Wow, this thread was dead and all the animoscity had subsided... way to try to revive it!



We've already made our opinions clear so I won't descend back into a lengthy diatribe about what I think or why I think it, but my own experience (72lbs, 14% body fat lost) and Lukes seem to disagree with your whole hypothesis that "eat right and exercise" is a bunch of BS.



That's more of a testament to your lack of willpower than the failure of any diet. It doesn't matter how you lose it, your history of behavior has shown that once it's off you're going to put it back on (at least three times now), regardless of how you lose it. If the rotation diet gets the weight off, great, but you should really focus more of your attention on WHY you lose weight rather than HOW, then maybe you can keep it off this time.

I could care less what diet you go on; if the rotation diet works for you great. If you buy the Abs Diet and decide to follow that, more power to you. Hell, if you go on a diet of only foods that begin with the letter "P" and it sheds the fat, awesome... write it up and I'm sure you'll find an audience. What little I do care about, when it comes to you, is that you're successful in KEEPING IT OFF, and subscribing to any program which is time delimited (which is to say it starts and finishes) is only going to encourage you to go back to unhealthy eating once it's finished, and then in a year or two; you'll be telling people that some other diet fad works and others don't because you've lost 50+lbs FOUR times now and gained it back.

Round five... FIGHT!

As far as this thread goes, all this debating sounds suspiciously like something Hitler would do.

There, I call Godwin's Law on myself. I simultaneously win and lose, this argument is officially over!

Clifford, I had to chuckle at your sarcasm-laced post that claims that I'm reviving the "animosity."

Actually, in some strange way, I think we actually agree. I understand your point about a "time delimited" program and keeping the weight off. My point is, though, that the traditional way of weight loss that everyone always advocates does not work for the majority (check the statistics on longterm success for those who lose this way or any way for that matter). You are right: It may be a lack of willpower. My point is, though, that the magic solution to that problem is not simply to say "eat healthy & exercise." In short, you're advocating a solution that many have tried and that hasn't worked for most. Do you see what I mean?

You know that old definition of insanity: trying the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result. Some people have tried the traditional method of losing weight several times only to fail. Why not try something different? Perhaps something like the Rotation diet will give someone the motivation he or she needs to feel good about themselves, and that, in turn, may help that person to get on the road to more sensible eating habits.

In short, I think much of the weight loss success equation is mental rather than physical, and if someone can get motivation by losing a good bit of weight in three weeks, that might work better than losing that 1/2 lb--1 lb. a week and then feeling lousy about yourself each day you look in the mirror because you're not seeing the results that you think you should see for all the sacrifice your doing.

Anyway, that's my take. Different strokes and all that.

Your post was 20 days after the last on subject post not counting a post made on the 14th that no one responded to and, at that point, everyone had parted ways agreeing to disagree but in fairly positive terms. You went right into a rant about how wrong we all are for disagreeing at all and that "eating smart and exercise" doesn't work. At what point does offering contrasting information become "naysaying"? It's not as if anyone was saying "ur stupid and i hope you fail!" at the end

You also overlooked the fact that several of us had even explicitly said that we were stating contrary opinions because we want everyone to succeed and were offering our input to help and inform, wrong as we may be, and that we'd genuinely love to be proven wrong since that would mean success for the rotation diet fans. Yeap, I'd say the thread necromancy and negativity here is your handiwork.



It's hardly a fair trial if you give up on it, especially since the big part of it that people give up on is the longterm part which is the important part, and if you give up on that then I would say you're not really trying it at all. If you had lost the weight and continued eating healthy and exercising and put the weight back on, your argument MIGHT have legs to stand on, but as it is, you didn't so you don't. That'd be like someone saying "saving money doesn't work, I'm still broke" because they put money in the bank for a month, then spent it all; you're missing the point completely if you stop and splurge.

The fact is that we're not advocating "eating right and exercise" as a short term means to the goal of "looking good in bikini season", we're saying that if a person makes it a lifelong commitment to being healthier and looking better year-round, rather than looking better for 2-3 months out of the year, that "eating right and exercise" and building that into a LIFELONG HABIT is the smart way to go.

Hell, even if you want to use the short-term goal as the basis of your argument, which you're doing, you've already conceded that you've lost the weight at least three times now by doing it, and yet you didn't keep it off: you weren't able to commit to a pattern of healthier living and eating when you already made yourself live that way for a short period of time, what makes you think that if you do something completely different that DOESN'T encourage a healthy MAINTAINABLE (keyword there) pattern of eating and living that you'll suddenly magically be able to flip a switch and make it stick this time, when you make the jump from the rotation diet/atkins/low-carb/lemonade dieting to wanting keep it off this time?

The problem with any of these diets is that they don't build healthy HABITS so when they end, so does any perceived health benefits. Clearly, in the past you weren't able to build healthy HABITS into a lifestyle change, and I'll honestly be surprised (in a good way) if you manage it this time, since you won't even be doing it leading up to your "goal".



Like you said, a bigger part of the equation for success in ANYTHING, dieting included, is going to be mental. If you don't change your attitude towards what you want to achieve, then the HOW is completely irrelevant, and by embracing a different dieting mechanism to try to lose weight you're not necessarily addressing the mental aspects, since you've ALREADY lost the weight in the past; in essence you've just found a different square peg for the same round hole.

You're simply looking for, and taking, a shortcut to get where you think you want to be, then HOPING that once you're there you can make the mental adjustments to change, but once you're there you're going to lose the benefit of having a goal to aim for, so finding inspiration to change and maintain that change will be difficult. You've got to start by fixing what was wrong in the past, or else you're just embarking down the road to insanity.



No matter how hard or how fast you lose the weight, naturally, you're not going to see suddeny dramatic changes in the mirror. Even if you lose 3lbs a week (which is about the rate I lost my weight at and, based on my own experience/experimentation, the fastest I could have lost weight without sacrificing significant muscle), your reflection in the mirror isn't going to change overnight... hell it's pretty subtle in the weekly photos until you look at week 1 compared to the current photo.

You can tell a lot about a persons mindset by their choice of words and, as much as we'd all like to see results yesterday, you have to accept that there is no magic bullet to make the fat melt away quickly. If "super fast results" is what you're looking for to find motivation, you're going to be looking for long time... time that you could easily spend building those healthy habits into a lifestyle. There is no easy way out of it, once you fall into this hole the only way out is to bear down and climb, and as long as you keep looking for the shortcuts and easy solutions, you're only setting yourself up for another fall. It is going to take time and work to get the results you want. Until you can accept that and realize that, you probably are going to struggle with the gain/loss rollercoaster for a long time, and until you stop seeing "eating healthy and exercise" as a "sacrifice", I can gaurantee that you'll be putting the weight right back on.

Bottom line is this: if you don't have the mental fortitude to commit to eating healthy, being healthy and living healthy, then you will NOT be healthy. If losing weight and being healthy is only a short term goal for you and shorcuts are how you want to achieve that, then you're going to be having this discussion again with someone else, whether it's here, on another website or in real life.

Sorry, but it really does work. The problem most people have is they see it as a diet, which it is not. If you want to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off, you need to eat healthy and exercise FOR EVER, not for 2 or 3 months until you reach your goal and then give up.
Eating right is not a diet.


Too true. There were certainly weeks I'd look in the mirror and think "Why am I bothering? I'm obviously not getting anywhere..." but really you just have to struggle on through those periods, and eventually come out the other side a thinner person.

the rotation diet is GREAT! I did it 25 years ago and lost 15 pounds in 4 weeks and kept it off for 20 years. The key is to a) be physically active (brisk walking for 45 min/day) and b) "fool" the body's metabolic sensor by alternating a severe diet week with a mild week. It worked for me and my wife!

It turns out the "diet" is really a "head game" to help you change the way you look at food. It is the "eat more veggies and fruit and less caloric-rich fatty foods" kind of eating. Having lost the weight in the 3-4 weeks of the diet you really don't want to go back to the old ways of eating. And for a sedentary guy like me, the walking was perfect. About 5 years ago, for a variety of reasons, we (wife and I) began eating much richer and stopped the walking. Lo and behold I picked up 20 pounds so we are currently in the middle of the diet again. Wish us luck!

Good luck Daniel and your wife! I was just now online browsing some additional menu plans for this diet, and accidently found this site. Yes, it does work. I had been schlepping along with Weight Watchers for several months, and needed a jump start. This spring, a co-worker gave me an old xeroxed copy of this original diet from Family Circle magazine from 1986. This was published before Dr. Katahn even published his book. I tried the plan and immediately jump-started my diet, while I continued attending WW mtgs. Everyone was amazed and the compliments began pouring in. The great thing is that you aren't hungry because the design of the plan is so many fresh fruits, veggies, whole grains, and enough protein to keep you going, plus it seems like you are eating all the time. It was definitely not starvation. By the way, in his original plan, which didn't make it to the book, but was in the magazine article, the rotation is 800, 1,000, and 1,200 calories. Do you know of any web sites with expanded menu plans for this diet? I do not own the book, only the magazine article.

Laura, lots of WW people hit plateaus and become discouraged, and quite a few have found that varying their points intake gets the weight loss moving again. For instance, instead of 20 points/day, they'll switch to something like a 18-22-19-21-17-20-23 pattern (all kinds of variations are possible as long as the points tend to average out to what they're supposed to be eating) and find that their body finally remembers it's supposed to be losing. I think changing the points around helps curb boredom and combines the best features of WW and the RD.