The 3-Hour Diet

Why Fat People Don’t Cook
OK. I’ve already change my mind about the Eat-Clean Diet. I was all for it until a co-worker loaned me a copy of the Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook. The problem I have with many diets and their meal plans are that they assume overweight folks like myself like to cook. I’m not a big fan of cooking. I don’t have fancy kitchen stuff like a food processor or a slow cooker. I also don’t want to buy fancy ingredients that I end up using once. I don’t want to come home after the gym around 8:00pm and spend 30 minutes in the kitchen cooking dinner and another 30 minutes cleaning up afterwards. I’m also not good at planning meals and going to the grocery store. Bottom Line — I’m lazy and I don’t have the time.

The Year of Failed Attempts
If I had the time and patience for cooking, I probably would have lost weight a long time ago. That was my down fall with Weight Watchers. I did great at first. The program taught me how to read labels, control my portions and eat healthier. But after the first 30lbs I plateaued and became frustrated with always having to think about food and go to meetings where all they do is talk about food. Which is why I liked the Core Plan, but it restricted even the healthiest whole grain breads and absolutely no sweets. Then I found the Abs Diet, which enlightened me about the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup and Partially Hydrogenated Oils. It also introduced me to the fruit smoothie. But unfortunately I didn’t really see any changes, mainly because I never committed to any type of meal plan. Then there is the Fat 2 Fit Radio Show. An informative little podcast full of diet and health information. Their motto is “Eat like the thin person that you want to become.” Not really sure how to do that. I see thin people eating fattening food all the time. Then I tried the Daily Plate where I’m suppose to enter all foods I eat and track my exercise. It was fun at first but I stuck with it for a few months and never saw a consistent change in my weight no matter how many calories I logged into The Plate. Plus it gets hard trying to uncover the amount of calories in everything you eat and it’s not an exact science.

What Next?
I am lucky that I’m not a yo-yo dieter. If it wasn’t for all the exercise and my generally good eating habits, I probably would be over 200 pounds again. So now what? I’m glad you asked.

The 3-hour Diet
I found yet another cookbook at the library last night. It’s called the 3-hour Diet cookbook. It caught my attention because all the recipes were quick and easy. They didn’t require a lot of ingredients or a lot of fancy cooking skills. The recipes incorporate a lot of pre-packaged foods like cooked chicken, frozen veggie burgers, microwave vegetables, store bought dressing and sauces. There are a lot of recipes for pizzas made using whole wheat tortilla as a crust. And whole grain bread and low cal sweets are not restricted! Everything in the book looks so good and tasty. But what struck me as odd is that none of the recipes had any nutritional info. No listing of calories, fat, carbs, fiber, etc. This guy’s philosophy is that in order to lose weight we should eat every 3 hours by eating healthy foods and snacks in moderate servings. Oh and drink lots of water. Ok, this diet isn’t revolutionary. I’ve seen this before in many other diets.  But I’m going to try this one because the foods he’s suggesting are easy to prepare and there’s are a lot of recipes that I want to try. Also if I combine what I’ve learned from the Abs Diet and Weight Watchers, I can tweak his recipes to make them even healthier. I’ve already made the Penne Pasta w/ Chicken and Mixed Veggies. It was OK. But I need to use better veggies next time.

I’m going to try one of the pizzas tonight before hockey. Hopefully, I can get through a few weeks on this 3-hour diet plan before the end of the year.

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