Losing some weight after holiday feasting

Visiting family over the holidays involves lots and lots of feasting at the house of my in-laws, because my mother-in-law is a very talented chef. Which is wonderful and delectable! Except for when I step on the scale when we get back home. Usually I've gained between 4 and 6 pounds.

I've developed a plan for this, though, which seems to work pretty well. My diet plan is to eat as much as I want, of anything on this list:

• oatmeal
• whole milk
• blueberries 
• any vegetables (radishes, cabbage, tomatoes, green peppers, etc)
• hard boiled eggs
• rye crisp crackers
• lentil soup
• Any zero-calorie drinks (coffee, tea, diet soda)

I also add one ounce of butter daily.

I've done this twice now for 3 days, and it's remarkably effective at "resetting" my eating habits after a period of overindulgence.

There's quite a few negatives.

• It's not a long-term diet plan. Three of four days is probably my limit. This means that it's not great if you have a lot of weight to lose.
• You don't develop an understanding of calorie counts, like you would if you were actually weighing, measuring, and logging your food.
• It's hard to go out to eat with people - you'll just be sitting there, drinking your coffee.

But for me, the positives outweigh the negatives by a large margin.

• It's SO easy! Just eat as much as you want, no need to prep, weigh, measure, and log
• It's very effective.
• The foods are all very healthy 

If I need to make it easier to follow the plan for more than a few days, I could add add a few more items to the list, such as plain cottage cheese, plain yogurt, maybe plain roasted peanuts, canned beans.

Notice all the emphasis on "plain". Everything on this list is bland, with no added sugar. Avoiding sugar is part of the whole "resetting" mechanism, and makes food much less addictive. However, all the foods on my list are full-fat, not low-fat or non-fat. You need full-fat foods - otherwise the diet would just have too little fat to be tolerable.