Last week I had a revelation that made me feel really, really stupid.

I had been dieting for three weeks. I’m going to Australia at the end of October, and since I’ll be spending a majority of the three weeks I’m there in a bikini, I’d like to be in somewhat decent shape. I decided to go back on the HCG diet, MINUS the drops. I figured I could follow the meal plan without the drops and I’d still lose weight. Maybe not as quickly as last year, but I’m only trying to lose 10 pounds and at that point I had two months to do it. Less than two pounds a week. Should be easy, right?

I was doing really well. I was exercising four or five times a week, and I had completely cut out all types of “bad carbs” from my diet. I went out drinking three times in that period, all for friends’ birthdays, but I stuck to wine or vodka and club soda and my only major cheat was on the night of my friend’s birthday when I got really wasted and ended up eating Burger King at 3 in the morning. But that was at the end of August, and I’d gotten back on track well enough that I should have been losing weight.

But I wasn’t. In the entire three-week period that I was dieting, I had only lost 1.5 pounds. And in the 4 or 5 days prior to my revelation, my weight hadn’t changed at all!

So what was the revelation? Well, that morning after weighing myself and seeing that the number on the scale hadn’t changed, I thought to myself, “What the hell is going on? I’ve been following the HCG maintenance plan to the letter, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be down 4 or 5 pounds by now. WTF?!”

Then it hit me. I’d been following the MAINTENANCE plan. Maintenance, as is maintaining your weight. Duhhh! Even though I had cut out carbs, I was still eating low-fat cheese, nuts, avocados, and all this other stuff that may be healthy but is still high in fat. At that moment I realized that if I actually want to lose weight, I am going to have to eliminate all those things from my diet.

In the week since then, I’ve significantly reduced the amount of fat I was eating (I was eating half an avocado a day for almost two weeks!). I don’t like wasting food, so I’m finishing all the stuff I still have in my fridge, like cottage cheese, sour cream, etc. Starting on Monday I will be in hardcore diet mode, because now I only have one month to lose 10 pounds!

On the positive side, I’m happy that I finally found a way to maintain my weight. That was one of my New Year’s Resolutions, remember? It’s nice to know that once I finally get down to where I want to be, I will be capable of maintaining my weight and will therefore be able to STOP yo-yo dieting once and for all.