Day 4 - The 17 Day Diet

Another Monday, another new restart!  This time around, I'm about to embark on a familiar path towards weight loss glory known as The 17 Day Diet.  I know I've talked about the 17DD previously, but I'm not really sure I've gone into any great detail about why I think it works so well for me.  This isn't a sales pitch for any particular product or book, and I can guarantee the program won't work for everybody.  Still, I've found that this program has so many free resources and can be done by eating things you can buy in the grocery store without need for additional supplements or crappy pre-made foods, so it might be a good plan for someone who is a little cash strapped (for example, me).  

The 17 Day Diet was created by Dr. Michael Moreno (Dr. Mike) and focuses on retraining yourself to eat in a healthy way.  The diet consists of four cycles: Accelerate, Activate, Achieve, and Arrive.  Each cycle is made up of a 17 day period, so if you followed the entire diet as planned, you'd be looking at about a two month commitment.  Each cycle focuses on a limited food list, with each cycle adding more and more allowed foods until you get to Cycle 4, which is pretty much a full, regular diet.  The book (which I own and will gladly lend out through Kindle) gives you great tools and detailed lists of what is and isn't allowed during each cycle, and there is a huge community of people on Facebook and message boards that share terrific recipes and support.  

Cycle 1, Achieve, is the one that I've found to be the most helpful.  It honestly isn't a lot different than many of the no-carb programs that are out there.   It focuses on eating lean meats (unlimited chicken, turkey, and fish!), unlimited green vegetables, two servings of fruit (they have to be eaten before 2 pm), a little bit of olive oil, and two probiotics (yogurt generally) every day.  For the obvious outside the home diner such as myself, it initially sounded waaaaay too restrictive, but after spending some quality time on the interwebs, I found lots of recipes that didn't sound like "steam chicken breast and broccoli" and that almost always leave me full.  The real trick is to lay out your entire menu on Sunday, make a trip to the store and only get the items you know you'll need to get you through Friday, and stick with it.  As with almost everything in life, the more planned and prepared you are, the easier life is going to be.  

Molly and I are very interesting examples of how the diet can work in multiple ways.  I have tremendous freedom of schedule and can eat about anytime I want.  She is pretty well locked into the classroom and can only eat at very specific times.  I'm becoming more and more like my dad and can get by with only one or two "meals" on an average day.  Molly needs more structure and more food and does it in the more healthy, recommended way.  The great thing is that the results work out about the same for both of us.  It definitely helps that we are both doing the same plan because it makes meal planning and cooking a heck of a lot easier.  Through our Cycle 1 in January, we ended up dropping about a combined 30 lbs.  Cycle 2 didn't go as hot (you get to introduce basic carbs like beans, rice, corn, and oatmeal, as well as lean pork and beef on every other day), but I think it is hard to go from losing 30 lbs combined in two weeks to only losing 5-10 lbs in the following two weeks.  That doesn't mean the diet isn't still working, just that you have to be ready to see some slow down.  To be COMPLETELY honest, the rate of cheating on the diet also seemed to increase in the past two weeks, so that probably had as much to do with it as anything.

The nice thing about the 17DD is that you can always go back to a previous cycle if you don't feel like you've quite reached the next cycle's goal.  For instance, Cycle 1 is intended to be the main weight loss cycle.  Dr. Mike encourages you to jump back to Cycle 1 after Cycle 2 if you don't feel like you've really hit the goal you want.  Cycle 2 is meant to reintroduce carbs into your system and "activate" your body's digestive system.  Cycle 3 is meant to reintegrate yourself into more and more foods once you've reached a spot that you're ready to maintain, and Cycle 4 is a plan to use once you've hit your goals.  I've yet to make it past Cycle 2 because I've yet to reach a spot where I feel like I'm ready to maintain anything.  

So, tomorrow morning we'll start back up in Cycle 1 and see what happens.  By the time this Cycle completes, we'll almost be through Fitness February.  I'm not expecting another 20 lb loss this month, but if I can get under 225 by the end of the 17th day, I'll be happy.  If you'd like more information about the 17 Day Diet or if you'd like to start Cycle 1 with Molly and me tomorrow, just let me know and I'll get you set up with the information.  

Jeff