How Delish Editors Keep From Gaining Weight While Working At A Food Website

From Delish

The common table at the Delish office is kind of like a real-life Facebook feed. Every couple of hours, a new recipe pops up on it — brought from our test kitchen a few floors down — and it's often finished in less than 60 seconds, just like our videos. We don't just cyber-tag each other in posts; we physically drag one another over to the table to take a bite. It's all fun and games until you realize your pants don't button as easily as they used to or your unfiltered great aunt makes a comment about the new gig treating you well (wink, wink).

To lose the "Delish 15" (or, for the lucky ones, prevent it) the editors here have tried everything: fad diets, obscure eating rules, even going vegan — cold turkey.

"I went on a three-day juice cleanse and stopped craving sweets and carbs."

"I have had several, 'oh sh*t, I need to do something' moments since I started working here," Associate Social Media Editor Lianna Hursh wrote in an email to me. "A few weeks ago, I attempted to slip on my once boyfriend-style jeans and realized they'd become skinny jeans." Delish's other social expert Julia Smith's recent selfie gone wrong — "I had a double chin that came out of nowhere … and no Snapchat filter could cure it." — sent the two to Jus by Julie to buy the three-day cleanse.

"I did this cleanse once before as a post-college SOS PLEASE CLEAN MY INSIDES OUT rehab," Hursh wrote. The gist: You drink six juices a day, five of which actually taste pretty good, according to Hursh and Smith. "The dreaded juice number three tastes like literal grass and has the consistency of baby puke," Smith elaborated. But here's the kicker: The girls swear they're actually filling. "You're not hungry while you're doing the cleanse; there's no ridiculous starving or deprivation. It's the fact that you're so conditioned to eat at this time, snack at this time," wrote Smith.

Smith's whole goal was to curb cravings and stop all of her grazing, which is basically an Olympic sport for Delish employees. "There was a Coca-Cola cake that came up a couple months ago," Smith wrote. "I took one bite, walked away, came back, ate another bite, then somehow half the tray of cake was gone."

For Hursh, the cleanse was the kick-off of a 60-day healthy eating challenge. (It's day four.) "My plan is to start bringing my own snacks to work, so I have healthy options the next time a bacon spinach dip arrives," she explained. "That'll probably happen in about 10 minutes."

"I was nervous to tell my coworkers I was vegetarian."

You'd think Assistant Food Editor Lena Abraham was about to confess to murder when she told the Delish staff she'd become a vegetarian. "Trying everything is such a big part of our job," she explained. "I didn't want to expose myself as the one who doesn't want to eat meat!"

Abraham's goal was more about her general health than weight loss. "I had days here where I would eat three different kinds of meat, and that grossed me out," she told me. "When you're in the kitchen, you're always eating when you're not hungry. Why not cut this weird amount of meat out of my diet?" It's only been a month since Abraham quit meat cold-turkey, but the results are clear: "I just feel better when I leave at the end of the day," she said.

"I lost 11 pounds by doing Whole30."

"Life is too short for such a restrictive diet, especially for a Delish editor," Lindsey Ramsey, Delish's managing editor, wrote. But completing Whole30 is kind of like wearing a badge of honor in 2017. It's the fad eating plan ("diet" is a four-letter word to Whole30's founders) of the year. "I felt like it be would be a cool thing to try since I'd read so much about it," Ramsey explained to me in an email. "My birthday is right after the holidays, so it's more than two months of constant eating and drinking."

Ramsey's reset meant a month of chocolate-filled, cheese-topped, candy-stuffed dishes flaunted in her face. There was even a day she had to bite into — then spit out — a dozen chocolate truffles for a photo shoot, but it paid off: "I ended up losing 11 pounds in 30 days," she revealed. "I've never lost weight like that from any kind of lifestyle change."

Ramsey has made half-hearted attempts to start up Whole30 again, but they never stick, so she's employed what she refers to as "the famed two-bite rule of tasting Delish food." It's exactly what it sounds like: two bites, then you walk away. Her kryptonite: "My weakest moment is anytime the kitchen makes anything chicken Parmesan."

"I don't try any Delish recipes after 2p.m."

Test Kitchen Assistant Makinze Gore lasted about two months at Delish before devising a plan. "I was snacking all day long, and when I would get home at night, I was never hungry for dinner," she wrote in an email to me. And snacks, by Delish standards, aren't nutritionist-approved hummus and veggie cups or a handful of nuts. They're three bites of cake instead of a whole slice or a banana pudding dip — because there's fruit hidden in there somewhere.

Gore did something brave, something no Delish soul had done before. She didn't just cut out a food group; she stopped munching altogether. "I don't eat anything — not one bite of anything we make — after 2p.m.," she explained. It was more preventative than a weight-loss solution. "I certainly didn't want to start gaining weight, so I stopped snacking before I had the chance!" Gore wrote. Despite the occasional mess-up, Gore says the shtick's working: "It's a random rule and a random time, but it has helped a lot to cut back on the constant snacking."

"I went vegan and lost 30 pounds."

"I fell asleep during a documentary my wife and I were watching and woke up to her saying, 'We're vegan now!'," Video Producer Jonathan Boulton confessed. He stuck with it since the New Year's resolution he'd made a couple weeks prior to "not be the Delish garbage can anymore" wasn't working. If you think a life without bacon and cheese sounds torturous, Boulton doesn't disagree: "I have to take a walk outside the kitchen pretty much any time they come in front of me," he laughed.

But the true test came a week after he went vegan. Boulton got sent on shoots to Disney World and Waco, TX — a.k.a home of the freakishly giant turkey leg and the mecca of all things barbecue, respectively. Don't feel too sorry for him: Boulton found love in a hopeless place. Disney doesn't exactly cater to herbivores, but they've got more options than you'd think. And he ranks the vegan grilled cheese from Cheddar Box, a food truck at Waco's Magnolia Market, as one of the top things he's eaten this year. "It was actually a super awesome experience," he said. "I learned so much about things that I could eat or make that I didn't even realize were vegan."

At this point, Boulton has shed 30 pounds — and a tiny sliver of self control. "I broke veganism on camera, with a ridiculous barbecue hamburger in Miami," he laughed.

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