Do you strictly/loosely follow a diet?

Cocktails are good, diets are only good in medical emergencies.

Yeah... I'm going to go off the "cocktails" diet... Bad bad baaaaaaad idea... Let's see, it lasted for roughly 4 or 5 days and my liver now looks like a raisin.

Nice.

So if you're thinking of going on the hyped up "Cocktails Diet," ... don't, man, unless you want to be making some crazy decisions that, at the time, made wonderful sense.

Still, cocktails are better than beer, surely.

I think for the buzz to calorie ratio, cocktails are the winner over beer. Also, you can add OJ or celery or an olive for fruit/veg points, none of which improve beer.

For a fascinating perspective on the food-pyramid thing, read Marion Nestle's "Food Politics"--she was part of the committee in charge of making the diagram, and details how they got buffaloed by the food industry.

Diet-wise: I eat what I feel like when I feel like it, but have learned to stop eating when I don't really want any more. When I feel like snacking, I drink a glass of water or Emergen-C first and see if I still feel like it. And I exercise pretty regularly. Seems to work out okay.

I eat a lot of rare steaks.

I used to be on this crazy diet: mostly fruit and yoghurt. Don't ask me why, probably had this mad idea that I'd get everything out of these two things. I did eat other things, like salmon and nut/dried fruit bread, but overall I tended to eat yoghurt and fruit. How in the world I managed to survive (on this and iron pills, duh) I don't know. I was pretty lean. Not skinny of course as the fruits had so much sugar and my body was probably trying to hoard as much of it as possible? I was about 57 kilos. About 125 pounds. I'm about 136 now. Which is pretty okay but I need to lose some weight. Pregnancy et all has rendered me somewhat... *more* than my usual self. So I quit sugary drinks - boo on Schweppes - and crisps. I have already lost two kilos. yay. So do I follow a diet? Not really.

I quite strictly followed South Beach for 12 months, and now loosly follow it. It's not a no-carb diet, it's actually quite sensible and logical. It's a no processed carbs diet. So no white bread, no white pasta, no white rice, no sugars, no fruit juice (without the fibre from the fruit the natural sugars in the juice get absorbed too quickly)There's interesting science behind it, all about blood sugar levels and cravings etc. The only 'quack' sounding bit about it is the first two weeks, which is hell. REALLY limited foods and drink, the theory is to rid your body of the cravings for 'bad' carbs. You can ignore the first two weeks, it'll just take longer for any weight to fall off.

I lost two stone, and have managed to keep it off. We've drastically changed our eating habits and rarely eat processed foods, but if we fancy something that's off the diet, then we'll have it now and then. I feel so much better since we changed our diet, much more energy.