Like anyone living in a world with the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and Photoshop, I am not happy with my body. Yes, I recognize that there are a lot of unrealistic images out there. However, I also see very real people walking the streets rocking jeans and a crop top without a muffin top. (Muffin Tops: great to put in your body but not to have on your body.)
Every year the scale creeps up just a little higher than it was the previous year. And every year I come up with new ways to prevent those numbers from going up. Because I am incapable of doing anything in moderation, I normally concoct the most outlandish diets.
Spoiler Alert: They never work! Here are some of the diets I’ve tried this year to get rid my ever-increasing muffin top.
The “Eat as much as I can on Sunday” Diet – This is my favorite diet because it’s just a precursor to every other diet. Sometime during the week I’ll come up with a whole new plan on how I’m going to get skinny. This time it will be different and I’ll really stick to the diet. But before I start the diet of boring, unfulfilling green shit, I have to treat myself, right? That’s where this diet comes in. The weekend rolls around and I will divulge in all the fattening food I won’t be able to eat once my diet starts.
The “1200 calories a day” Diet – I’ll download the MyFitnessPal app and start recording every single bite I take. This works great for all of breakfast and part of lunch until I realize that every single thing has calories. Why do I have to include the butter I put on my bread? Why the hell does mayonnaise have so many calories? It’s only purpose is to make sure my God damn sandwich isn’t dry!
The “Clean eating” Diet – I can eat unlimited amounts of chicken, veggies, fruit, and sweet potatoes? I love all those things. This should be a piece of cake! And it was. Until I realized that cake was NOT on the clean eating menu.
The “Eat just half of everything” Diet – This diet actually worked for me once. Four years ago. When I was younger and had a much faster metabolism. I also had a lot more self control. I lost about 7 pounds in this diet once. Not this year when I tried it. It turns out that eating half a slice of pizza is impossible.
The “I’m too poor to be this fat” Diet – This diet usually comes not from looking at the scale but from looking at my bank account. When I notice that 95% of my money goes to food, it’s time to go on a money diet.
The “Life is too short to be on a diet” Diet – I have to say, this diet really worked for me this year. It was the only diet I was able to stick to for more than a day. I think I may continue this diet in 2017 because life is too short not to eat the cupcake.
Am I Thirty Yet 
Last summer I ran 15-20 miles per week, and I lost not one pound! Now I’m boxing, and at least I’m having fun. (Also, my arms are getting really toned!)
Damn! 15-20 miles a week! That is really impressive no matter what the scale says. I always say I want to pick up running and then something always gets in the way.
I feel ya here. I trained for a marathon last year and lost absolutely nothing. I was furious haha life is certainly too short to not eat a cupcake. Go ahead and have a cupcake. It won’t kill you!
That’s gonna be my motto for life. I will never be one of those people who says no to a cupcake.
I find the “I’m too poor to buy groceries” diet pretty effective. LOL
That one works wonders for my scale and bank account.
I always feel betrayed by mayonnaise whenever I read the jar. I don’t read the jar anymore lol
There are a lot of foods that betray me when I read their nutrition labels. Mayo is high up on that list.
OMG this is the best. I definitely have tried all of these! I’m with ya though, I prefer the “Life is too short to be on a diet” diet!
The “Life is too short” diet is by far my favorite.
Diets are horrible! That is why I read everything I could on nutrition and just ate what I could theoretically grow. I hope you find something healthy in the future that works for you. Until then, enjoy that cupcake!
I am hoping I can find something this year that will help me eat a little healthier and spend a little less on food.
If you are interested you should read the book Plant Strong. It is all about nutrition and may help spark you eating healthier. It worked wonders for me.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll definitely look into it.
I feel like you could start a whole movement with this sentence “life is too short not to eat the cupcake”
I really need to lose some weight (because of the whole IVF trying to have a baby thing), but I am into small changes and baby steps. There’s less chance I’ll fall off the wagon if I take the time to secure myself before it takes off 🙂
Hope everything is going well on your end with the IVF. I’m thinking about you. When it comes to dieting and losing weight, I think baby steps are the best. They help so you won’t get discouraged.
What you said in The “1200 calories a day” Diet portion is why I don’t understand counting calories / why the very thought of it exhausts me. specially if you’re making your own food! Sure, it’s easy to count calories if everything you’re eating comes in a box or a bag but that really limits your options.
Myfitnesspal allows you to put in recipes. So it can calculate the calories in each serving of something you made. But that is still hard to do. Things always add up and it’s hard to calculate completely cause when you cook you’re not always using exact measurements. It’s really frustrating to count calories.
Well, i too tried a lot of exercises and dieting this year, was partially successful this year , hope the coming year will be a success story .
Awesome. I’m glad you found some things that worked. I am hoping I can find something a little more successful this new year.
I swear I had about three of these diets. Lol! I just found out about your website from Josie of MindJoBusiness and this is my first post that I’m reading and I love your blog already!
Aww thanks so much! I’m glad you’re enjoying my writing.
I suck at diets. I have never managed one due to zero willpower. (Except when I tried giving up chocolate and replaced it with doughnuts for six days… actually gained weight.)
I love that GIF. (Disapprove of the sentiment, of course, but it’s a funny line in the film!)
Haha, Omg I love the replacing chocolate with donuts diet. That’s hilarious.
Lol, I personally seem to be a fan of the ‘eat healthy during the day, then eat everything in sight at 8 pm’ diet. Great post 🙂
OMG, I forgot about that diet. I follow that one as well. It’s just so hard to eat healthy the entire day! It’s too long.
I love this!!! I think every girl can relate. When I was in high school I totally did the 1200 calorie thing and didn’t even need to! I recently wrote about this on my blog too, as most of my friends are doing some sort of”bikini burn” workout right now and I haven’t been able to work out normally in years now because of my illness. It’s hard being a girl, but it becomes a lot easier when we learn to accept ourselves. This is so well written, thank you for sharing!
Thanks for reading. I do believe that life does get a lot easier if we can just accept ourselves more. I have gotten to a point in my life where I am not concerned about diets. I realize they are not sustainable. Instead it should just be about being a little bit more healthy. But the overall goal should be to simply make sure you’re happy.
YES, EXACTLY. Very wise words; I wish more young women would realize the same thing. It will be hard to keep up high intensity workouts as we age, but learning to love ourselves no matter what stage of life we are in is so important.
Haha, I love this. It’s so true. Everyone I know has been on at least one of these diets, including myself. I like to follow the 80/20 rule, and as long as my diet is mostly made up of whole foods with the occasional treat, then I know I’ll be on the right track. I loved your blog, following! x
The 80/20 rule is a good one to live by. I really believe that it’s all about moderation. I never want to go on a diet where I completely deprive myself of a certain food. The occasional cupcake won’t kill you.
Haha, The “Eat as much as I can on Sunday” Diet is especially bad when on Monday, I’m all like “Never mind Monday, Tuesday will be the day I start eating better.” I definitely don’t recommend the “Eat as much as I can for two solid weeks before I finally pull me shit together” Diet. 😛
Omg that’s hilarious and that 100% sounds like something I would do. In fact, it’s something I do a lot of weeks sadly.