Does Living Lean work?

This is something I wrote before Christmas 2004. From Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, I followed Living Lean, to just maintain my weight while I was cooking an enormous amount of goodies for friends.

I am just trying to maintain through the holidays. I've always cooked for about 12 little old lady shut-ins and last year, my first holiday season on the program, I did things, but not cooked at home from scratch. I felt guilty all year about that, so this year I decided to put my selfishness aside and cook for them. I take a Christmas plate or platter that I get from the $ stores and fill it with goodies, plus a napkin, a menu, and usually a little decoration of some sort. I call it Porta-party or party on a plate. I'll be delivering them on Tuesday afternoon, so you know I've spent the entire weekend baking pumpkin breads and cookies , making candy (English toffee), making sandwich spread, which I'll convert to sandwiches tomorrow evening, etc. So, because I'm a taster, I have opted to make my goal to maintain my weight through the holidays. Then, I am going to re-commit to exercise and a renewed commitment to eating nothing off plan, so I can say I've been POP (perfectly on plan) each day!!!

So, what happened? Well, I was able to taste everything I made and wanted to taste, but I chose to have only very tiny amounts of the off plan foods, and then compensated for them by eating two of the rapid results meals on those days. The end result was that in 5 weeks, I ate what I wanted, used the knowledge of portion control that I had learned, and actually lost a lb. doing it!! I'd say that Living Lean really does work!!