Bibliofreakblog

The Game On Diet by Krista Vernoff and Az Ferguson

This is a DNF–a did not finish–for me.  Not a did not finish the book, but a did not finish the diet.

The story (of the book, I’ll get to me in a minute) is that Krista Vernoff, produce of Grey’s Anatomy, needed to lose weight, so she turned to her marathon-running, fitness-junkie friend, who designed her a diet that she did not stick to.  So he decided to make a competition out of it, and she liked that and she lost weight and there are before and after pictures to prove it.

Now she wrote a book about it so the rest of us can “kick our friends’ butts while shrinking our own”. 

So here’s what you do.  You go buy this book, and you get all your friends to also buy the book, and you form teams and if you follow all of the rules you get points and if you get more points than the other team, you win.

There’s many facets of the diet, meaning many ways to earn points.  Here’s the details:

• Sleep 7 hours each night
• Eat 5 small, healthy meals a day, containing one fist-sized carb, one palm-sized protein, and one thumb-sized healthy fat, (plus some veggies) from the approved food list, which means only whole wheats/grains/fruit/skim milk count as carbs, and only Greek-style 0% fat yogurt, low-fat cheese, and lean meats (including kangaroo!) count as protein.  And only all-natural, sugar free peanut or almond butter count and only certain oils count, and you should probably carry this book around with you everywhere because if you eat something not on this list (except for one 100 calorie dose of anything each day) you lose points.  Also if you snack.
• Drink 3 liters of water each day.  Herbal, decaf tea counts.  No other liquids count, but you may put a slice of citrus fruit in you water.
• Give up one bad habit
• Take on one good habit
• exercise 20 minutes each day.
• Drink no alcohol or pop (even diet).

You get one day off of each thing a week (for food that means that you have one day off where you can eat/drink all you want, plus one meal off another day where you can have one adult beverage).

The alcohol was the hardest part for me, but I persevered…for two weeks.  At the end of said weeks, I’d actually regained the pound I lost the first week.  If you don’t lose 1% of your body weight each week, you don’t get any bonus points, and you lose your alcohol privileges FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

The whole two weeks, I had been grumpy, eating celery at the bar, rudely snapping at my friends and yelling at my husband.

So, when I realized I was going to have to give up my alcohol privileges every single day, and we had some parties coming up, I quit.  I mean, it wasn’t working anyways.

I felt kind of bad, but for me, it just wasn’t worth it.  

Last summer, I did Weight Watchers.  I had gained about 10 pounds since my wedding in 2005.  I’m in my 20’s and while people tell me, you’re getting older, deal with it, I don’t want to be in the habit of gaining an average of 2 pounds a year.  So, doing WW, I lost 8 pounds, and then kind of petered off of it.  Since then, I have gained back about 6 of those pounds (maybe I over-ate over the holidays, because I was all like, it’s O.K., I’m going on a diet in January).  

I like the flexibility of WW, as this diet is extremely stringent, despite having the days off.

The thing I’ll miss the most, is the camaraderie.  Doing the Game On diet with fellow book bloggers was the best part.  I loved the virtual pats on the back I got when I reported resisting a cupcake at work.  But clearly, this diet does not fit my lifestyle.  I’m young, I have no kids, I go out a lot.

Also, Krista Vernoff swore off alcohol several years ago, so obviously that wasn’t a problem for her.  Bitch.

 
Buy The Game On! Diet on Amazon

If you like this book, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones; The edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones’s Guide to Life by Helen Fielding
French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guilano
French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes, & Pleasure by Mireille Guilano
The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

Other works by Krista Vernoff:

none

Other works by Az Ferguson:

none

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