For a while, after I ran some marathons but before I devoted my blogging to wedding-related stuff, I wrote a lot about my weight loss journey. My sister got married in October 2004, and I was determined to look good in the pictures. And then I got engaged a month later, and after that, my motivation revolved around my wedding. All told, I lost about 40 pounds, I think (not including the weight I lost while training for the marathons.) But then it all came back after the wedding, and then with my pregnancy, blah blah blah. Tried losing it many times, and could never get more than a few pounds off.

I was really starting to lose hope. Weight Watchers had worked for me in the past, but as I got older, it didn’t work as well, and frankly, I didn’t have the time to devote to journaling everything I ate, and going to meetings. I did Jenny Craig for a while last year, as I wrote about, and I actually liked it a lot more than I expected to. But I couldn’t afford to stay on that, so unfortunately, the weight came back.

I started to consider maybe I needed to try something new. And I remembered a few friends mentioning a diet they were having a lot of success with. It seemed pretty restrictive. No sugar. NO SUGAR! (Hardly any carbs at all, in fact, but NO SUGAR?!?!?) I am a sugar fiend. I figured any diet I ever did would have to allow me some sugar so I wouldn’t feel deprived.

But then I started reading about people having successes with fasting, maybe not for weight loss, but for breaking their sugar addiction. I’m telling you, quitting smoking was a piece of, uh, cake, compared to the idea of giving up my beloved sugar. But I kind of knew, that’s what I’d have to do. Not fast, necessarily, but give up sugar. I needed to make a drastic change. I needed restrictions.

Enter the Dukan Diet. That’s the diet my aforementioned friends had done and lost weight on. So I ordered the book. Read over the website. Found some blogs. Did some research. And decided to just go for it. (And sadly realized I would have to stop making the pumpkin steel-cut oats I’d been enjoying for breakfast. Sniff, sniff.) I think what really convinced me was all the success stories I found online. Not the ones on the Dukan website, but the ones from real people. And the fact that the diet has a lifetime phase. You very gradually work back in more foods, and by the time you’re at the maintenance phase, it should be second nature.

The Dukan Diet is basically a low-fat, low-carb, high-protein diet. Yeah, like Atkins or South Beach, I guess. And let me tell you, I finally found something that really works for me. It really works! I started on January 30, and have lost 26 pounds. That’s in less than two months! I will freely admit that I have had some sugar. I allowed myself a slice of king cake at Mardi Gras, a piece of chocolate on Valentine’s Day, a small slice of birthday cake here and there. But overall, I’ve stuck to the plan well. (It helps that sugar now gives me a massive headache.)

There’s also no drinking on Dukan, so the glass of wine I used to enjoy after the boys go to bed has fallen by the wayside. George was, at first, a bit upset that I wouldn’t be hanging out with him at the pub on the nights the boys were at Granny & Grandpa’s. But it’s just a temporary sacrifice until I hit my goal weight (which should be this summer sometime.) I consider it completely worth it, but yeah, I do miss my wine.

So that’s kind of a big thing that’s been going on with me lately, but I haven’t really wanted to blog about it until I had success with it.

Any questions?