I had finally agreed to go on my very first cruise, and it was just a month away.
I wanted to look good, so I decided I had to lose weight in 4 weeks - at least 10 pounds of extra weight.
I was also concerned that I'd gain a ton of weight on the cruise, since it was all-you-can-eat-at-no-extra-cost cruise.
I have gone on diets before, including Atkins, Weight Watchers, the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet.
You name it, I probably have tried it.
The thing is, pretty much any diet worked for me, but since it was a diet, it wasn't anything I planned to include in my life forever.
I thought of it as something to 'get over with' so that I could get back to eating the way I usually do.
I'd lose weight in 4 weeks and put it back on in a week.
I was effectively dieting my way to the most I had weighed in my life! I was fortunate in that I wasn't way overweight, but I still had 10 to 15 extra pounds that I was hauling around.
My clothes didn't really fit well any more, and when I sat down, my belly pooched out a bit over my legs.
I could always hide that extra fat with a baggy shirt, but I wanted to lose weight in 4 weeks and keep it off for a change.
We had a big motivator - the cruise - and that was a definite plus in sticking to our plan.
My husband and I decided to try a lifestyle change instead of a diet, so we decided that we would make a commitment to eating less at each meal, and share meals when we ate out at a restaurant.
We found that we were satisfied sharing an entree and adding an extra salad to our selection, and the cost savings was an extra bonus.
If you are wondering whether you will get enough food on this 'eating half' plan, you aren't alone.
What we found is that we really needed much less food than we typically ate to get our required calories and nutrition each day.
This was especially true when eating starches, carbohydrates and fatty meats.
Over the years, many restaurant meals have grown to offer enough food (and calories) to provide a whole day's requirement or more at just one meal.
To compensate, many people eat little else on days they eat out.
The bad news is that eating only one huge meal each day is a recipe for weight gain, not weight loss.
It's much better to eat more frequent small meals each day, both for weight loss as well as for overall health.
We certainly found this to be true for us.
We were able to lose weight in 4 weeks without feeling deprived or starved, and we were easily able to continue this eating less plan so we didn't regain the weight we had lost.
Typically my challenge with a diet was having to totally avoid so many of the foods I love, and the eating half plan solved that for me.
I chose my food thoughtfully, and when I'd choose a high-calorie food, I just ate less of it and adjusted the rest of my meal accordingly.
We even maintained our new weight during the cruise by selecting what we wanted from the many calorie-laden tables piled with food, and then shared the selection.
We got to enjoy all of the amazing food that was available to us, and if we found we wanted more of a particularly tasty dish, we just got another serving and shared that as well.