Today we give you part two of our Donna Schwartz Mills interview. You’ll remember she’s the fabulous mom blogger and dieter who caught the eye of People Magazine! Donna lost 56 pounds with a little help from Wii AND here’s what she ate…

 How did you control your eating? (Low carb or cal? Weight Watchers? Intestinal virus?)
 I came to the conclusion that trying to lose weight on my own wasn’t working for me – I would lose some, plateau, lose interest and then gain it back – plus some. Weight Watchers works if you stick to it and it did work for me when I was younger. But these days, those meetings just make me crazy. Plus, I kept running into people I knew there, and then my competitive nature would kick in – and not in a good way.
 
Three years ago, I lost 20 pounds on South Beach, but after a while it stopped working and then I stopped doing it and gained back 30.
 
A couple of other moms at my daughter’s school had amazing success in a really short time at a weight loss clinic. It was extremely expensive, but you went in EVERY DAY for counselinf that was ONE ON ONE (no long meetings, no embarrassing run-ins, and personalized meal plans).

Read on to find out how low Donna had to go on calories. Kiki and Greta are amazed.

They put me on an extremely low calorie, low fat, low carb diet. Low carb works by putting your body into ketosis, and I guess the South Beach experience messed with my metabolism; to go into ketosis and stay there, I needed to go even lower on the carbs (under 50 grams per day) – this meant cutting out the fresh fruit that was in the basic diet, resulting in a meal plan that was just 600-800 calories a day. Both real food (in tiny portions) and proprietary products (not bad tasting – just not real appetizing).
 
But the good thing about ketosis is that it becomes a natural appetite suppressant, so that 600 calories wasn’t as hard as it sounds (and now that I’m on maintenance and having trouble sticking to 1500 calories a day I’m amazed I was satisfied with so little). BTW, it only took me seven months to lose 56 pounds. I’ve been maintaining now for six.
 
Also – the daily scoldings from the nurse/counselors were a great incentive to stick to the plan. That, and the fact that the program cost a fortune. Every time I felt like cheating, I reminded myself of how much I’d spent. That money could have been used for a family vacation, or home improvements. We can’t get new windows because I lost weight! I would feel really awful if it had turned out that I’d wasted that money, so there was a real incentive to stick with the program (and now, with my maintenance).
 
Finally, I blogged the entire thing, so if I gained it back, my humiliation would be public. Another great incentive.
 
What’s your Best Advice on succeeding at a diet?
 
There’s no one right way to lose weight. If something is not working for you, try something else. And there’s no shame in getting help – in fact, I would think that for most of us, it’s too hard to do by yourself. Being accountable to someone you trust is a huge help.
 
And you’re probably gonna need to exercise. Bite the bullet and move. The Wii can be a good start.Way to go Donna and now we need a snack. It’s 5pm and we can’t wait for dinner. Dang.