No More Diets

How can I stop thinking about food? I can’t stop thinking about it until it is all gone.

This is a fairly common problem which can lead to massive weight gain if you don’t learn to control it.

That’s because the essence of weight maintenance (never mind weight loss) is to eat only when you are hungry and stop when you have eaten just enough - well before you have stuffed the last cookie in the packet in your mouth.

So how can you control this problem?

1. First of all you need to reduce your opportunities to overindulge. This starts at the store. Buy just enough food for proper meals for those in your household and absolutely stay away from giant packs of anything or two-for-one offers. Let others grab those “bargains”. They are no bargain for your figure.
2. Do not buy snack type foods unless they are super healthy such as raw vegetables or fruit - the less you have to indulge with the better.
3. Cook just enough for the people you are serving and if you “miscalculate” and there is any left over, offer it to others rather than taking it yourself. If there’s still any left put it straight in the trash - better wasted and in the trash than on your hips. Remember to cook less next time.
4. Don’t keep food in sight where you will be tempted.
5. Get involved in other activities and get so busy and so engrossed that you don’t have time to hear the food calling from your name from the kitchen.
6. When you think you are about to indulge, use the strategies for stopping a snack attack I just put on my Think Slim blog 3 Simple Steps to Stop a Snack Attack

How do I know if eating too much or too little?

If you leave the table and feel even slightly uncomfortable then you have eaten too much. The aim is to feel satisfied rather than stuffed. The only way to detect this point during a meal is if you eat slowly and focus on the food rather than eating quickly and mindlessly.

If you have been overeating for some time and your body has got used to having too much food you may have to retrain your stomach to get used to less food over a few weeks by gradually reducing quantities. The right amount of food for comfort is about the size of two fistfuls - not a huge amount - but your stomach is about the size of your fist and has to expand to accommodate even that quantity of food.

In order to get a balanced diet it’s best to eat lean protein about the size of a pack of cards, a small portion of whole grain carbohydrate and filling up on fruit and vegetables. But in practise if you keep quantities down you can eat more or less as you like - it just won’t be as healthy.

For most people eating this amount for lunch or dinner, a snack will be required between meals - mid morning and mid afternoon. Choose fruit, vegetables and a little lean protein to quell your hunger.

Apart from this the only thing to be aware of are the hidden calories in drinks. Drinks don’t fill you up but they can easily add as many calories as a meal. Be wary of milky drinks (including coffees) and fruit juices as well as alcohol and sugary soft drinks.

Once you have regulated the quantity of food you can tell whether the food choices you are making are causing you to lose weight, gain weight or stay the same. Generally this plan is enough to lose weight if you don’t waiver from it. If you want to waiver (and let’s face it we all have special occasions when we might want to) then you may have to start and change the type of foods you are choosing as well as the quantity.

How can I get over my plateau (I’ve bumped up my exercise intensity and my weight won’t budge)?

It’s quite normal to get stuck in a weight loss plateau when you are in it for the long haul - and it is a major danger point - so many people give up at that time. You know how it is - you start full of enthusiasm and really tackle weight loss head on and then a few weeks later despite making a great effort the dial on the scales refuses to budge.

There are quite a few potential reasons for a plateau:-

Maybe you don’t think you are making any less effort but actually you are paying a bit less attention to your eating habits in terms of portion sizes and food choices. Maybe you have got a bit more lax about following your plan and some of your old habits have crept in.

OR

Maybe you have lost weight and you haven’t adjusted your eating habits accordingly. Every pound of extra fat means you have to carry an extra pound of fat around all day. A person who loses weight generally needs fewer calories unfortunately.

OR

Maybe you have been TOO strict with yourself and your metabolism has slowed as a result. Your body thinks you are starving and is conserving fat as much as you can. This generally happens if you are eating more than 500 calories fewer than you need each day (and if you are doing a lot of exercise you may need to adjust the standard daily requirements for your activity level). Maybe your body has even reached the level where it will resist weight loss because you at the healthiest weight for you. If you were trying to reach super model proportions this might very well be the case.

OR

Maybe as you have been exercising so much you have been replacing fat with muscle. Muscle makes your body firmer and more compact plus it burns up more calories even while you are resting but it also weighs more than fat - so you can actually become leaner AND heavier at the same time. This may be happening to you.

Whatever the reason, if you definitely still have weight to lose (and you’re not trying to make yourself unnaturally thin) you have two choices when faced with a weight loss plateau.

You can give up and let the plateau defeat you

OR

you can make an extra effort to continue to get in shape by checking that your food consumption and exercise levels are fine for the weight you are currently at - neither too high nor too low. Then you need to be more vigilant.

Giving up serves no purpose. But if you carry on eating more healthily and moving your body the scale will eventually continue to move and you’ll continue to build the shape you deserve ounce by ounce and inch by inch.

Salad upsets my stomach, what sort of diet do I do?

Nearly all traditional diets prescribe lots of salad. In many ways, it’s the perfect diet food. It has very few calories and quite a lot of bulk - although I do find that without some protein and slow-release carbs with your salad the full feeling tends not to last too long. And you have to be careful with dressings too - if you add more than a tablespoon (15ml) of anything the perfect dieter’s meal turns into a dieter’s nightmare. Salads in restaurants are a particular problem.

Whether it’s a good salad or a bad salad, doesn’t matter to you though. If salad doesn’t agree with you (or you hate salad) don’t eat it!

This probably counts out 90% or more of the diet books on the market which have a rigid meal plan.

I guess, what you’re asking me is what do you eat instead to get the low calorie/high vitamin combination that salads provide. The simplest thing is to replace salad with cooked vegetables (which are gentler on your stomach) and eat a little fruit too so that you get a good helping of vitamins and minerals that the salad would give you without going overboard on the calories.

If you don’t like or can’t eat too many cooked vegetables then you have to get a little creative with them. You may find that you tolerate them better if they are pureed or incorporated into soup or pasta sauce and this can go a long way towards getting your healthy quota of 5 portions for the day.

The thing is you don’t need any particular food or food combination to lose weight - you just have to avoid eating too much of whatever you choose. Particular food groups are essential for good health though and this includes fruit and vegetables. It’s just not necessary to eat them in the form of salad.

I don’t recommend any particular diet - diets are a temporary thing that may work for a time - but weight just piles back on when you return to “normal” eating. I recommend that you gradually change your eating habits step by step until you are eating (and enjoying) modest portions of healthy delicious foods every day (with the occasional splurge on less healthy food, which is good for the soul) and that you eat that way for the rest of your life.

And this works salad or no salad.

How Do I Lose Weight Quickly for the Summer?

The quickest way to lose weight is to eat a very low calorie diet - that’s the principle behind the kind of diets where you eat very little real food and have some kind of special drink, soup or bar instead of a real meal.

I don’t recommend this though.

Why not?

1. Although some people find that having a rigid regime makes things easier (there’s no doubt about what you can and can’t eat), most people find sticking to this kind of plan exceedingly difficult especially with a normal work, family and/or social life. Plus you have to contend with the hunger caused by eating such a small volume of food.

2. This kind of plan is definitely a short term thing - it’s not something you can do for life (or would want to). It’s just not healthy. So what happens after you lose the weight? You go right back to eating how you were before and put the weight straight back on (nothing more heart-breaking than that, is there?)

3. A very low-calorie diet tends to affect your metabolism. Your body goes into fat conservation mode for self-protection. Plus you tend to lose muscle as well as fat on a very low calorie diet - the muscle which burns calories even when you are resting. The result is that when you go back to eating normally you gain weight faster than you ever thought possible.

4. In using a very low calorie plan you are not learning how to stay slim. You are not learning how to eat moderate quantities of delicious healthy food and enjoy it. You are not learning new eating habits. You will be going on and off diets for the rest of your life.

You might decide (as 95% of the population do) that you still want to diet (and diet to lose weight as fast as possible) and that you’ll deal with the maintenance issue once you’ve got rid of the weight.

Believe me, it just doesn’t happen like that. Unless you learn new habits - new habits you are willing to stick with for the rest of your life, you will not maintain any weight you manage to lose.

Changing your habits doesn’t happen over night in the same way as you can eat cabbage soup for a week and lose a few pounds. It takes about 21 days to make a habit stick.

But the effects are cumulative as you change each habit and they last and last….

….long after the point where you would be starting to turn green and feel sick at the thought of another bowl of cabbage soup or a strawberry meal replacement milk shake (probably within a week or two if you’re like most people)…..

….long after the point where you would feel the misery of your clothes getting tighter yet again (within a month of stopping your diet) ….

long after the point where you are searching around for yet another solution.

By changing your habits consistently one by one at a pace you can live with you will still be enjoying delicious food, great health and a slim body long after all those people on a diet are pinching their extra inches. You will be just like your slim friends - after all you have the same habits as they do.

And that’s not just for this summer but next summer and every summer afterwards.

How Do I Lose 15kgs?

If you have weight to lose - whether it’s 10lbs or a hundred - there’s only one way to do it - one ounce or one gram at a time.

It’s all about creating a deficit in the calories you eat compared to the calories you use up each day. If you eat 100 calories less than you use every day you will lose a pound of fat in 35 days - and it will take you 1155 days to lose 15kgs.

If you want to lose weight faster than that you need to do more - by eating fewer calories and moving more to create a greater deficit - just be aware that a deficit of more than 500 - 1000 calories a day is not recommended by most weight loss experts (and most recommend 500 giving a weight loss of 1lb a week). More than this and your metabolism tends to slow down.

Now you can create this deficit and lose weight the hard way by going on a strict diet and exercise regime and STICKING TO IT - you will find these types of weight loss programs in every book store and all over the internet. Look for one which suits your lifestyle and/or preferences so that you have the best possible chance of sticking with it.

I don’t like diets - although they may work for some and do a good job on a temporary basis.

I don’t like them simply because they don’t work forever. Unless there is a maintenance option, they don’t teach you to permanently modify your eating habits - and even when there is a maintenance option are you prepared to live with that kind of restriction forever?

In any case we tend to see diets as temporary. We go on a diet, and then we come off it and put all the weight back on by going back to “normal” eating and activity levels. At least the statistics show that 95% of us do - and they are not good odds.

What to do instead?

Examine the habits which made you 15kgs overweight. What do you do which slimmer friends do not? And what do they do which you don’t? What do you eat? How much? How often? What do you drink? How much? How often? What kind of exercises do you take? What are you doing differently to them? What do you need to change?

Gradually change your “fat habits” one by one at a rate which is comfortable for you. Change those which are easiest for you to change first before tackling the ones which are more difficult. Lose weight by starting to live a healthier lifestyle one small step at a time.

Even if you insist on dieting work on your habits too - each small habit you change permanently will reduce the rate of weight gain after you stop dieting.