Sharon Osbourne’s Top 3 Diet Secrets

Reader’s Digest has always worked to bring the latest in health news to its readers, including our recent New York Times best-selling book The Digest Diet (and to our close community at facebook.com/digestdiet). So when we heard Sharon Osbourne was available to talk about her weight-loss journey, losing  23 pounds in six weeks just before her milestone 60th birthday, we jumped at the chance to ask for her best tips.

Osbourne—the luminous talk-show host, author, business mogul, TV personality, dog-lover extraordinaire, and wife to heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne—followed an Atkins diet and did regular exercise with lots of family support. Now nearly 30 pounds slimmer, the star shared her best tricks for losing weight.

1. Choose a diet plan that suits your social life.

“There’s nothing worse than going out with friends or family and being the one who says ‘Oh, I can’t eat that…I’m on a diet,'” Osbourne explained, detailing her frustration at feeling restricted when she went out for dinner with loved ones. “Also, it’s like you make an announcement to the world that you’re going on a diet, and everyone expects you to be skinny the next day.”

Instead of opting for plans that severely limit the foods you can eat (here’s why these gimmicks never work), Osbourne suggests finding one where you can apply the general weight-loss principles to dining out.

2. Find the healthiest way for you to feel satisfied between meals.

“I always used to leave the dinner table thinking, ‘What’s in my fridge?’,” Osbourne confessed, but now she finds healthier snacks like her Chocolate Peanut Butter Atkins bars to help fill her up. We’ve read it can be mind over matter: The good feelings you get from treats can sometimes last only three minutes. Ask yourself: Can you skip it? You can also beat unhealthy snacking with a five-minute walk, or, brushing your teeth.

3. Focus on the “day-to-day” benefits instead of the number on the scale.

Osbourne used to hate facing her closet every morning: She felt like everything was too tight, and she was waging a war with her clothes. Now she describes the joy of getting dressed, and how her “blousers” are gone—that fat rolling over the tops of her pants when she sat down. Instead of being a slave to the scale, it’s good to look for sneakier signs of weight loss and good health like better-fitting clothes, less joint pain, and more energy for daily activities. The weight loss will come, promises Osbourne. And now: “I sleep incredibly well now—and my feet feel so much better because they are carrying less weight.'”