memes

I know, it's kind of the obvious advice, but I would recommend slowly incorporating more and more greens into your diet. I'm no nutritionist, but as I understand, when you just switch out your diet like that, some of your gut bacteria will get none or much less of the food that they need. Then they'll chat up your brain and tell it that it's now craving the food that you've cut out.

If you switch over slowly, your gut bacteria have time to adjust to the new diet and they don't need to make you crave things.

Olive oil is delicious, and I've always loved acidic foods

so long as there's yummy dressing on the salad, sign me up.

Just get in the habit of making simple dressing, e.g., EVOO, red or balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt & pepper. (Mustard helps with emulsification.) Yes oil is caloric, but afaik this is much healthier than drowning your salad in ranch or Thousand Island or whatever.

Olive oil can make you feel full, too, so even though you're eating fat, it can be a net win.

A Mediterranean diet is delicious, vegetarian/vegan compatible and, I think, fairly healthy. But mostly it's the delicious that counts.

Don't go eating salads on day one. The biggest mistake people make is drowning their salad in dressing, which takes away from the point.

Every diet invented does exactly one thing: reducing your caloric intake. Atkins, South Beach, those diet shakes, Weight Watchers...doesn't matter who.

The goal is to lower how many calories you consume. You don't have to pay for this unless you believe that paying for it will help you.

Some people like the structure and others like the variety. But it doesn't need to cost you anything.

If you are consistent, you will see the most weight loss in the first two weeks. Most people will lose 5-7 pounds almost immediately as their body adjusts to the new diet.

However this will plateau over the next few months and you will need to add additional exercise to keep your weight loss going.

Common ways people gain weight:

• under estimating how much you eat
• over estimating how many calories you burn
• "cheating" fairly regularly by saying you'll make up for it later

New Grumpy Cat just dropped!

Why not start today, then you can enjoy that on new years eve!