How I lost 8 pounds in two weeks using the Dr. Oz 2-week rapid weight loss diet. It’s all about real food and no junk. I loved it!

Dr. Oz 2-week rapid weight loss diet

My baby’s first birthday was on the calendar, and the closer that it came, the more antsy I got try to lose some weight. I know that there are plenty of people who will tell me to be patient with the baby weight, to just eat healthy and it’ll come off, to keep nursing, all kinds of things along those lines. In the past those tips have worked for me, but a few things have changed for me, and they have stopped working. It was time for me to do something. A big something.

Here are a few reasons that I decided a full-on diet was what I needed this time:

• I had my 5th baby over a year ago. The weight came off much easier with my first, second, and even third pregnancy, but five is a lot.
• I’m over 30. Again, weight seemed to come off a little more easily before I turned 30, almost 2 years ago.
• I haven’t made time to really workout. Sure, I lead an active lifestyle (5 kids 9 and under will do that to you). We hike and swim and garden, but I don’t go to the gym and really sweat it out. I do much better during the school year, but this summer, I have worked out zero times.
• I already eat pretty healthy. I think my body is used to good food and it’s great at maintaining weight. I feel like some people can cut out soda pop and fast food and lose weight, but I already don’t eat those things, so it’s harder to just cut a little here and there and see results.

I did a lot of research when I decided I need a jumpstart to lose weight, and I decided that the Dr. Oz 2-Week Rapid Weight Loss Diet was what I wanted to do. The ideas behind it were really things that resonated with my food philosophy and opinions on what I consider to be healthy eating.

I don’t watch the Dr. Oz show, but I happened upon this diet online. I read about it, I watched the show that was filmed about it, and I thought about it for a week and a half before I decided that I wanted to try it. I felt like it aligned with what I feel like healthy eating is. I don’t know much about Dr. Oz; I felt a little leery about putting too much stock in his doctor title because he’s a TV show host too, but the more I’ve read, the more I think he has some pretty sound ideas that he’s telling people. He really pushes whole foods and cutting out things like artificial sweeteners, wheat, and sugars, and that’s something I can get behind. I don’t know if everything he says should be taken to heart (because I literally don’t know what he is or isn’t telling people. Again, I don’t really watch the show), but all-in-all I think he has some sound ideas and principles behind his diets, programs, and shows. I do think the show tries to “sell” diets, results, and things that people want in order to get viewers to tune in, but that’s the advertising side of things and I can see that for what it’s worth. It’s still a business.

The Dr. Oz 2-Week diet is quite restrictive. He tells you what you can eat, and that fills about a sheet of paper, which means that there are loads and loads of things you can’t eat. The idea is that you have a homemade shake in the morning, eat 6 ounces of chicken, turkey, or fish, one cup plain greek yogurt, ½ cup brown rice, and then all of the low-glycemic vegetables that you want. The first time I looked at it, all I could think about were all the things that you couldn’t eat. A little bit of meat and a million veggies sounded awful. When you look at the list of vegetables though, the list includes lentils, kidney and garbanzo beans, and squash. If you can eat lentils and beans, that is really a game changer (the fact that you can’t eat legumes, beans, and lentils on the Whole30 diet is the main reason I have never tried it!). When I got to looking, I could make all kinds of things with lentils and chickpeas. Instead of feeling like I needed to only eat vegetables, I shifted my thinking more to vegan eating. I’m not going to be a vegan my whole life, but I sure can do it for 2 weeks (and it wasn’t even a vegan diet – you still eat that cup of yogurt plus the 6 ounces of lean meat…).

There’s surprisingly little information about the diet on the website. I kept thinking I would find more, but there just isn’t much there.

Here’s what you can eat:

What You Can Eat:

Wake up: Start day with cup hot water and 1/2 lemon.
Breakfast smoothie: Use this recipe.
Green tea: Preferably organic.
Protein: One 6-oz serving of meat (chicken, turkey or fish) per day.
Carbs: 1/2 cup of cooked brown rice a day (otherwise no carbs/starches).
Fats: Good fats in moderation (e.g. olive oil and avocado).
Dairy: 1 cup of 2% plain Greek yogurt per day (otherwise no dairy).
Vegetables: Unlimited low-glycemic vegetables (see list) and Detox Broth (recipe here).
Snacks: Hummus, pickles, a couple handfuls of nuts.

If you want to read more, here’s the information that you can read:

• Overview of the Dr. Oz 2-Week Rapid Weight loss Diet
• Diet instructions (so short!)
• The diet summed up on 2 pages
• FAQ’s about the Diet

Maybe there’s more information if you are a member of the Dr. Oz website, but I couldn’t tell. As far as I know, you can click around a little on those pages and it tells you what you can and can’t eat without much more direction than that.

That’s why I’m here. I really liked this diet and I had success doing it, but I really want to offer you some additional insight so that if you would like to do the diet, you have a better place to start.

Here’s my two cents on what you can eat:

Wake up: Start day with cup hot water and 1/2 lemon – I hated this and only did it once, more on that later in the post.
Breakfast smoothie: Use this recipe – Loved this! This was my first time really using protein powder (I bought this brown rice protein powder on Amazon) and I loved it. I know protein powder very popular, but I always felt like it wasn’t much of a “whole food.” But I have done a lot of reading now, and protein powder is something that I’m going to be using daily from here on out. It’s amazing how full it keeps you. And side bonus, it’s an appetite suppressant! I’m sold on it, and will be adding it to my smoothies from here on out.
Green tea: Preferably organic  – I also didn’t do this, more on that later.
Protein: One 6-oz serving of meat (chicken, turkey or fish) per day – This might not sound like a lot to you, but I felt like it was plenty of meat! I did better if I divided it up into two smaller servings because the whole 6 ounces was a little too much for me to want to eat at one meal. I liked the push to have fish more. I don’t buy it a lot, but I did have it once each week and I just loved it. It was worth the expense because it felt like a delicious treat. There’s a lifestyle or diet called the Mediterranean diet. I’m no expert on it, but from what I have read, this diet is similar to it. It might be helpful for you to know that when you are doing it and looking for your own recipes to make.
Carbs: 1/2 cup of cooked brown rice a day (otherwise no carbs/starches) – I didn’t do this. I didn’t feel like I needed this, because I wasn’t craving carbs. I ate enough of the chickpeas, lentils, and kidney beans that I was getting plenty of carbs, and didn’t feel like I need to add them just because I could.
Fats: Good fats in moderation (e.g. olive oil and avocado) – Long live olive oil and avocado. These were so satisfying and delicious.
Dairy: 1 cup of 2% plain Greek yogurt per day (otherwise no dairy) – I couldn’t find 2% at our little store, so for the first few days I used nonfat. But I was feeling super hungry, so I started mixing the whole milk plain with the nonfat and was much happier. This was actually harder to incorporate than I thought. If I were making falafel and tzatziki sauce or was having chili, then I could eat it in those things. If I didn’t have a recipe on my meal plan where I could add the Greek yogurt easily, then I would add it to my smoothie in the morning (delicious!). It was too hard to just eat plain and I didn’t like it as a vegetable dip that other people might do (too sour). I’m pretty sure that the yogurt is there for the probiotics as well as some calcium, so I didn’t feel like it really mattered when in the day I was eating it.
Vegetables: Unlimited low-glycemic vegetables (see list) and Detox Broth (recipe here) – Yay for not having to count calories! I loved having unlimited access to veggies. Sure you get sick of salad, but you can have all the roasted, steamed, grilled, and raw veggies that you want! I liked this flexibility a lot. It was also interesting to see what was considered low-glycemic and what wasn’t. Carrots, sweet potatoes, and corn were all off the list, but you could eat all the peppers and tomatoes you wanted.
Snacks: Hummus, pickles, a couple handfuls of nuts – Again, these felt very “Mediterranean diet” to me. I loved loved loved being able to have hummus for a snack. It’s so delicious. Pickles make tuna a million times better, and I like that it says “a couple of handfuls of nuts.” Sometimes when I’m trying to be healthy, I end up eating a million almonds because I can’t think of anything else. They still have a lot of calories and fat (though it’s good, things still need to be in moderation). I tried to eat no more than two servings (2 ounces total) a day of nuts. A few days I ate a little more than that, but I didn’t have my hand in the jar all day, which I feel like I do sometimes.

I had normal sugar cravings for two days in a row. The third day, I was craving peanut butter so so so bad. It was all that I could think about for literally two days. I did a little reading about why people crave peanut or nut butters. This article on food cravings was very insightful and useful. Your body is so smart! It normally means that you need more fat, protein, or magnesium. I felt like I had the protein and magnesium under control (I take a good magnesium supplement, plus lots of the lentils and flax seed in the smoothie have it), but I wasn’t so sure about the fat. Instead of giving into my craving, I upped the amount of nuts I was eating by an ounce and I added a whole avocado to my day (I put half of one in my smoothie in the morning for a few days). I also switched out that nonfat yogurt at this point. That really did the trick. I stopped craving just about everything, I stayed full between meals, and I only had a snack in the middle of the afternoon a few times (which is unusual for me).

There’s all kinds of amazing vegan recipes that are delicious! I made falafel (pan fried) with tzatziki sauce (thanks to that yogurt you eat every day!), chili, lentil burgers, grilled chicken and veggies, one sheet pan salmon with veggies, my favorite red lentil and butternut squash curry, taco salad (with lentils and beans seasoned for my “meat”), lentil soup, chef salad, and tons of other delicious things that I just modified to fit within the parameters of the diet.

In two weeks, I lost 8 pounds. I even had a few really hard days and didn’t eat as well as I could have. I think I would have lost closer to 10 pounds if I would have done as well the second week as I did the first. I know that some of that weight is water weight (when I don’t eat grains, I’m much less bloated, so some of it is water weight for sure), so if I were to eat whatever I wanted now that it’s over, I would gain back at least half that weight in just a few days. That being said, this was a great jumpstart to losing my baby weight. It was the springboard that I needed to continue to diet to lose more weight.

Here are the things that I didn’t do well on the Dr. Oz 2-week diet:

• There’s a recipe for a vegetable broth that you are supposed to make. I made it the first day of the diet but I didn’t really use it. I guess I don’t understand what it’s for. I think if you are feeling hungry you can warm it up and sip on it? I’m not sure. I ended up cooking my lentils in the broth and making soup, but I didn’t really see why I needed it on hand.
• You can drink green tea on the diet (because coffee isn’t allowed). I don’t drink caffeine for health and religious reasons, and I wasn’t going to start just for this. I’ve heard that green tea can boost metabolism as well as curb hunger. I didn’t use it, so I’m not sure how it might or might not help. The average weight loss on the show was 9 pounds (and a few people lost up to 20!), and maybe the green tea helped with that.
• You are supposed to drink a cup of warm water with a half of lemon in it every morning to help your metabolism. I did it the first day and it was gross and it made my stomach hurt terribly. I didn’t do it after the first day.
• I, like many people, have some (or a lot) of issues with emotional eating. This was really hard to deal with but good at the same time. I ate 6 cookies one day and another night I just couldn’t make myself a different meal and I ate eggs and toast with my kids. So I didn’t do things perfectly and that gave me a lot of guilt. But on the opposite side of things, I also saw the times where I could have turned to food and I didn’t.

So, I didn’t even do a lot of the things that you were supposed to and I still feel like it was really successful. Part of me wonders what my weight loss would have looked like if I would have done everything just perfect, but alsa.

Things that I feel like went really well on the diet:

• I liked that I could eat as many vegetables as I wanted. If I was really hungry, I’d eat them. If I was just bored, then I would skip because I didn’t really want them that badly.
• I got over sugar cravings super quickly. I wanted a sweet afternoon snack or a banana the first two afternoons, but after that I didn’t feel super sugar crazy.
• I loved how full I felt. After I figured out that I needed more fat, I was really satisfied with what I was eating and the amounts.

Things that really helped me succeed:

Meal planning, meal planning, meal planning! I can’t say that enough. On the days that I knew what I was eating, I just did it. When you take the thinking out of the diet, more than half of the work is done. It was easy for me to just stick to what I had planned. The few days that I didn’t look at my plan or chose not to go with it were my worst days. I didn’t get my yogurt in or I didn’t know what to make or plan ahead. So when it was time to eat, I kind of winged it and then felt less satisfied and more hungry.

My meal plan also helped me to work out what I was going to do in social situations, which are always tricky when dieting. In my two weeks, I hosted the baby’s birthday party at my house, my sister and her husband spent two nights here, and a friend from college and her family spent the night on their way to a family reunion. I knew that people were coming and I planned accordingly.

I planned things that I could eat and everyone else could too.

For the baby’s birthday party, I planned on hamburgers and hot dogs for everyone and I made myself lentil burgers. So I didn’t eat the potato salad, baked beans, or cake, but I did have a burger on a lettuce bun with gauc and felt totally satisfied. It was great.

I made soup one night with my sister and I made spaghetti and meatballs for my college friend and her family. Everyone else had the pasta, bread, ice cream, and watermelon. I didn’t eat the meatballs, but put the sauce over zucchini and had a side of green beans. I didn’t make a whole separate meal, but instead just adjusted what I made them and what I ate so that it all kind of met in the middle.

Plan, plan, plan! That is 100% the key to success.

My meal plan:

Here’s kind of a plain list of what I planned on eating during the two weeks:

Breakfast: The smoothie that the diet tells you to eat (easy!), here’s that recipe.
Snacks: All the veggies, a few handfuls of nuts, pickles, hummus.

Day 1

Lunch: Falafel + Tzatziki. I liked this recipe from Pinch of Yum and this recipe from Minimalist Baker. I replaced any breadcrumbs or flour with coconut flour. Tzatziki was the cup of plain yogurt, 1 diced cucumber, juice of half a lemon, and salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and cumin to taste, easy!
Dinner: Crock Pot Butternut Squash and Lentil Curry (recipe in my freezer to slow cooker ebook, get it here) over Roasted Cauliflower (You could have some rice here if you wanted). Family ate the curry with rice and the roasted cauliflower on the side.

Day 2

Lunch: Salad – Romaine, tomatoes, grilled or baked chicken (make this in bulk via this recipe), kidney beans, bell peppers, onion, with this Roasted Garlic Salad Dressing (minus the cheese called for in the recipe).
Dinner: Cauliflower crust pizza (I used this recipe and topped it with all kinds of veggies and chicken, it was ok, but with cheese would be much better). Family had normal pizza.

Day 3

Lunch: Falafel + Tzatziki.
Dinner: Cowboy caviar + grilled chicken (Kidney beans, grilled chicken, avocado, tomatoes, japaleno, bell peppers, cilantro, lime juice, salt + pepper + cumin to taste). Family had this turned into burritos.

Day 4

Lunch: Tuna + avocado + pickles on lettuce wraps.
Dinner: Lentil burgers on lettuce buns with avocado. Family had normal burgers.

Day 5

Lunch: Salad (same as above).
Dinner: Chili. I served it with cornbread for the family.

Day 6

Lunch: Leftover Lentil Burgers.
Dinner: Leftover Chili. This was Sunday for me, so I just packed this to my MIL’s house for our normal Sunday dinner. It was easier to bring my own thing than to have her worry about what she was making; it wasn’t a big deal.

Day 7

Lunch: Curry from day 1 over roasted cauliflower (I portioned out the leftover curry and stuck it in the fridge, it was a great easy meal).
Dinner: Fish + Roasted Veggies (family had this plus watermelon and crusty bread).

Day 8

Lunch: Falafel + Tzatziki.
Dinner: Ground turkey taco salad (family had normal tacos with the ground turkey).

Day 9

Lunch: Tuna + avocado + pickles on lettuce wraps.
Dinner: Pasta sauce over zucchini + green beans (family had meatballs in their sauce and normal pasta).

Day 10

Lunch: Falafel + Tzatziki.
Dinner: Lentil Soup (family had this plus bread).

Day 11

Lunch: Curry from day 1 over roasted cauliflower (I portioned out the leftover curry and stuck it in the fridge, it was a great easy meal).
Dinner: Leftover Lentil Soup

Day 12

Lunch: Salad like above.
Dinner: One pan roasted chicken sausage and veggies (family ate this over rice).

Day 13

Lunch: Curry from day 1 over roasted cauliflower (I portioned out the leftover curry and stuck it in the fridge, it was a great easy meal).
Dinner: Salmon with grilled veggies.

Day 14

Lunch: Cooked chicken and mushrooms with pesto.
Dinner: Chef Salad (Family ate this with all the veggies plus cheese, ham, and boiled eggs + ranch).

It’s not gourmet or perfect, but it tasted pretty good. I felt like I had enough variety, and it was all pretty easy. Plus when I’m eating well, my family is eating well too. I like that. This might be something that you look at and make your own adjustments to, but it should be a great place for you to start. I really liked making the curry from my Freezer to Slow Cooker book on day one and then keeping it in the freezer. It made great easy meals and it was nice to have it on hand.

Other recipes that I looked at but didn’t make included: lentil meatballs, mushroom fajitas, chili lime lentil tacos, and a few other fun vegan recipes.

Eating out:

I did end up eating out twice in the two weeks, which I didn’t plan on. The first was at Cafe Rio because we took a quick trip to town (2 hours away) to buy a car (which we didn’t end up getting, boo). I got a small salad with black beans, lettuce, grilled chicken, salsa, and gauc. The second time was a family date to see our local community present the play Annie. We took the three oldest kids and wanted to make it a special date. I decided last minute to do this so I hadn’t put it into my plan. We went to Wendy’s (there are very few eating out options in the next little town over, but I knew that Wendy’s had good salads). So I got a small Mediterranean salad and it was fine. I didn’t put on the dressing because it had corn syrup and stuff in it, but it had greens, chicken, some kind of roasted tomatoes, and some chickpeas and white beans. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t a totally gross “side salad” with iceberg lettuce like most places have.

So eating out was hard and unsatisfying to me. We eat out so seldom that I really like it to be a treat when I do. Trying to diet and eat out wasn’t that fun for me. Some people like the convenience, but I would rather eat at home.

What I fed my family while I was dieting:

I included what my family ate every night for dinner along with what I ate in the meal plan. I did a lot of normal stuff like PB&J’s, quesadillas, and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

I started this diet the week that my husband went to Scout Camp and I didn’t even tell him I was on it until a few days after he got home. He honestly didn’t even notice. I didn’t make it a big deal, I just did it. I never used the word “diet” in front of my kids, I never said “I can’t eat that,” and I made a point to not make a big deal out of it. I don’t want my kids to think of me as a dieter. I just want to be a healthy well-balanced mom who models that for her kids. There were only probably 3 times in the whole 14 days they asked why I was eating this or not eating that and I simple said that it was what sounded good to me. I made no labels of “healthy” either. When they asked if I wanted a bite of something I would just say, “no thanks,” and we’d move on. It really wasn’t a big deal because I didn’t make it a big deal. I think that’s important when it comes to dieting in a house full of other people.

Where I’m going from here:

Boy oh boy. This is my first day off the diet and I’m trying to count macros (carbs, fat, and protein). I use this site to calculate my macro needs. I LOVED all of the meatless meals in this diet (I’ve always been a fan of meatless meals so this was great), so I’m trying to figure out how to get enough protein while not going over on my carbs and not just eating a ton of meat (so not my jam). I’m going to try this for a month and see where it gets me. It feels a little more flexible, but I’m just not sure I know how to do it well (but I’m always up for a challenge when it comes to healthy food!). I want to keep losing weight though. I’m still about 15 pounds away from my goal and now it actually feels like I can reach that (having to lose over 20 pounds felt very unattainable). This was just the jumpstart that I needed.

I wrote this because I wanted to help you! Let me know if you have any other questions and I’ve love to answer them. This might not be for everyone and I’m no doctor, but it worked well for me and I feel like it was something worth telling the intranets about 🙂  Enjoy!

Update: It’s now been 2 weeks off of the diet and counting macros is a lot harder than I thought it would be, though I’m seeing success. I’m down a total of 10 pounds now though I haven’t been very diligent on macros. I also haven’t gained my weight back either which is good. I’ll keep you updated.