Idiot-Proof Diet
I was introduced to the Idiot-Proof Diet by my wife, who always seems to know how
to find these things. What you do is use the online software to create an 11-day menu, where you have to eat all the meals the
plan creates for you based on choices you make, you can eat them in any order and as much as you deem necessary at each meal, as
long as you don't stuff yourself until you feel full, and of course there's the obligatory high amounts of water that you have to
drink each day, though, on this diet, you can mix it up with other diet drinks. After the 11 days, you get 3 days to eat whatever
you want, as long as you don't stuff yourself, whenever you wish, then you're supposed to start it all over again. I decided to
give it a try, as another bonding exercise with her, and believed I would be fine on it.
Of course, I did my research before beginning, as I'm a type II diabetic. I couldn't find one bad thing about it from anyone,
which I found interesting because one will usually find all the bad things before they'll find the good things. I could only
find two reviews from people who were diabetic, and both of them were type I diabetics.
Here the deal. After you create a username and password, you get to go through this process of selecting the meals you're going to
eat for the next 11 days. It gives you these series of choices, and you have to select something from that particular list. As
with many of these things, there were some times when I had to pick the lesser of four evils, as I'm not much on fruits or
vegetables. After you've answered the questions, the program creates your menu, along with instructions of what each of the meal
definitions means, and some of the other things you're allowed to have, such as low fat mayonnaise, no sugar, etc.
The first thing I noticed was that I at least ended up, for the most part, with meals that I would eat. There were a couple of
choices that I wasn't necessarily happy with, such as egg salad, but I figured that I had four meals each day, and I'd get the
things I didn't like in during one of the afternoon meals, since you're supposed to eat them within 2 ½ to 3 hours of each other,
if possible. The second thing I noticed was that there was one day where I would only be eating three meals; one of those meals
was what they term "fruit salad", the other two mixed vegetable meals. For most people, three meals a day might be a good thing;
for someone like me, who usually ends up only sleeping between 5 and 6 hours a day, it means there would be a very long gap at
some time between my last meal and my going to bed. Truthfully, it was the same worry I had with four meals, as, even if I could
stretch it out so that my last meal was at 8PM, if I went to bed around 3AM, which is regular for me, it means 7 hours of not
eating anything before going to bed, and more than 12 hours without food; not necessarily a good thing for blood sugar, in my
opinion.
Still, I went on the diet with my wife, who decided to share the same menu I was using. Through the first half of the diet, I was
hungry most of the time. One day, I actually crashed, as my glucose level fell to 44; I'm sure that taking a very long walk at
the lake in 88 degree weather with the sun beating down on me and no water didn't help any, and I was lucky to have one more
meal to eat, but, because of how I was spacing my meals, it pretty much told me I couldn't work out as hard as I'd gotten used
to. Day four was the tough day, as it was the day of only 3 meals of fruits and vegetables and, because of spacing, my last
meal was around 6:30, and I didn't go to bed until 2:30 in the morning; that was tough. I did have lots of water and sugar free
drinks, including both iced and hot tea, during this period to help keep me somewhat full, but it didn't work all that well.
On day six, the diet ended, because it was a Saturday, and both my wife and I were going to be gone almost all day. There's no
way one can eat the foods they recommend for you if you're not going to be around, which is a minor flaw in this particular diet.
And, on Sunday, we decided that this particular diet wasn't going to work well for someone like me, unfortunately who'd gotten
used to eating six small meals a day, six days a week (I take Fridays off). Still, I have to say that the diet did
achieve its objective, sort of. I lost 3 pounds; my wife lost 7, which was phenomenal.
So, I'm not sure whether, or how much, I can recommend the Idiot-Proof Diet. You will lose weight, but you might be hungry,
it's not easy to modify if you're not home, or don't have access to a refrigerator and microwave, and I'm not sure it's an eating
plan that someone could try to adopt for the rest of their lives. Still, if my wife is any indication, you can lose a bit of
weight really fast, especially if you mix some exercise in, which my wife and I did.
