The Cookie Jar Diet

continued

Tammy Coxen has always been a foodie-and a fattie. “I spent my life as a fat girl,” she says.

But when she looked at the scale and saw that she was about to hit 200 pounds, she knew it was time to diet. Never mind that her diet started just as she was developing her new business, Tammy's Tastings. Never mind that the business involved staging food samplings of such things as bacon, olive oils, and maple syrup-and making chocolates. She weighed 198 and didn't like the way she looked in the mirror.

So in August 2006, she borrowed a friend's Weight Watchers sys¬tem and started counting points. Her goals were to lose twenty pounds initially and fifty pounds in all.

Coxen, now thirty-six, decided quickly she couldn't give up good food-so she'd have to eat less of it. She still drinks some wine, and eats good bread, but focuses on quality over quantity. If she has a meal in a restaurant, she enjoys half of it and takes the other half home. And she eats less during the week so she can “splurge on the weekend.”