Here’s the complete report. Take a look.

Now here’s how I rank the diets that AREN’T on the US News and World Report List:

Best Diet For Looking Good in Skinny Jeans: The Genetics Diet. This diet is great for people who have narrow hips, were parented by tiny people and who just “forgot to eat.”  The trouble is if you’re human sized you’ll have to get new parents before you start this. Oh and a reality check up.

Best Diet for Being Over Forty: Be Dara Torres. Seriously – WTF. Olympic swimmer over 40 rates really effective on the works like crazy for Olympic swimmers over 40 scale. You’ll have to tell your boss you can’t be to work because of the whole “training eight hours a day” thingy.

Best Diet for Regular Women: Go on Dancing With the Stars. Regular women like Rickie Lake and Kirstie Alley are seeing AMAZING results. Operators at the casting department are standing by….

Best Diet For the Holidays: The Overbooked HOLIDAY DASH Diet. It’s the fantastic upside to overbooking yourself to the point of not being able to sit down because you’re so busy you literally have to run errands while running errands. THAN pick up stomach flu while agreeing to hosting family and neighborhood get togethers while decorating your entire house and running errands. Oh and throw in some random yelling for extra muscle toning. What?

We are not amused.

The study found that committing to something new on Tuesday is too stressful, you don’t have time to go to the grocery story and get the right food, your boss has you so paggered that you just want to hide in your flat with a pint. It’s enough to drive you barmy!

Researchers advocate committing to your diet on Saturday or Sunday.  Don’t be so blinkered as to think that Monday is the only day to start a diet! Dieters will be chuffed to know that the weekend dieter is much more successful, and that’s no codswallop.

If you fancy the idea of dropping a stone, just fanny around until this weekend. You’re more likely to do a bang up job with it. So if you want people to be gobsmacked even when you’re starkers, don’t start your diet on Tuesday!

Cheerio!

 (Translation: If you start on Tuesday you don’t have time to shop and your week has so much stress that by Friday you’re off the diet. )

A lot has changed since my little ones ate Happy Meals. Back in those days I was going to the driv-thru every day of the week to make sure we had two Simbas all the way down to two Rafikis. And actually those were Burger King Kid’s Club Meals I just realized. How soon we forget.

Anyway nowadays you can request boy or girl meals. Back then, the early ’90s, when it came to a drive-thru kids meal, this is what the kids understood and I made them recite as we pulled in:

Me: Okay – it’s the drive-thru. What do we say about the drive-thru?

Kids in Unison: You get whatchooget.

Me: Good Job!

Kids in Unison: Awe dang. We already HAVE Rafiki.

Me: Crap.

The ancient wisdom indicates you should get your a@$ moving.

So I’m up. Not in mood, though I’m okay there, but up in weight. It’s hardly surprising. I spent the last two months thinking about, inventing, testing, and baking desserts. It was out of necessity and to achieve a goal. I HAD to be all desserts all the time if I wanted to compete in a really cool contest. And don’t get me wrong, dessert in moderation is perfection. Desserts in the quantities I consumed them, mania. Several days when I was inventing I ate nothing but batter from the beaters and licks off spatulas from morning to night. Yep. I’m admitting it. So NOW I’ve got some work to do. Fifteen pounds of work.

Part of me says, why start again? Why not just be the size I am? It’s not too bad. That’s a BIG voice in my head, the voice that says oh screw it, you’re fine. Why start again, work to lose, fight for health, strength, and brief flashes of smokin’ hotness? At first I had no answer so I turned to that old sage, my Oracle, oh yes, Google.

These quotes are helping me get back in balance and fight to reclaim my healthy weight.

The longer I live the less confidence I have in drugs and the greater is my confidence in the regulation and administration of diet and regimen.  *John Redman Coxe, 1800Ignoring healthy eating doesn’t mean you stay the same. Long term disregard for healthy diet means you get more tired, slower, and your numbers (blood pressure/blood sugar/cholesterol) go up. It always catches up with you. Eventually. The fewer drugs you need for all those things the more money you save. Relying on your own body instead of pharmacy is a good thing.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.  *Plato Ignoring exercise and motion doesn’t mean you retain what you’ve got. Yes, right now, I can run two miles, and walk another three on top of it. But the minute you STOP moving, your body goes with that. Soon you lose that strength and before you know it bringing the laundry up the stairs FEELS like running two miles. Soon you’re calling in your kids to operate the can opener for you. No thanks.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. *Confucius Ignoring your issues with food means the dang food wins. I have issues with food. I eat when I’m bored, stressed, am breathing. As a goal oriented person it is important to me to balance those issues, and yes conquer them most days. Ignoring the fact that I have issues with food means I’m letting the issues win. I will not let potato chips or cookies be the boss of ME. Dangit.

If you have to diet you may as well have a riot! Rebecca Regnier

Yes, I said it. I live it. Dr. Dukan probably said it better with, “Anything you do without pleasure annoys. Anything you do with suffering destroys.”But you get the drift. My creative purpose in life is to make this pain in the ass reality of counting/lifting/sensible choice making/willpowering MORE FUN! Why not? Lifelong health is not a given. Maybe you’re lucky to just HAVE it. I am not. So if it is a lifelong project I’m going to make it more fun.

So yeah. I’m back in the diet humor business. Join me?

I certainly never met a diet fad I didn’t at least investigate. And in his day Adams was accused of being a “food faddist” as well. According to Dr. Zebra’s extensive research, at one point, Adams was on a then trendy eating plan called the “milk diet.” He avoided meats, spices and spirits and ate bread, milk, veggies and water on the diet.

Sometimes Adams would even purge himself by “taking a vomit” of tartar emtic and turpeth mineral. Ah, tartar emtic, good stuff. Anyway, Adams said the purge “worked seven times and wrecked me.” Which totally could be me when I do the Cabbage Soup Diet.

It is not a new phenomenon to pursue happiness through the right diet. Without Adams’ intellect, perseverance and character our great nation may not exist. But amid things like, oh, founding the Navy he also struggled with diet and health. We can all relate to his struggle. (I mean his struggle with food is relatable. I can’t begin to understand the quality of person who can invent a country. The dieting I get.)

It wasn’t all diets and vomit. “The Atlas of Independence” liked spirits and in fact since alcoholic beverages were safer to drink than water and could be stored so “tippling” was fairly common to the founders.

During the Revolutionary War in May of 1777 the sea lanes were constrained. Adams was in Philadelphia and couldn’t get his favorite drink which is believed to be Madeira wine. He wrote these lines to his beloved wife Abigail:

“I would give three guineas for a barrel of your cyder. Not one drop of it to be had here for gold, and wine is not to be had under sixty-eight dollars per gallon, and that very bad. I would give a guinea for a barrel of your beer. A small beer here is wretchedly bad. In short, I am getting nothing that I can drink, and I believe I shall be sick from this cause alone. Rum is forty shillings a gallon, and bad water will never do in this hot climate in summer where acid liquors are necessary against infection.”

John Adams lived to be 90 and died on July 4th, 1826. Pretty good evidence that Madeira wine is good for the Constitution.