The Game On! Diet

by Krista Vernoff

  —Michael, 36

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Having all the information is empowering. And weighing yourself once a week is how you get all the information. What do I mean by that? Well, the first week he played this game, my husband gained weight. Why? He wasn’t paying that much attention when Az explained the rules and important little things like portion sizing. So he went from three relatively large meals a day to five relatively large meals a day. Had he not weighed in, he might have stayed on that path and gotten the opposite result that anyone is hoping for. Instead, he got on the scale at the end of the week and went, WTF? And Az said, “Let’s have a look at what you’re eating.” Kevin then went on to steadily lose twenty pounds.

  So let’s just decide right now that we’re not going to make this a whole big emotional thing. Let’s just let it be a tool—one tool in a big toolbox of health. Just get up, pee, and then get on the scale. Naked. And remember, the number on the scale is just a starting point. A fact. A number. It’s a number just like the number in your car that tells you how fast you are going. It’s not a giant sign that says “you’re a big fat-ass loser.” So for the length of the game, take the emotion out of the number. For four weeks, give up making that number mean something bad about you. The number on the scale tells you where you are today and in four weeks it will tell you how far you have come.

  To help, we’ve implemented a penalty for getting on the scale more than once a day. This is designed to help you let go of the unhealthy obsessing and embrace the health of having all the information!

  * * *

  Step Up Your Game!

  Some tips for making friends with your scale.

  Paste a happy picture on your scale. Maybe a picture of your kid or your spouse or your pet smiling or making a funny face. Let the picture remind you that (a) you have a great reason to get healthy and (b) you should be smiling too because the number on the scale is just a number. It does not quantify you.

  Weigh yourself either once every morning or once every week. The rest of the time, keep the scale out of sight, in a closet or under your sink.

  If two members of your household are playing, surprise each other by redecorating the scale every day or two! Funny pictures of your family one day. Crazy porn the next. Keep each other guessing and keep yourselves laughing.

  * * *

  Believe it or not, I have come to look forward to weighing in each week that I’m playing the game. Because every week I’ve played but two, I’ve lost weight. I’ve done it consciously, I’ve done it healthily, and I’ve done it without obsessing or fixating. And that is such a good feeling.

  * * *

  • • • A Tip from Az • • •

  If you have no need or desire to lose weight and are hoping instead to firm or bulk up, set yourself a fitness goal as a way of earning your bonus points. How would that work? Something like this: Do a HIIT workout on Monday. (See Chapter 9, Exercise.) If you do it on a stationary bike, and the highest you can go is, say, level 6, then set yourself a goal of reaching level 7 by Sunday. If you do it, you get your bonus points. The key here, as with every other aspect of this game, is complete integrity. Ride as hard as you can on Monday. And then train like hell to beat yourself a week later. If you don’t do it, you don’t get the bonus points! You can also set yourself a distance goal (if you can run only five miles on Monday, you want to be able to run five and half by Saturday). Or a weightlifting goal (set yourself a goal weight)…You get the idea. But before you make this decision, keep in mind that if you have unwanted fat anywhere on your body, you have to lose weight to get rid of it. YOU CANNOT TURN FAT INTO MUSCLE. You have to lose the fat (lose the weight) and then build muscle in its place!

  * * *

  Frequently Asked Questions

  Q:

  I have my period/am constipated/am bloated. I think that’s why I didn’t lose weight. What do I do?

  A:

  See Chapter 16, Troubleshooting.

  Q:

  Should I weigh in every day or just once a week?

  A:

  Studies show that dieters who weigh themselves every day lose up to twice as much weight as dieters who weigh in once a week. So I weigh myself every day. It keeps me honest and motivated. But it’s really up to you.

  Q:

  Can I get some of my points if I lost .99 percent of my weight?

  A:

  No. Sorry. We gotta keep the rule clean and clear. But if you lost .99 percent of your weight, you rock and you know it. That’s your reward.

  Q:

  Our team wants to reward any kind of weight loss even if it’s not 1 percent. Suggestions? Can we make up our own point system?

  A:

  Truly, you can do whatever you want as long as your whole team and all of your opponents agree. We find the game to be most effective when played by our rules, but we respect your desire to do your thing. Just make sure you’re all agreed as to what your thing is! (FYI: The reason we chose 1 percent is that it levels the playing field—often a heavier person will lose weight more quickly than a lighter person.)

  Q:

  Why do I have to lose my alcohol for the entire game? I’d rather lose my 100 free calories or my meal off. Can I trade?

  A:

  No. This isn’t meant to punish you. It really is because alcohol can slow the body’s ability to burn fat by a whopping 73 percent!! It is a major reason why people fail to lose weight on diets. Again, not a punishment—just an effort to help you step up your game and meet your fitness goals. Really. Truly. Love ya. Mean it.

  Q:

  Does it matter what kind of scale I use? Is electronic better?

  A:

  Just use the same scale at the same time of day every week.

  Q:

  To make things fair, shouldn’t we all be using the same kind of scale on our teams? It seems easier to cheat with those dial scales.

  A:

  Nobody is cheating. We all have integrity. PLEASE please please, let’s all play with integrity! But if you’re concerned, have a group weigh in!

  Q:

  When I first started the game, I liked the scale because I kept losing weight. But now I’ve hit a plateau and I HATE it. It depresses me when I start to walk toward the scale for weigh in. I don’t want to feel this way. Any suggestions?

  A:

  Yes. Step up your exercise and/or cut back your calories. Then do this exercise…

  GET A PEN!

  On the following lines, list ten great things about you that have nothing to do with the number on the scale. Then read them aloud to yourself. This describes you. The number on the scale does not!

  * * *

  Play by the Rules

  * * *

  Weigh yourself on the morning you start the game, within 10 minutes of waking.

  Once a week, weigh yourself the morning of your day off.

  Each week you must lose 1 percent of your body weight to earn a bonus that equals 20 percent of your points scored for the week.

  If you do not earn your weight-loss bonus you must give up drinking alcohol for the remainder of the game.

  Remember that the weigh-in is designed to be a feedback tool that helps you see your progress and educates you as to where you may need to make some adjustments.

  If you weigh yourself more than once a day, you lose one point for every extra time you get on the scale.

  Remember that the number on the scale is just a number. It empowers you by giving you all the information you need to succeed in meeting your fitness goals.

  For the length of the game, try taking the emotion out of the number on the scale. Give up making that number mean anything bad about you.

  Studies have shown that those who weigh themselves daily have more success with weight loss.

  If you really hate your scale, try decorating it with something that makes you happy every time you see it.

  Chapter 8

  FOOD

  (Or, W
hy French Fries Don’t Count as a Vegetable.)

  My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four; unless there are three other people.

  —Orson Welles

  * * *

  The Rule: Eat five small meals a day. Each meal should include a combination of lean protein, healthy fats, carbohydrates like whole grains and fruit, and/or vegetables. Meals must be no fewer than two and no more than four hours apart. Meals must contain none of the F.L.A.B.B. foods you will find listed in this chapter. Each fully sanctioned meal is worth 6 points for a total of 30 possible meal points a day.

  The Exception: Each day, in addition to your five meals, you may consume up to 100 calories of whatever you want (including the F.L.A.B.B. foods on the list, but not including alcohol, soda, or diet soda).

  Note: Between meals, you may snack on cucumbers and celery without penalty.

  Penalty: If you eat anything between meals besides cucumbers and celery, you must deduct a 10-point snacking penalty. You must include veggies in at least two of your meals or you will not recieve your meal points for those meals.

  * * *

  When my daughter was six weeks old, my sister and her family came from New York to visit for five wonderful days. I was on maternity leave and my husband and I were hunkered down in new baby bliss. (Except that one time she decided to poo while we were all in the bathtub together. That was slightly less than blissful.) We had the intoxicating love of new parenthood, a lot of doting and helpful friends and family to help, and tons of time—the most precious commodity and the one I hadn’t had enough of in years. It was the happiest time of my life so far and my sister’s visit was the icing on the happy cake. We went out to breakfast and lunch every day and ordered dinner in and lounged around the house ogling the baby and making those cooing baby-talk noises that all twentysomethings swear to God they will never make.

  When my sister went back to New York after five days, she sent me this e-mail:

  We had the best time ever! I love Coco soooooo much I want to eat her. But I probably shouldn’t since I got on my scale this morning and saw that I GAINED FOUR POUNDS. Four pounds in five days! All that vacation eating was fun—but daaaaamn, now I gotta hit the gym. No Coco eating for me. Miss you!

  Kaisteroni

  Most pressingly, Kaisteroni is a name I affectionately call my sister—a combination of Kaili, sister, and macaroni-head. I have no idea why macaroni-head. Anyway, I wrote her back an e-mail that went something like this…

  Dude. Scales are stupid. And depending on what time of day you weigh yourself, they change. There’s no way you gained four pounds.

  And then she wrote me back…

  Dudette. I gained four pounds. For reals. On my way to gym now. Ugh.

  xxooo

  This was just a casual e-mail exchange for my sister, but for me it was a huge wake-up call. Kaili gained four pounds in five days by eating what I was eating every day. This was not “vacation eating” for me. This was my habitual, daily diet. Omelets and potatoes and toast for breakfast. Tuna melts for lunch. Pasta and bread and copious crab cake–like appetizers for dinner. And then, dessert. Every day.

  Here’s the thing—I don’t cook. I’m bad at it, I hate grocery stores, I would much rather order in every meal. But the game taught me really great ways to keep food in the house, to take care of myself (like a grown-up) and that’s when the weight came off. It wasn’t that hard, I just needed some motivation—and the game has motivation in SPADES.

  —Pete, 38

  You see, I had been told that breastfeeding burns, like, 500 extra calories a day (and it does). And I can tell you for certain that breastfeeding makes you extra hungry. And I was walking to breakfast every morning. Walking in Los Angeles! Pushing a baby stroller! Almost a mile each way! I thought for sure that balanced any extra extra calories I had been eating. Plus, twenty-five pounds of my pregnancy weight had dropped off in the first two weeks after my baby was born, so I figured it would kinda just keep going that way. But when I went to my six-week checkup post-baby, I had not lost any more weight. None. In a month. And I couldn’t figure out why—until I got that e-mail from my sister.

  I am not dumb. And I am a person who has something of a lifelong “issue” with food and weight. So I did have a basic understanding of the “calories in vs. calories burned” concept. But because it had been a long, long time since I had bothered reading calorie contents or really even thinking about them besides the most basic “French fries, I should probably pass on those,” what I didn’t have was an understanding of just how many calories were in the foods I was casually eating each day. I would usually skip the fries that came with the tuna melt, yeah. But do you know how many calories are in your average tuna melt?? It’s two large pieces of bread—about 300 calories. Plus several teaspoons of oil or butter—another 300 or more. Plus cheese—probably about 300 calories’ worth. Plus fish—hey, only 200 calories! Plus the mayonnaise that’s mixed with the fish—I’m estimating low at 200. That’s 1,300 calories. Which is well over half of the calories that almost anyone should be consuming in a day. And that was just my lunch.

  You’re panicking now because I’m talking about calories. I get that. You’re having flashbacks to the eighties: calorie counting, Jane Fonda in a leotard, Richard Simmons in a unitard. But allow me to point out that the country was skinnier in the eighties. We didn’t become morbidly obese as a nation until we threw out calorie counting for fad ideas like counting fat grams. (Hey! Pasta’s fat free! I’ll eat a pound!) That said, if you are still panicking, let me assure you that the game does not require you to count calories. But we really encourage you to understand the basic concept!

  * * *

  Step Up Your Game!

  Know this: There is only one way to lose weight. You must burn more energy than you consume. That’s it! End of story.

  YOU MUST BURN MORE ENERGY THAN YOU CONSUME!

  Please note that this is completely different from “eating less and exercising more,” because you can eat an amount of food that is less than what you were eating previously and still be consuming more energy, depending on your food choices. You can also exercise for longer than you have before and still be burning less energy than you have in the past, depending on your choice of exercise.

  So to step up your game, go to www.thegameondiet.com and enter your height, weight, and age. The Web site will do a quick and free calculation for you and tell you how many calories you should be eating each day. (You can also have a trainer at your gym help you come to this number—but he or she will want to pinch your back fat to get it!) Once you have this figure, you will be truly armed with all the information you need to lose weight and keep it off! You can then read the calorie content on the foods you’re choosing (or you can enter the foods you’re choosing into our Web site and we’ll let you know the calorie content). This will help you when the game is over, and for the rest of your life, to truly understand when you gain weight WHY you gained weight (and how to lose it).

  * * *

  * * *

  • • • A Tip from Az • • •

  Before the low-carb diet became such a huge dieting fad, it was known for years as the bodybuilders diet. It seems that some capitalizing people took note of the amazing results that bodybuilders get before going into competition—in particular, with minimizing their body fat.

  But it’s important that you understand that bodybuilders go on this type of diet for a very short time (just for their “rip up phase” before a competition) and they do it knowing full well that as soon as the competition is over they will go back to a healthier, more sustainable way of eating and they will gain weight back.

  So when you choose a diet that is all protein and fats and very low carb, you have to realize that the choice you are making is not sustainable, because your body is not getting all the nutrients it needs. You might get decent results while you are on the diet, but when you go off the diet you will gain weight back and find yourself in t
he miserable phenomenon known as yo-yo dieting. So if you’ve ultimately “failed” on one of these diets, don’t look at yourself and say “if only I had more discipline…” It is not you, it’s the diet!

  Better to have a healthy blend of all nutrients—including carbs.

  Goodbye, bacon. Hello, potato!

  * * *

  The food plan I’m about to lay out for you is nothing new. We’re simply asking you to eat in the way that nutritionists across the globe now understand to be the healthiest way to lose weight. And it’s actually quite simple, but that doesn’t make it easy.

  It’s not easy at first because, for most of us, it’s new. We are asking you to eat five meals a day when most of us, for most of our lives, have been eating three. (Many dieters, for much of their lives, have been eating even fewer.) So not only is this a change (and man, do I resist change), but five small meals requires more thought and more preparation than three.

  Losing weight was the easy part. It was committing to an eating regimen that required me to be prepared to eat every two to three hours that was difficult. But to my amazement, I found that other areas of my chaotic, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants work/lifestyle became more organized and manageable, achievable even, as I created order around eating. Even my finances showed improvement. And mood swings I used to attribute to an artist’s temperament proved to just be low blood sugar. So much for the portrait of the artist. Consistent food and sleep, the new miracle drugs.