The 10% Diet Solution
The problem with diets, whether it's the Bowflex Challenge or some other fad, is what happens when you come off the diet. The idea of course is that you're supposed to learn new healthy habits and continue them after the diet ends. The reality is many people struggle through the program, succeeding only because of some reward they've promised themselves (if I just get through this I'll let myself have a big hunk of cheesecake...). Some people do succeed in changing their habits, but for many of us after the six or twelve weeks are over there's a tendency to relax our efforts. Before long, we may be back where we started, or worse.
This is not to say you should forget the Bowflex Challenge or whatever diet you are working on, but if you've been down this road before, and you find yourself in a pattern of losing and gaining, you may want to try a different approach.
In the book Soft Steps to a Hard Body, Ellington Darden Ph.D. suggests, "Small changes produce large rewards." If you can't drastically change your diet permanently, try changing it by 10%. If every day you eat 10% fewer calories than you usually do, this can make a big difference in the long run. According to Dr. Darden, if you eat 100 fewer calories per day (a tablespoon of mayonnaise) than you usually do, that removes ten pounds of body fat in a year. He writes, "If you want to be ten times thinner by this time next year--and stay that way--stop trying to be twenty pounds thinner by next month." If you can cut 200 calories a day, that would be twenty pounds in a year.
So, how do you go about cutting back 10%? It might be something as easy as switching from whole milk to skim milk, from beef to chicken or fish. Maintaining a food journal will help you keep track of what you're eating every day. You don't need to be obsessed about counting calories; just be conscious of what you are putting in your mouth.