This morning I signed up for Diet to Go, a frighteningly expensive diet plan. At about $435/month, it’s more than a Weight Watchers membership and probably more than Jenny Craig or anybody else. So why am I doing it? Well, I’m tired of seeing the scale go up instead of down. I feel quite frustrated because as far as I can tell, I have been eating pretty well, and it’s not working, which just makes me want to throw up my hands altogether. So on Tuesday and Friday evenings for the entire month of January, I am going to stop at their office near my work and pick up the meals for the next few days.

I signed up for the 1200-calorie/day vegetarian plan, for three meals a day. Someone who works for my company also uses Diet to Go and he said he started on the three meal plan but soon realized he could put together his own breakfasts more cheaply; I have decided to start with three meals anyway because I want to see if it really works. This does depend, of course, on not eating anything but what they supply to me. That’s how I’m going to look at it mentally: NO cheating. There will still be other food in the house, of course - I don’t live alone - but I think I can mentally handle the concept of “no, you can’t have that, it’s not on your plan.” But that has to apply to everything - I think my weakness has been the “eat what you want” attitude of simple calorie counting and Weight Watchers. So I’m going to try the approach of not eating anything I want.

I’m still sedentary, and I need to change that too, but meanwhile I’m going to start Diet to Go and see how that goes for a month.