Jonathon Donahue's Miracle (FREE) Diet

Several years ago, alarmed that my weight was just going up and up, I started thinking about diets. It was obvious that most do not work, no matter what the cost to the dieter. It is hard to change enjoyable habits, and impossible to change those habits quickly. But if I could accept taking a long time to lose weight -- like a year or two -- then a successful diet could result in new habits that would become absolutely normal behavior.

What follows worked for me. In less than a year, I went from 190 to 155 pounds. More importantly, I've stayed at 155-160 since then. Up a little, down a little... but very slight swings. Best of all, my miracle diet is free. Doesn't cost me, or you, anything at all. No special dinners to buy, no pills to buy, no books to buy, nothing to buy at all. Not bad!

There are two ways to lose weight.

Eat less

Since we always eat what we are served, reduce the size of your bowl or plate.

In general, avoid sweet foods, except for a treat now and then. Here's a daily menu that you can live with --

Breakfast: 3/4 cup bran flakes with 2% or 1% milk, blackberries, raspberries or blueberries, but no sugar. You can also have ½ a plain yogurt, no sugar.

Lunch, three choices:

1. Single-slice whole-wheat bread (try Oroweat Master’s Best Winter Wheat) with 1-to-3 slices of deli ham. One dab of mayonnaise, and a little mustard. Water, tea or coffee (no sugar).

2. Cup of soup (Campbell. Progresso, etc.), 4 saltines with 1 pat butter, or 1 small bread roll with 1 pat butter. Water, tea or coffee (no sugar)… or glass of Concord Grape Juice.

3. Salad or salad bar, light on pasta, heavy on vegetables, 4 saltines with 1 pat butter. Water, tea or coffee (no sugar)… or glass of Concord Grape Juice.

Dinner, two choices:

At home:
1. Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine frozen food dinner- small size. There are about 25 different meal types, and the small-size boxes average about 250 calories. Salad - lettuce, tomatos, etc. One slice whole-wheat bread with margarine. Water, tea, or coffee.

2. Can of soup, with salad, and 1 slice whole wheat bread w/margarine. Water, tea, or coffee.

Dinner, eating out:
No more than 2 nights per week. Try to avoid potatoes, breads, fried foods. Try to eat salads, vegetables, chicken, fish. Try to eat a little less, in volume, than usual. Drink water, coffee, tea (no sugar). No sodas. Glass of wine is just fine. Before you know it, you'll start being shocked at how large restaurant portions are. Practice -- slowly at first -- just eating your new, smaller amounts -- and leaving the rest on the plate. Hard to do! We are all conditioned by our 100,000-year pre-civilization hunter-gatherer genetics to eat anything put in front of us, as much as we can -- because our ancestors never knew when they would eat next.

Snacks:
Twice during the day, either 3 dried apricots, or two prunes, or sliced apples. Or 8 wheat thins. Water, tea, or a glass of Concord Grape Juice.

Supplements: Two 1000mg Omega-3/Omega-6 fish oil capsules per day. One multi-vitamin. Comments from a friend who has Type 1 diabetes -- add more fresh fruit. Good advice!

Treats:
No one in their right mind would deprive themselves of fine food. The food we love. The trick is to slowly eat less of it. Less pizza, less french pastries, less chicken fried steak. This isn't rocket science. We all know that what makes us fat tastes good, so all that we have to do is -- slowly -- change our habits to eat less of it.  'Slowly' is the key. Fast changes do not work.

Walk more

Walk, don't run. Do not work out; do not go to the gym; don't bother with exercise machines. All workouts do is increase your body's need for food. Wait until AFTER you have lost weight... THEN go to the gym if you want that sculpted look.

But walking is something else. Absolutely normal for the human animal -- what our ancestors did for 100,000 years before we started moving into cities 5,000 years ago. Walking -- for our diet purposes -- is wonderful.

Get a simple, basic pedometer, like an Accusplit Eagle 1020, that just counts steps (not calories or miles). Walk between 6,000 and 10,000 steps per day. Try to average 7,000/steps/day per week. Doesn’t matter whether you walk fast or slow. Just walk!

Diet result

You will lose 1½ pounds per week, or about 6 pounds a month, or about 25 pounds every 4 months, or 75 pounds a year. Again -- this is not an ‘immediate results’ diet— they don’t work. The longer it takes to lose weight, the more you will truly change your eating habits. Lost pounds will stay off after you reach a target weight that’s safe for your age, sex, and height.

Additional bonus: if you are a Type II diabetic, your blood sugar readings taken 2 hours after dinner will go down into safe levels. I tested this for a year with blood sugar samples after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Kept a log, and the doctor's tests showed that the diabetes was checked. This may not be true for everyone -- we are all a little different -- but using this diet, you will be way ahead of the game. Show this page to your doctor!

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