what is a good diet?

Weight Watchers is excellent.

I second Weight Watchers being excellent.  Their focus is a healthy lifestyle including a well-rounded diet, exercise and positive thinking.  I'm 16 lbs lighter then I was 10 weeks ago, thanks to WW.  :) 

My favorite part of WW is that I can still eat the food that I like, I just have to watch portion control.  There's no way I could give up whole food groups.....I have no where near enough will power for that!  

I had good luck with Dr. Perricone's Anti-Winkle Diet, which is a lot like the Atkins Diet (low/good carbs) only with tons more fish. I went down a few sizes and my skin looked better.

Contrats Carole!  That's terrific. I have some friends that did well on the WW diet., too.

But, any diet that you choose has to be adapted to your eating preferences, too. If you're going to stick with it, the diet has to be something you can live with. When I went on the Perricone diet I gave up coffee and bad carbs (mostly), but I still ate ice cream practically every other night - I cut the portion down to only a couple of spoonfuls, but I never gave it up. Same thing with pizza - I still ate it just without the crust. Think of it as a lifestyle change, not just a temporary project and how you can make it work for you in the long term. That's my take anyway.

I did real well on a slightly modified Atkins program. I looked great until they put me on 80mg of Prednisone and I ballooned!!!

It also kept my sugar under control and got me off the pills for it and kept me off insulin when I was on such a high dosage of Pred. The DR was really surprised. When he handed me my first prescription for Pred, he handed me one for insulin. I asked if he didn't think I ought to wait to see if I would actually need it? He said not to worry, I would. He said I may only be a mild type II but the pred will change all that.

I guess I fooled him! I've only had to have insulin when I was in the hospital for nearly 2 wks 2 yrs ago, and they had to put me on Salmedral (sp?) a liquid alternative to prednisone. It did cause my sugar to go up dramatically. But, once I came home and got back on the regular pred, my surgar came back under control, and I've not taken insulin since! Praise the Lord and Thank Him  for miracles! :) 

Unfortunately, if I don't figure out a way to get my weight back down while still on pred (only 10mg now) I'm going to be on it eventually!!! I hate that thought, since I'm needle phobic! Oh Dear!!