What can MacDonald's do for you?

First we heard about Jared and the Subway diet (Jared lost 245 pounds eating only at Subway), and now the McDonald’s diet is receiving attention. Chris Coleson, a 42-year-old Virginia resident, lost nearly 80 pounds eating two meals a day at McDonald’s for six months.

And Chris is not alone. Eating only at McDonald’s, Merab Morgan of North Carolina lost 30 pounds (10 pounds a month for three months).

These dieters aren’t the first to claim weight-loss success eating at McDonald’s. Previously, a New Hampshire woman lost more than 35 pounds on a diet based on McDonald’s fare, and Don Gorske, featured in Guinness World Records, has eaten over 19,000 Big Macs, yet he remains a slender 6-foot, 180-pound man.

For some of us, the idea of eating mounds of french fries and double cheeseburgers, topping that off with a McFlurry dessert and still losing weight is a dream come true. But the truth is that all of these dieters drastically reduced their calories by choosing salads, wraps, diet sodas and apple dippers without the caramel dip. The dieters also limited how often they ate and how much food they consumed.

Like Jared, Chris and the other McDonald’s dieters lost weight because they cut the number of calories consumed on a daily basis. Even on the reduced-calorie regimen, the dieters found eating strategies they enjoyed, so they were able to stick with their program. These successful weight-loss stories reaffirm the basic premise: if you consume fewer calories than you need, your body will burn stored fat to make up the difference, and you will lose weight.

Even if you’d never consider adopting the McDonald’s diet, Chris’s story still provides a lesson: to lose weight and sustain new habits, follow an ongoing eating regimen that you find pleasurable and satisfying. Depriving yourself of food you enjoy and forcing yourself to eat food you hate can easily send you into an attack of overeating and bingeing. To achieve your ideal weight, eat foods you like that provide nutrition and don’t pack on pounds. This way, you can continue your eating program indefinitely.

Whether the McDonald’s diet provides the necessary nutrients remains unclear. But even on a low-calorie eating regimen, you can consume the required nutrients if you eat a balanced diet.

The key to losing weight and maintaining your new weight does not involve where you eat, but what you eat. Don’t follow your inner sheep and adopt a regimen that for others. Instead, find the eating style that works for you and your body. Your goal is to achieve a healthy body weight and have fun achieving it.

"Things are only impossible until they are not." Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation