Anything Goes Diet

How do I lose weight while eating intuitively? What if I intuitively like to eat out, go to parties, eat donuts, or participate in family pizza night? Is it hopeless?

I get a lot of e-mails that are some variation of the above. People desperately want to relax the rules but how do you do that and lose weight? Or stay lean? Well, John Barban has written a whole program on that very subject, The Anything Goes Diet.

Plenty of us, myself included, don’t need programs anymore. We’ve got it! If you’ve got it, excellent. But if you need more guidance on how to back away from diet rules while still making a deficit happen, or how to handle social situations, or how to change your thinking, or some input on calories if you feel completely lost while winging it, this may be just what you’re looking for.

There are no off-limits foods, no meal timing rules, no special ratios, no absurd protein requirements, just a deficit, a consistent, no-hassle, eating what you like, deficit. John Barban and intermittent fasting guy, Brad Pilon, are pals and have very similar philosophies on eating what you love and having a life. You shouldn’t have to become a clock-watching obsessive compulsive eater to be lean. Your “diet” should fit your life, not the other way around. John’s approach is all about including socializing, fast food and favorite treats. I picked up a few great tips I’d never even thought of, Bethennyesque tips. Eating in at a fast food restaurant? Toss part of the fries in the trash on your way to sit down. WHAT?! I will totally use that because you can’t order “small” anything anymore. It would work for movie popcorn too.

To give you a feel for the program, some of the chapters are:

Calorie Guessing - Guessing Is Better Than Counting

Think Weekly - Nothing Changes in One Day

It’s ALL GOOD - There Is No “Bad” Food

All About You - Only Compare Yourself to Yourself

I also really enjoyed the section on The Yo-Yo Dieting Cycle - How The Weight Loss Industry Leaves You Out of Shape and Out of Control. He describes the stages of a “control continuum” that we’ve all been on and how it’s in the best interest of the industry to keep us all stuck, confused, and trying again. It was eye-opening and infuriating to realize how many years of my life I’ve spent IN shape but OUT of control, thinking I had it all together but still totally at the mercy of Body for Life or The Zone or whatever diet I was trying to live by.

There is some enjoyable reading here and quite a few ah-has, even for me. The Anything Goes Diet seems to be written just for Happy Eaters. It doesn’t even require exercise. Still, there are a few things I don’t like. It’s a program. Weird complaint, I know, but I don’t like programs. I don’t want anybody telling me how to eat, even if they’re telling me how to eat whatever I want. I’m sort of pigheaded that way. :-) There is calorie talk. I don’t like calorie talk but I know many of you have been asking for exactly that. If you’ve tried to talk to me about how many calories you should eat, you know that I just cover my ears and make la la la sounds. John Barban actually goes into detail for those who care to count, or “guess” as he encourages. I don’t really get the low calorie recipe guide. If you can eat anything you want, why would you eat low fat cheese? Ever? I suppose it comes back to “the differential” as Bethenny calls it. If you can’t taste the difference, or prefer the substitution then it makes total sense to save the calories. The 150 pages of recipes do look good (Nachos, Potato Skins, Super Bowl Chili, Spinach Dip, Apple Crumble) but I’d be fattening them up!

The Anything Goes Diet has five manuals plus a 60 day e-mail coaching sequence. It comes with:

* Weight Loss Manual
* Social Eating Survival Guide
* Thinking Thin Guide
* Recipe Guide
* Success Tracker Journal (an interactive .pdf)

The Anything Goes Diet isn’t for all of us but I think it will really appeal to those who want more guidance on relaxing the food rules while getting or staying lean.