For the last 20 years I’ve fretted about my weight. I’ve watched it do mostly nothing except go up. A few times I score a victory and see it drop for a bit.

But the trouble is I love food, I find a lot of pleasure in eating, and I detest counting calories. So the only watching of what I eat is watching it go in my mouth.

I’ve come up with a bunch of diet plan ideas the last few years. I’ve never stuck with them long enough to see if they’d work, but I’ve always thought if I could, I might find weight loss fame and fortune in addition to weight loss.

Here’s a few of my diet plans:

1. THE FIVE MINUTE PLAN: Set a timer for five minutes. Eat whatever you want in those five minutes. Repeat three times a day. Have two one-minute snacks throughout the day. (The thinking is, “How much could you really eat in five minutes?” Surely this would limit calorie intake and help you lose weight.)
2. THE SURVIVOR PLAN: I heard someone else talk about doing this once too, so it’s maybe not entirely fresh. (At least about eating like they do on Survivor somewhat. But the workout ideas are all mine.) THE FOOD PORTION: Eat only a cup of rice three times a day (tops) for 39 days. (If you can make out with only once or twice a day that’d probably help you lose weight faster.) You can also have coconut, mangos and bananas a couple times a day. THE WORKOUT PORTION: Like they do on the show, you can also have “Rewards” every once in a while. The Rewards are key to the exercise side of the equation of this diet plan. You want to do a lot of exercise. And having an “opponent” doing this plan would also be good. You can compete to see who wins the most weight lost every few days. Winner gets a predetermined award you’ve agreed on between yourselves. You can also compete in physical challenges: Whoever can walk the farthest in 30 minutes on a treadmill, whoever has the fastest time on a bike (stationary or otherwise), or even use the Wii and do Wii Fit things to see who has the youngest age or who gets higher scores on any of the aerobics or training games. If you don’t have anyone to compete against, you can modify some of the above for an individual and reward yourself if you reach your weight loss goal that week or get a certain score on certain Wii Fit Plus games.
3. THE PANERA’S DIET: First it was Subway, now Taco Bell’s got one, but Panera’s is really the most obvious of all the “fast food” chains to have food that could help with weight loss. Think about it, if you eat Panera’s every day for every meal (because they do offer breakfast, lunch and dinner), and you lose weight, you could be the next fast food chain spokesperson to claim weight loss fame and fortune! The only downside is both Subway and Taco Bell are a little lighter on the pocketbook. Panera’s could cost as much as NutriSystems or Jenny Craig for the food. (Well, maybe not that much.) However, if you’re successful, it’ll probably translate into compensation eventually. Likely from being a paid Panera’s spokeperson.

What kind of diet plans have you ever envisioned? Have you ever tried any of them?