soup Diet would be an incredibly retro option if you were so inclined… only one food group per day, supplemented with very low-calorie gas-inducing cabbage soup. Yum! š Or…you know…you could keep going…the good old way š Good luck! xo.
Ha! My mom told me about that. Super retro!
This may sound really “duh,” but have you talked to a nutritionist?
Oh yeah. That was my first stop. I gained five pounds in ten days. I think she was honestly shocked. I would have been proud, if I wasn’t so bummed. (Probably goes without saying, but I stuck to the diet, portions and all.)
Tapeworm eggs. It works every time.
Bill