More Non-Scale Victory!

I had originally planned to get up by 9:30 yesterday morning but kept resetting the alarm until it was about 10:10.  I got up and had half of my breakfast…a pear and 1 cup not-from-concentrate papaya juice.  Then I got ready for my run…3.1 on tap for today.  I mapped out my loop route the night before last before heading to bed.  I headed out the door just before 11.  I warmed up in front of the office and then took off down the street.  This was a completely new route…well, the middle 1.5-ish miles was new, anyway…so it was a little exciting for me.  About a mile of the route had no sidewalk on the side of the street I was running on, so I was running in the street…facing traffic, of course.  Good thing I wore my bright orange running pullover.  This was a very fast route for me…figuratively and literally.  When I hit 3.1 miles and stopped my Garmin, it said I did the run with an overall average pace of 10:19 min/mi!!!  That’s the fastest I’ve run since getting back into it regularly.  YAY!  The last .35 of a mile was straight into a headwind and that sucked and slowed me down a little bit, but I did it. 

the headwind at the end slowed me down a little bit as you can see

I am definitely pleased with this morning’s run and look forward to today’s 6 miles.  I was thinking of only doing 5.5, but then I realized that the half marathon is just 3 Sundays from now, and I want to get in a 10 miler 2 weeks before it and then start a taper.  In order to do that, I need to do 6 today and 8 next Sunday and then I can do 10 the following Sunday.  The Sunday before the half, I’ll just run 5-6 miles.  Take it easy, you know?

When I got to work yesterday afternoon, there was MORE BBQ.  This time it was barbacoa, which is my favorite.  I love barbacoa!  When I eat at Chipotle, I get the bowl and I get the barbacoa with black beans, corn salsa, guacamole, pico de gallo, and the shredded cheese.  And, while I don’t think just one bite would have hurt anything, I refused to eat any.  I have had zero slip-ups in the last 18 days, I wasn’t going to start now.  And today will be 19 when it’s done.

Today when I wake up is weigh-in day.  I’m excited.  My clothes fit better today than they did last Sunday when I last weighed in.  I’m really hoping to see 180-something…or…dare I say it?  179-something…that would be amazing to be back in the 170’s.

When I was getting my food ready to take to work with me yesterday, I went to make my chicken lunchmeat sandwich…I got out all the fixins for it…2 slices low sodium chicken lunchmeat, cucumber slices, a tomato slice, a slice of reduced fat cheddar, 2 slices 100% whole grain bread, and my bagged salad mix.  I put everything on there and went to put on the salad mix and it was gross already.  Really?  I just opened it yesterday.  It should have been good until at least tomorrow.  Oh well.  In the trash it went and now I have a sandwich without greens on it.  Boo!  I lived, though.

Yesterday, about halfway through my regular shift at work, the supervisor for the other building where I work overtime at on the overnight shifts called me and asked if I wanted to work last night.  So, of course, I said I’d work it.  I had no reason to say no.  Of course, that meant doing one of three things: 1) break my diet and get something “fast” for dinner, 2) order something similar to what I was going to eat for dinner from a restaurant and pick it up on my way to the other building, or 3) drive home really fast and pick up the food I had already set aside for dinner last night and take the toll road to get there as quick as possible so it didn’t cut into my overtime hours.  Well, I chose option number 3.  That also meant I could grab my evening pills/vitamins and take them on time and carbonate 2 bottles of water and add syrup to them.  Since I had been eating on the schedule that I would be off work at 10 last night, I had to just stop eating until I got to the overtime shift.  So, the last thing I ate was a “baby burrito” (a 6 inch corn tortilla w/2 tbsp bean dip & 2 tbsp salsa) at 6pm until I got to the overtime shift around 10:30pm.  It’s cool…I wasn’t really hungry during that time anyway.

While I was at work last night, I chose all my food selections for the week for my meals and snacks and typed up and emailed myself a shopping list so I can go grocery shopping this evening.  I really love meal planning like this.  I love planning out what I’m going to eat for the entire week.  Of course, that makes grocery shopping easy.  I usually only have to go once unless I wasn’t paying really good attention and I forget something here or there.  Oh and if I’m eating salads, I have to make sure to buy new salad mix every couple days because, duh, it will go bad.

I had the idea to maybe do my Sunday long run when I got home from work this morning.  But, I have been awake since about 10am yesterday, so I wasn’t awake enough nor did I have the energy to do it.  Although it would have been super nice to get another run in before my weigh in when I wake up this afternoon.  So, I’ll probably get up around 1:30pm, weigh in, eat my breakfast, wait about 30 minutes then head out for my run.  During the waiting, I’ll come up with my route on Map My Run.

The Best Laid Plans...

Yesterday, I had planned to run a quick 2 mile run.  However, when the alarm went off at 8:30am, I thought better of it and reset my alarm for 10:30am.  I “thought better” of it because I worked a double shift yesterday and I was thinking about how long I would be awake for if I did that…about 22 hours…to be followed by only 5 hours of sleep this morning and then back to work again.  (sorry, Carina…but I will try out your idea of how to run that quick 2 miler within the next couple weeks and make sure to write report on it!)

I did, however, make it to the bookstore to have a looksee at the Super Shred Diet.  I didn’t buy it because, well, it seems to be basically the same thing as the regular Shred Diet that I already have.  So, I couldn’t justify spending the money on it.  I looked through some of the other diet books they had and found a book I might go back and buy.  It had about 4 weeks of meal plans already written out for you to just follow. 

I’ve looked through the DASH diet and, well, I like it.  I really like it.  It will obviously take more thought on my part than the Shred diet does because it doesn’t lay out you need to eat this, this, this or this or choose from this ample list of items to eat at this meal/snack.  It provides the first week of meal plans based on your calorie needs, but after that, you’re on your own with only a checklist to make sure you’re getting the right amount of servings of each food grouping each day.  Of course, this really opens up what you can be eating.  And it does have a few super tasty looking recipes in the back of the book.  Also, if you’re just starting out and have loads of questions about what to do, I highly recommend this book even if you don’t follow the diet.  It’s extremely informative and has a great deal of relevant information.

Yesterday, when I was getting ready for work, I consciously noticed that my pants weren’t tight AT ALL and were very easy to clasp.  Also, my gun belt wasn’t at all tight.  HOORAY!!!  I love non-scale victories!!!  I’m really looking forward to my weigh-in on Sunday.  I’d really like to see 180-ish.  The first week, I lost about 2.2 lbs and last week I lost 2.6 lbs.  I’m on a roll!  So, yea, I’m really hoping to at least partially replicate the last 2 weeks and get a 2-ish lb loss again.

Also yesterday, I paid in my $25 for the new fitness competition!  I officially logged my long-term goals that I would like to achieve by August 15^th and my short-term goals that I want to achieve over the next 2 months.  My long-term goals are:

• get down to a 31” waist

• run 5 organized events by the end of competition (Aug. 15^th)

• run an organized half marathon in 2:41 hrs or less

My short-term goal for the first segment is to lose 5 lbs.  That would put me at 177 at the 2 month mark.  I’m really hoping to blow that goal out of the water, though.  I’m pretty sure that this will be the ONLY weight loss goal I’ll have during the entire competition.  I don’t like setting myself up for potential failure if I’m not able to meet a weight loss goal, which is entirely possible since I’m so close to my goal weight.  And during the last competition, I got down to 172.2 and could not get down any further, no matter how hard I tried or what I did, I just couldn’t get the scale down any lower.  So, I’m loathe to set a weight loss goal for the competition for this reason.    There is a high probability that I won’t reach my personal weight loss goal of getting to 160.  It may just not be physically possible for me to reach 160 in a healthy way.  170-ish may be my healthy low weight.  And I’m fine with that.  I did like how I looked at 172.  And I felt good at that weight.

So, today I started the Shred Diet over from day 1!  I’m going to be choosing some different selections from the options it gives for different meals this time around.  Also, I’m going to broaden my selection of snacks from the lists provided.  Even though yesterday was the last day of my first cycle through the Shred, I did eat something I hadn’t eaten in the weeks previous: a portobello mushroom stuffed with roasted veggies.  I chose zucchini, onion and tomato to dice up and roast.  Then, I stuffed it all in the mushroom and roasted it for another 10 minutes before packing it up to take to work with me.  It was VERY good.  I’ll plan better for it next time I eat it and make sure I have enough time to roast it all properly…I roasted the diced veggies for 15 minutes and then the whole thing for 10 minutes.  I would have preferred to roast the veggies themselves for 25 minutes and the whole thing for 12-15 minutes. 

I went the other day and bought some new syrups for my SodaStream.  I grabbed what I thought was “Diet Dr. Pete.”  The first time I used it, I noticed that the syrup was thicker than the syrups for the other diet syrups I use.  The second time I used it, I figured out why.  It’s not diet.  D’oh.  So, I did a quick nutrition label check.  35 calories per serving and there’s 4 servings in a liter.  That’s 140 calories.  I got lucky and that same day, when I got to work, there was a box for Dr. Pepper so I checked the nutrition label.  150 calories for a 12 oz can.  So, my 140 calories for an entire liter was nothing.  Sure, I prefer to NOT drink my calories (unless it’s a healthy smoothie or juice), but I’m okay with finishing the bottle of syrup and not throwing it away.

Today I ate yet another snack that was new to me: dried apricots with blue cheese!  I was a little skeptical, but curious enough to try it.  OMG!  Delicious!  This is now one of my favorite snacks!  I will definitely be having that again.

When I first got to work today, I was recounting the fact that I had not even wanted one of my favorite donuts when presented with them the other day and then that last night, on my overtime shift, I had been offered and had refused root beer floats…as I was telling this to a coworker, another coworker walks up with some Girl Scout cookies and asks if I want one and I exclaimed “NO!  get away from me!”  Hahaha!  Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, the judge bought BBQ for our shift…so I had to turn that down too!  But, I did indeed turn it down.  So many non-scale victories this week!!!  So proud of myself.

Day 15?!?!?!

I walked into briefing for work today and someone had brought in doughnuts (Round Rock Donuts to be exact…the best donuts in the world as far as I’m concerned…I can literally eat these until I’m sick.  I’ve eaten a whole half dozen by myself before…in one sitting…hello Fat Sara!  Ha!).  When I saw them, this is what went through my head: “oh donuts.  I’m going to be temp…wait…what?  I’m not tempted?  What the heck is this?”  SUCCESS!  15 days of being “on diet” apparently means that I’m not tempted by something that I wouldn’t have been able to stop at just one before!  Go me!  Oh and an added note…I WAS HUNGRY!!!  About half an hour later, I ate my scheduled 15 baked Tostitos scoops with some hot bean dip (approx. 2 tbsp).  Yum!

Speaking of work…yesterday they mailed out a copy of the fitness newsletter called “Fit For Duty.”  And guess what…I’m in it!  Me and all the other agency employees took a group photo at the beginning of December wearing our participant shirts (well, except for me because I couldn’t find my shirt until the 24^th) and finisher’s medals.  Here’s a screenshot of the blurb:

Another little tidbit of success for me…I’m not finding myself to be hungry hardly at all between meals and snacks anymore.  Even when I have to wait for like 3-4 hours in between eating times.  This is a definite “non-scale” victory.  I’m very happy with this “development.” 

So, I bought the DASH Diet for Weight Loss book the other day

And I’ve done a very brief cursory review of what’s in the book (I’m going to do a thorough read-through of it while working the overnight shift tomorrow night…hopefully…depending on what position I’m assigned to work) and so far…it seems complicated.  First off, there’s math involved.  Math was one of my favorite subjects in school, but still…ugh.  So, according to the math it has me to do figure out how many calories I should do based on my age and activity level (etc), I should be consuming roughly 1900 calories a day.  Okay, I’m good with that.  Then, you have to figure out how many of each kind of food you need to consume each day…then there’s a checklist that you use to check everything off to make sure you included everything you needed to include.  Like I said, it seems complicated.  They do, however, give you your first week of meals planned out to help get you started.  It gives you a week each for 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800, etc up to 2600 calories a day, for both meat eaters and vegetarians.  So, if you wanted to have 2 weeks of already planned out for you meals, you could do a week of the meat eaters and a week of the vegetarian at your calorie level.  Since my calorie level falls between the 1800 and the 2000 plans, I would go with the 1800 plan.  I still have a full 6 weeks of the Shred Diet to do again before I need to decide if I’m going to implement this diet or not. 

OH!  Speaking of published diets…I caught the very end of the Live With Kelly & Michael show this morning and they had Dr. Ian Smith, the author of the Shred Diet, on the show showing them some healthy snack ideas and such.  He was also on there to promote his NEW book…the sequel to the Shred Diet…this one is called the Super Shred Diet!  I checked it out on Amazon.com real quick.  You know how they let you look at some of the pages in the book to get an idea of it?  Well, I decided I actually need to look at in person before deciding to actually buy it.  It sort of looks the same as the regular Shred, but some of it looks different.  I need to have the actual book in my hand to figure out if it’s different enough to spend the money on it.  So, on Sunday, I’ll go to the book store and check it out and see if I want it

This morning, I had “scheduled” a 3 mile run.  I decided yesterday that I didn’t feel like running an “out and back” course.  That meant I would run a loop route instead and my shortest loop route is 3.3 miles.  So…I did 3.3 miles today.  Tomorrow I have a 2 mile run “scheduled.”  I’m going to try and run it as fast as I can sustain.  This one WILL be an out and back run, but that’s fine.  I’m going to *try* to run as close to 10 min/mi (or less!) as I can for both miles.

I don’t know…now that I think about it, maybe if I can wake up “on time” tomorrow morning, I can hit the run early and then go to the bookstore tomorrow?  Hmmm.  We shall see.  The run itself won’t take more than 23 minutes…with warm up and cool down, 30-ish minutes.  It would only take me like 30 minutes to go to the bookstore, check out the book and come back home.  I can do all that before work…IF I can get up “on time” of course.

Friend Makin' Monday

Taboo Topics

1. Are you a registered voter? nope.  there hasn't been anyone worth voting for, in my opinion.  when there is, then i will register

2. Do you believe in GOD?  nope.  i've tried...believe me i've tried.  i was that girl that went to 3 different vacation bible schools in one summer and asked jesus to be my savoir every time and each and every time...nothing.

3. How has your readership changed since you first began blogging? no one read my blog when i first started...but when i first started it was about personal stuff...i was at the end of a horrible relationship with a guy and it was my way to deal with it.  then i didn't touch it for a while, then i started up again but was blogging about weight loss.  at first, it was just a couple of my friends.  well, not just at first...for the longest time, actually.  then i started commenting and posting on other blogs and a few more people have found my blog. 

4.  If you could choose between a serious relationship or $100,000, which would you choose?  $100,000...i have had no desire for an intimate relationship over the last 3+ years.

5. Have you ever changed political parties?  nope.  never had an affiliation to begin with

6.  If you were put in a position in which you had to be in a room with someone that you can’t stand, how would you handle the situation? ignore the fact that they exist

7.  Do you ever eat in secret because you don’t want anyone to see what you consume?  i have in the past. 

8.  Do you use curse words in your daily conversations?  i say them, yes, but i don't say them anywhere near as often as i used to.  guess you could say i've grown up in that regard.

9.  How much do you tip when you’ve had decent service at a restaurant?  for typical service i will leave $1 for every $10 on the check.  if it's really good service, i'll double that.

10.  How do you respond when someone confronts you?  i don't like confrontation, but i've grown some balls since losing all this weight that i didn't have pre-fatness, so if someone confronts me, so long as they're wrong and i'm right, i will stand up for myself and fight the good fight...if they're right and i'm wrong, i'll admit it

Good Progress

Yesterday I had 3 miles on the schedule.  However, when the alarm went off, I just wasn’t feeling it.  I didn’t feel like running 3 days in a row right now…not so early in me getting back into running on a regular basis.  Sure, that means that I didn’t get in my 3 days of running or my 4 workouts for the week that I like to get.  But, as I’ve said before, I don’t want to feel “forced” when I do my workouts.  If I feel forced, I’m not going to enjoy the workout which means I’m going to start dreading them.  So, even though I didn’t get in 3 runs/4 workouts, I did get in 2 runs with a total of 3 workouts last week.  I’m good with that.  Really, my goal is to do 3-4 workouts each week and I just “hope” to get in 3 runs.  So, really, my running goal is 2-3 runs each week and I met that.

I had to really work to stretch out my food yesterday since I worked the double (16 hr) shift yesterday.  Usually, it’s not a problem but yesterday’s menu there was one less snack than usual.  What I ended up doing was splitting my 1^st meal (aka: breakfast) into 2 parts.  The first part I ate right after getting to work at 2pm…that was the low fat flavored Greek yogurt.  The second half I ate around 4pm…that was 2 small oranges.  Then, I also split up the 2^nd meal.  I had the lemon water and chicken lunchmeat sandwich around 7:30pm and the salad at about 9pm.  It all seemed to work out pretty good for me.  I guess it was a good thing that I didn’t go run yesterday morning because otherwise I would have had to eat something before I left for work and space things out even more.  But, even though for the first couple hours I kept getting hungry to the point of a growling stomach, everything settled down about halfway through the day’s food when the meals were no longer split up and were the size they were supposed to be.

So, today, when I woke up, I weighed in and took my starting pictures for the fitness challenge that starts on Wednesday.  My weight is 182...that's 2.6 lbs down since last Sunday!!!  I decided I’m going to start taking pictures of the scale when I weigh in each week, so here you go:

So I will add all that to the “official” forms for the competition.  Well…not the picture of the scale, but the other pictures I will. Keith (the guy running the competition) is requiring the front and rear pictures, I wanted to go the "extra mile" and do a side picture too.

Last night at work, I took the time (a few hours) to type up the entire 6 weeks (42 days) of daily menu schedules for the Shred Diet so that when I rotate back to week 1 day 1 on Friday, everything is all ready for me.  I just need to write in my choices for each meal.  I’ll work week by week because, obviously, I’ll need to go grocery shopping the day before (maybe earlier than that, depending on the food item and what I have to do with it to prep for the week). 

I’ve decided roughly what I’m going to do for exercise this week.  Now, if it ends up not working out as planned, that’s fine.  Today was a 5 mile run.  I did my usual 4 mile route with a 1 mile detour to make it 5.

As you can see, I was able to keep all my splits within 25 seconds between the slowest mile time and the "fastest" mile time.  I just refrain from looking at my Garmin while I and run by feel and it seems to work pretty good for keeping a fairly steady pace.  Overall, I really enjoyed today's run.  I really liked the 1.5-ish miles through the neighborhood and through a small park that was completely new to my running routes.

Tomorrow is my workout with Samy.  Tuesday I have to pay bills and go grocery shopping, so it’s a rest day.  Wednesday I’d like to run 3 miles.  Thursday, I’d like to run 2 miles.  No workout Friday morning because I’m working a double shift Thursday night.  Then, Saturday, I’d like to do my 3.3 mile loop.  I think next week I need to try to get in a regular gym workout (aka a “Paige workout”).  I don’t think I’ve stepped foot in my gym in over 2 months.  Oops.

I am happy to report that today will be day 12 of being 100% “on diet.”  I feel great and my clothes are fitting so much better.  My gun belt feels like it’s being held up by my hips instead of being held up by my fat (squeezed so tightly around my waist area that it’s not going to budge one bit).  I like that feeling.  I’ll be even more happy when I don’t have a little stomach sticking over the top of my gun belt.  But, thank goodness my shirt isn’t super tight over my stomach anymore.

I Have a What?!?!?!

Today I was up super early.  Alarm went off at 6:45am.  Why?  Because I had a dentist appointment at 8:30 and I’m always subconsciously terrified that I’m going to wake up late and miss my appointment.  Plus, I just like to be early.  Anyway, I hit snooze until about 7:20 and then got up, brushed my teeth (yes I still brush my teeth even when the hygienist is going to do a thorough cleaning of my mouth) and got dressed.  I watched the news and played on Facebook for a few minutes until it was time to go.  I got to my appointment and everything is going fine.  They take new x-rays (I hate the side “bite wings” cuz they make me gag) and then move me to another room where the hygienist proceeds to clean my teeth.  Then the dentist himself comes in and we chat briefly.  He asks about my tattoos and says he probably doesn’t have any because he’s afraid he won’t be able to control himself because he’s heard they’re addictive (they are).  Then, he finishes and without aplomb tells me that “one cavity has been detected.”  WHAT?!?!?!  Nooooooooooooo!!!  Anyway, when I’m checking out with the receptionist and making my next appointments (my next cleaning in 6 months and the cavity fill appointment) I mention that this is my first cavity to her and she seems shocked and states “that’s really rare.”  I know she’s trying to be nice, but that doesn’t comfort me.

So, after the dentist, I need to stop at the store to buy some salad mix and plain Greek yogurt, so I go to the store for that and scored a flavor of the Fage 0% Greek yogurt on clearance (it’s cinnamon orange!  I’m guessing they discontinued the flavor?).  I’m driving home from the store and I’m having a lot of back and forth about going for my run.  It’s drizzly out and half of me is all like no it’s yucky out I don’t want to run and the other half of me yes let’s run in the rain!  We’ve never ran in the rain before this could be fun!  Down the minute where I was standing in front of my apartment complex office doing my warm ups, I was still going back and forth.  Then, I set out down the driveway and turned onto the sidewalk and was instantly giddy!  Like to the point of I wanted to laugh maniacally out loud giddy!  I squelched that and reined in my pace for a comfortable 4 mile run.  I felt good for the whole run.  I refrained from looking at the time on my watch until I accidentally looked at my mile time for the 3^rd mile.  I had felt like I was cruising along for mile 3 but the watch told a different story.  It said 10:57 for mile 3.  Ugh.  Seriously?  I was a little deflated, but I kept chugging along.  When I hit mile 4 I stopped my watch and then checked my splits.  I did the same thing I’ve done on the other 4 miles I’ve run in the last couple weeks.  Mid-10 minute first mile, then up around 11 for mile 2, slightly faster in mile 3 and then more faster (haha, bad grammar, but it works for this) for mile 4.  The difference is that it wasn’t as dramatic as the other 2.  For instance, my last 4 miler, there was a whole minute difference between mile 3 and mile 4.  This time, there was only 24 seconds.  All 4 miles were within 25 seconds of each other.  This is the closest I’ve kept my pace for an extended period of time.  Sure, an elite runner can keep all their miles within like 8 seconds between their slowest and fastest mile, but I’m not an elite so this is damn good for me.

Today was day #10 of being strictly “on diet.”  WOOT!  I feel great!  I am definitely seeing a difference in how my stomach area looks and how my clothes are fitting.  It’s bit me in the butt when I’ve said this previously, but I’m looking forward to weighing in Sunday morning.  I’m really hoping to see somewhere around 182 on the scale.

Oh!  Tried something new again today thanks to the Shred Diet: wasabi peas!  They are YUMMY!  But, of course, a little on the "hot" side.  But, overall, I liked them. 

Chuggin' Along

Well, today I had planned to wake up early enough to go for a 4-4.5 mile run.  However, that didn’t happen.  I just wasn’t feeling a run this morning, so I just slept on and off until it was time to get up and get myself moving to get ready for work.  It’s okay.  I have tomorrow and Saturday still to get in my final two workouts for the week.  Tomorrow I have to get up by 7am for an 8:30 dentist appointment.  After the dentist appointment, I will do the run I didn’t do this morning.  Saturday, I was going to sleep in since I’m working a double, but I think I’ll run my final workout for the week of 3 miles.  This will mean running 3 days in a row, but that’s okay because Sunday’s run won’t be until mid to late afternoon.  Or, maybe I’ll wait until after nightfall and hit the treadmill at the gym?  I need to see if I can fix whatever mistake I made and get my audiobook player to realize that there is a book loaded on the phone so I can listen to my book while I run and hopefully not be so bored on the treadmill.

Today was day number NINE of eating “on diet.”  I know I keep saying this, but I am so proud of myself for day after day of staying on my diet and not deviating from it even once…for even one bite of “junk” food.  Speaking of, I got an invite today to a friend’s housewarming party next Tuesday.  There will be pizza and beer.  While I would absolutely love to go…I don’t want to be faced with pizza right now.  Why?  Because I LOVE pizza and I don’t think I could trust myself not to eat a slice or two or three…even if I showed up not at all hungry.

I really love the Shred Diet.  It’s just amazing to me.  I’ve done other published diets before…South Beach, for instance.  I loved the food on that, but it just wasn’t something that I could maintain.  I don’t remember why.  I think it had some to do with the availability of the foods it wanted me to eat…also the cost of the food was part of it too, I believe.  The Shred Diet is all “normal” foods that you can find at just about any grocery store.  And none of the food is all that “fancy” so it’s all affordable food too.  Salmon is about as expensive as it gets.  There is the sugar/fat free dressings, but really, those aren’t that expensive…not in my opinion.  But, as I said before when I first started this diet, it is definitely something I could do long term…I would just adjust some of the serving sizes of some of the food. 

While I’m on the subject of published diets…someone said something to me about the Dash Diet the other day.  I meant to look it up when I got home last night, but forgot.  Is anyone familiar with this diet?  If so, how did you like it?  They said it was rated the most successful diet of 2013.  I’m not sure if that means that followers of the diet were more successful on a whole than followers of other diets, or if it was the most successful in sales.  But, I’d like to check it out and, if I like it, I’ll buy it and cycle between it and the Shred Diet long term.  If it’s something that I think would work for me.