My Diet Story for NYPost

I didn't think I should blog about it, so I just sent a million secret emails to all my buddies and top-shelf bitches while I was on this mission. I participated in a six-week diet review for the New York Post.
I was assigned - Christine Avanti's Skinny Chicks Eat Real Food. I LOVE THIS BOOK!

I fell in love immediately. My mother-in-law got Christine's first book, which sounds a lot more strict than the diet book I just lived-by and reviewed.

Here's the text of the NYPost article:

The Dieter
Julie Hardee, 31

The Diet: “Skinny Chicks Eat Real Food” ($26.99) by Christine Avanti, shuns processed, chemical-laden foods in favor of more wholesome (and even full-fat) meals.

The Results: Hardee, a receptionist who lives on the Upper East Side, was slim to start, but wanted to tighten up a few problem areas and rid herself of bad habits, such as midnight snacking on Fire Cheetos and indulging in the office candy bowl.

Within the first week of reading Avanti’s book, Hardee was singing the author’s praises. “I am in love with my book,” she says. “She talks about how you should only eat things [when] you understand what the ingredients are — and try to keep it to five ingredients or less on the label. In short, don’t eat stuff you don’t understand, because it’s probably bad for you.” (Which delighted Hardee, because locally made organic beer was green-lighted.)

Not only did Hardee kick her Diet Coke habit — “Everything in Diet Coke is basically poison,” she says — she took to the health-food store with gusto. “The book didn’t have any specific exercise — it was more about label reading and enhancing your diet with flax meal and coconut oil or drinking a fermented food every day I had a kefir [a yogurt-like dairy beverage].”

Hardee even managed to put aside her fear of full-fat products. “I learned that it’s better to eat a pure-fat sour cream that comes from well-treated, lovely animals than to eat some reduced-fat sour cream fakeness,” she says.

Before
Height: 5’8”
Weight: 143.4 pounds
After
Weight: 141.2 pounds

Book: Skinny chicks eat real food

The Grade: A
“Amazing . . . [but] if you can’t go a health-food store, or if you were on a really tight budget, it’d be really hard.”

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/totally_waisted_Hi2mLFEM2PZbPAuXmpGXcP/1

And screen shots! I need to run out and get this in print.

I had airbrush face make-up for the first time in my life, and I Loved the hair & make-up girls. 

I thought my hair looked amazing at the time, but now I think it looks flat. And my tricep looks like a roll of dough but I'm critical. 

I also got styled, as in, these were not my clothes. I worked for a fashion stylist for a few years and never got styled from scratch like this. It was weird being on the other side. I also felt really awkward in the photo-shoot because I'm standing here on the seamless (backdrop) by myself and all these people who organized this were on the other side chatting and what-not. 

I was pretty nervous in the last 72 hours that I might not have lost any weight and would my story would be headlined under "Failure" but I lost 2* pounds and 1.5" from my hips. 

However, I've been "free" from this for a few days and I ate a pretty gnarly cheeseburger, and some delicious jell-o desserts and jell-o is not in the plan. 

While I was on the "Diet" - I didn't even feel like it was a diet, it felt like a Healthy eating plan, I ate one cheeseburger. The most amazing thing is I learned how to really read lables and I QUIT DIET COKE. 

I've quit Diet Coke before, after reading "Skinny Bitch" the scariest diet book in the world, which really just tells you to be vegan. I haven't had a diet coke since October and I'm very happy and not craving it at all. Now when I need a quick drink on the go, I grab a coconut water. 

I did have sprite twice during the 6 week diet phase, but I don't think sprite is as evil as Diet Coke. 

I kept a tiny food journal in my purse and I love chatting with Weight Watchers participants. Journaling is a major key to success. 

Weekend Food & Exercise Report

VERY home alone this weekend. Friday night - Leftover tomato/shrimp/basil pasta and an early bedtime. Maybe I ate a little bit of Breyer's. Just a little. Like half a cup.

Saturday: WOKE UP, walked Bonnie, drank coffee. Almond Milk. Sent Matt off to camping-camp.
JOGGED to the Central Park Reservoir. Ran around it once at a great pace, sun-blaring, felt so good I decided to do a 2nd lap. That's over 3 miles right there not including the trip from and back to the apartment all the way on the East Side.

I fixed 2 egg whites, 2 veggie sausage patties with salsa and 2 pc. of Fiber & FLax bread-toast with butter.


I packed a bag to spend the day at Central Park with full intentions of reading the new John Waters book, "Role Models" because I'm going to see him tomorrow night at the NYPL @ Bryant Park.


MY CENTRAL PARK BAG CONSISTED OF: The only drink I had in a travel-bottle. I found a HUNK of Frozen Club Soda in the back of our refrigerator. Matt took all the travel bottles camping and I refused to buy a plastic water bottle. I added some juice to the HUNK of Frozen Club Soda and a little Tito's Vodka. I'm super crafty and classy, I know.

I took Wheat Thins to snack on and a Granola Bar thing. I used the empty juice bottle to carry water for Bonnie-dog and I packed some Milk Bones for her to snack on. I was serious about spending the whole daylight day in Central Park reading.


SUNDAY: Walked Bonnie - Head was BUMPING I think because I sleep so much longer on the weekends that My body freaks out from the Coffee Consumption Delay. "Coffee Consumption Delay Distress" CCDD. I've been coming up with some sweet diagnoses lately since my doctor husband is SUCH a terrible family practitioner. He's a specialized specialist, therefore, useless for doctor stuff around the house. He knows any Mother with a Redbook MD trumps whatever he says.

So anyway - I was drinking a ton of coffee so I could get jazzed to clean the apartment. I got a major coffee high and cleaned our shit like Martha Stewart is coming over. Amazing job.

So my breakfast was 6 VEGGIE buffalo wings around noon.
At 3 I ate a bowl of Kashi cereal with Almond Milk - DELICIOUS.

At 4pm I went to the GYM. I lifted some awesome weights then ran 3 miles @ 10min/mile pace.

Then I was fucking STARVING so I drank a bunch of water and walked Bonnie.

I ate MORE LEFTOVER wheat pasta with basil/shrimp and tomatoes.

Then I met Tyler for Pinkberry. Luckly it's like frozen weird yogurt so I don't feel damaged by it.
Then I was snack-crazy and just ate a roll of Turkey deli meat. Tracy Anderson HATES deli meat but I can't be perfect all the time.

NEW IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE SKINNY SELF: Never eat YELLOW CHEESES or any Yellow cheese products and NEVER EVER eat Ranch Dressing Ever again. Not in any form. Not even a Ranch potato chip.

I've been googling "Skinny Girl Snacks" and there is a lack of resources so I'm going to start presenting "Skinny Girl Snacks"
#1. Eat a fucking piece of fruit. I've been doing good eating Oranges and other Fruit Cart items.

New Love in Pink & Green

I feel like I have a lot of photos to share. Here we go!



I was riding home from work and there were news vans and satellites everywhere and road blocks and I immediately thought - "Must be more bomb threats" But oh, no! It was Obama! He visited the NYPD to congratulate them on their quick work on the recent dumb bomber wannabe.

It was awesome because as you heard people say "It's Obama" to one another, they ran TOWARD the barricades to catch a peek. If it had been George Bush, I would have scrambled to find some rocks to throw. All these delivery boys were standing still on their bikes. I loved the excitement. I immediately took a turn on my bike past a barricade and a policeman whistled me back. So I was about a block away. This is the view across Park Ave.


This was my outfit that day. This is the best skirt ever and it has pockets.


This is a rainy-day outfit where I did not ride my bike. I was short a freaking NICKEL on the bus and I called out "Anyone got a nickel" guess who tried to help? Yeah, no one. The bus driver let me stay. A nickel!



This is from Obama madness afternoon. These buildings look so tall it makes me a little queasy to look at this image:



Friday at work, I used some technical drawing skills from this really hard, unforgettable class that I had in college. I helped make the cardboard insert pattern for this sweater-set that my company is manufacturing.


I like my new job. I love it in that I don't stress. But I really need to start watching what I eat and work out. My technical seamstress eyeballed me and asked if I've gained weight. Of course, I have no real idea and did not have statistical data to participate in an educated discussion. So she broke out the measuring tape and yes, my waist was 1.5" bigger than when I was officially measured. I've eaten a lot of white bread and I've been drinking a decent amount of beer. I told her this and it was as if I told her I murdered someone. Or punched her in the belly.

So here is my lunch from Friday - It's a crazy, skinny girl lunch in my opinion, but I guess I need to move in a new, less-fat, direction.
It's HALF of a vegetarian sandwich and some watermelon.
Two of my favorite blogs are PriorFatGirl and TheSkinnyWebsite, so I'm going to start showing what I eat more often and talking about this new thing called "exercise." I'm going to immediately cut my dairy intake by about 75% - 90% and I bet it's going to be huge/helpful.

I switched to Almond Milk a few days ago for my coffee. No sugar. Just almond milk.

2 days after my waist measured 1.5" bigger, it was only 1" bigger. I have a measurement that I need to keep it under. Do you want to know? I will whisper in your ear if you really want to know. My bicep-girth also has a specific measurement that needs to be maintained.

This is my Friday outfit:

I don't wear a lot of scarves, but I think I should.

I'm co-hosting a baby shower in June for a sorority sister and we are doing the Lilly Pulitzer "Desert Tort" motif as our theme and I'm loving it!
I went to the Lilly boutique on Madison Ave. and got the party supplies.

The shopping bag has nice grosgrain ribbon that I tied onto my back rack and easily rode home. I only lived a few blocks away. I was nervous about the wrapping paper falling out.

I really enjoyed myself at the Lilly boutique. Even though I'm sure I was the poorest, dirtiest looking person they've ever seen. It was very un-New York in there.


My favorite thing was the cursive and other freestyle wall-painting.


I'm trying to decide what item I could wear. This mirror was really huge and beautiful.


This is the invitation. So freaking cute!

I'm in love with Lilly P.!