Krista Vernoff - The Game On! Diet

How to Play the Game: An Overview

(Or, Im Really Too Lazy to Read This Whole Book, Plus, Im So Out of Shape That Turning Pages Kinda Hurts.)

Why Should I Play the Game?

(Or, I Like Myself Just the Way I Am. Except for the Love Handles. And the Self-Loathing.)

Teaming Up

(Or, Why Should I Give a Crap What Anyone Else Does )

Playing by Yourself

(Which Differs Slightly from Playing with Yourself)

Picking a Prize

(Or, Okay, Im Skinny, Whatever, but What Do I Win)

The Honor System

(Or, No, French Fries Really Dont Count as a Vegetable.)

The Weigh-in

(Or, Youre Kidding, Right You Want Me to Buy a Scale SERIOUSLY)

Food

(Or, Why French Fries Dont Count as a Vegetable.)

Exercise

(Or, I Never Even Knew I Had a Muscle There.)

Water

(Or, Are You Trying to Drown Me)

Sleep

(Or, Shhhhhhhzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

Transformation

(Or, Habits Thats, Like, Nuns Clothes, Right)

Healthy Habit Instructions

(Or, How the Hell Am I Supposed to Do THAT)

Alcohol, Coffee, and Diet Soda

(Or, What Do You Mean I Cant Drink All My Calories)

The Day Off, the Meal Off, and 100 Calories of Whatever You Want

(Or, Holy Nectar of the Gods, This French Toast Is Good!)

Troubleshooting

(Or, WTF Am I Doing Wrong!)

Postgame Wrap-up

(Or, I Am Liking This New Ass of Mine.)

Pep Talk

(Or, Game On!)

This is not really a diet book. I hate diets. Everyone I know hates diets. Diets are stupid and hard and not fun, and worse than that, they rarely work. I can only pull my theory on why they dont work from my own experience, which is that they suck and are stupid and not fun. But more than that, if you have any rebellious spirit in you whatsoever, youre gonna rebel against the deprivation of a diet. And whether you rebel at the beginning, the middle, or the end of the diet, the results will be the same: youll eat like crazy and refuse to move your butt an inch off the couch for weeks. Youll undo any good you may have done, and, if youre like me, youll end up fatter, flabbier, unhappier, and with lower self-esteem than you had when you started.

Maybe youre not like me; maybe youre like my coauthor, Az, and you thrive on restraint and restriction and deprivation. And if so, yay you, and we can still be friends. (I only hate Az and resent his discipline, like, fourteen percent of the time.) My point is, this book is not going to offer you any fads, any extremes, any swanky new science that says if you eat only protein, or only citrus, or only peanut butter, or only watermelon (all diets Ive tried at some point, by the way) you will drop seven sizes in two days. (If thats what youre looking for, we cant help you. Good luck, God bless, return this book now and get your money back. Well miss you.)

This book isnt even so much about encouraging weight loss as it is about encouraging health and an attitude that will allow you to accomplish healthy weight loss if thats your goal, or toning up if thats your goal, or getting up off your couch for the first time in three years if thats your goal. Truly, I think youre great just the way you are. But if youre not feeling so great, I think the super-fun game youre about to play will help.

I should note here that I am not anything resembling a doctor (though I write some on TV) and neither is Az. Az is really into fitness and we are friends and we played a game together and it made us healthier and now we want to share it with you. Any health advice we offer in this book is coming from copious research and conversations we had with people who are much better educated than we are in the fields of medicine and health (and we have credited those people throughout the book).

Az invented this game to help me lose weight and feel better about myself. Isnt he a good friend? I had a baby a while back (the worlds most amazing baby) and while I was pregnant I gained fifty pounds. Fifty. 5-0. Cause thats what happens when youre nauseated from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep and the only thing that staves off the nausea is eating something bready every 15 minutes. And like I mentioned, I got the worlds most amazing kid out of it and I dont regret any of it, so there. BUT. Four months after giving birth I was still carrying twenty-four of those extra poundswhich maybe wouldnt have bothered me so much except that when I got pregnant, I was already twenty pounds heavier than Id ever been.

So, I was bigger than is physically comfortable for me. I had nothing in the closet that fit, which might have been okay if I was still steadily losing weight, but I wasnt. In the prior two months, I had lost only two pounds. I figured at the rate of a quarter pound a week, it would take me, like, forty years to lose that weight. (Math: not my thing.) My maternity clothes were too big, everything else was too small, and the extra weight put me in a size that required me to shop in specialty stores, which was not entirely okay with me.

And so I said to Az one day, Wanna help me lose some weight, oh fitness-guru friend of mine? And he said sure, and he came over and taught me about healthy meals, and he taught me a kick-ass interval training thing on the stationary bike, and I was all grateful and motivated, cause Az is Australian? And he has that lilting accent? Where everything ends in a question? And its really quite motivating somehow? But then Az left and I had a script to write and I sat back down with my laptop and my donut and that was pretty much that. (Fine. I have exaggerated slightly. I actually did what he said in a very half-assed way for the next three months and during that time I lost four, maybe five pounds.)