No More Diets

How do you Lose 10 kg (22lbs) in a Month?

I wish I was able to wave my magic wand and give you a plan which would do just that. I tell you, I’d be a millionaire if I could.

But you really can’t lose weight that fast without doing a “Biggest Loser”and dedicating your whole life to losing weight. And my take on that is that there’s no point in even trying because:-

a) you’ll ruin your skin losing weight so fast
b) you’re not learning how to change your lifestyle so you’ll put it right back on again
c) you may be permanently damaging your metabolism so that you put weight back on faster than ever
d) you’ll probably fail anyway unless you have a huge amount of motivation - like a camera stuck in your face the whole time.

Best way to lose weight is sensibly, I’m afraid - a little amount each week while permanently changing your eating habits so that you lose weight AND keep it off.

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 you lose weight without having excess skin?

I have had a few questions about this. It is quite an important issue because many people who have a lot of weight to lose fear that they will look worse after they lose weight if there is a lot of excess sagging skin still there - and this is pretty damaging for motivation in losing weight.

Just to make things trickier it’s quite hard to tell up front whether you will have a problem with loose skin - a lot depends on the natural elasticity of your skin, how long you have been overweight, how fast you gained weight and so on.

Having said that skin IS remarkably elastic and it’s quite amazing how fast it snaps back into place sometimes. For example, most pregnant women look at their tummies after just giving birth and worry they’ll never be the same again - and though skin is never quite so firm or smooth afterwards with good exercise and a healthy diet the tummy is soon looking good again.

The best thing you can do is to give yourself the best possible chance to limit any skin damage which might occur by sticking to the following guidelines. If you have a lot of weight to lose and you lose it, it’s my belief that you will not want to go back to where you were whether or not you have a little excess skin.

1. Lose weight slowly

However good your skin tone, skin needs time to snap back into shape - so the longer you give it to adapt to your changing shape the better.

If you lose weight gradually your skin has a chance to shrink with you. Those who try and lose 100lbs in 6 months are likely to have the most problems while your skin is likely to find it much easier to keep up with you losing less than a pound a week.

2. Eat foods rich in nutrients

Eat plenty of foods which are good for your skin and avoid those which are high in sugar, saturated fat and additives. Choose foods which are high in vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. (Essential fatty acids are found in foods like avocados, olives, oily fish, nuts, seeds and cold pressed oils) Eat plenty of lean protein too. A healthy diet will benefit your skin no end while junk food does not give your skin a fighting chance.

3. Drink plenty of water

Keep skin hydrated by drinking enough good old-fashioned water. Drink it hot, drink it cold, drink it with a slice of lemon but drink it. And avoid drinks which have a diuretic dehydrating effect (tea, coffee, cola) to keep skin healthy. Aim for about 8 glasses of water or cups of pure herbal tea a day to keep skin in tip top condition.

4. Firm up as you Lose

If you lose weight too fast you will lose muscle along with the fat. This does nothing to support the skin which relies on the underlying muscle to keep it looking good. Exercise is not essential for weight loss (just a good idea) but it is absolutely vital to exercise your muscles if you want to preserve your skin.

Remember to include firming exercises for all parts of your body - including your face (an area often forgotten) - in your routine.

5. Moisturize

Use lashings of body lotion on your body and moisturizer on your face and neck to help keep your skin in good condition and hydrated. The lotion can’t penetrate the skin very far but it helps your skin feel good and the massaging action you use when you rub in the cream helps keep skin healthy by encouraging blood and lymph flow.

6. Start Losing Weight as Soon as Possible

If you put off losing weight, you will simply make things worse. The longer you have been overweight and the older you are the less resilient your skin is likely to be. And lose the weight once and be done with it. Going on and off diets all your life is also a bad idea for your skin tone - skin may be forgiving once but when you lose the same 30 lbs over and over it can take its toll on your poor skin as it constantly stretched and loosened.

If you are overweight gradually lose the weight by making a permanent change to your habits one by one. Choose changes that you are happy to live with for the rest of your life and never look back.

How do you stay motivated when you start to feel deprived of all the good-tasting stuff?

It really depends on how you are losing weight.

If you are following a weight loss program where you have rules where foods you love are forbidden then you can start to crave the good stuff more than you ever did before.

This takes iron will-power especially when the food you love is on offer in a restaurant or at a friend’s house. (You aren’t tempting yourself are you, I hope, by keeping the food around at home…?)

You may want to practice pausing at the moment you are tempted and remind yourself why you want to lose weight and what it means for you - run through the end result in your head - and then compare that with the momentary pleasure of the food.

But I tend to tackle this issue by working on removing the feeling of deprivation altogether.

In my program I have my clients tackle this problem by encouraging them to :-

a) eat the food they love, to buy the very best and to eat it in small portions, sitting down, very slowly, enjoying every moment. If you really taste the food, eat it when you are hungry and “know” you are consuming it - then a small amount is much more likely to satisfy you than if you stuff down a huge portion guiltily by the fridge.

b) find new healthy satisfying recipes and foods so that over time the food they love and the food that does them good get closer together. Healthy food does not have to be wall to wall salad and cottage cheese - there are loads of fantastic real food dishes which taste great, fill you up and satisfy your hunger for the good things in life so that you’d never know you were trying to lose weight.

These two approaches take away every sense of deprivation - the sort of diet mentality where you can’t have this and you can’t have that … until you come off the diet, eat it all again (in large amounts) and put the weight back on.

How do I lose weight and keep it off?

Many of the questions I get asked are really about this one basic wish and answering that question in a single blog post is nigh on impossible because everyone has different circumstances, different needs, different preferences.

But everything I do as a weight loss coach centers around this question and I help people with that every day.

My philosophy is based on creating the habits which will make sure you lose weight and keep it off forever. All it needs is the motivation to start changing your habits - a bit of determination while the habits solidify and become part of your normal way of doing things and then it’s downhill all the way to success.

If you’ve been on lots of diets then you know they are not the answer (or at least not an answer for permanent weight loss). You have to keep redoing them over and over again for the rest of your life unless you change the habits that are making you fat.

If you want to know more, I have been writing about this for years online and you can read back copies of my newsletters and articles free at my sites. (See the links to Weight Loss Motivation and Simply Slimming in the column on the right - follow the links to back issues at those sites and get my free report and e-course).

I also have an online coaching program the Diet Exit Plan which is just $87 and gives you the keys to success in a solid 8 week step by step program - but if that’s out of your budget start with the free stuff - I don’t want anyone to suffer a lifetime of diet misery through lack of a few dollars.

What is the best way to eat the “right” number of calories without having to go so obsessive?

Actually even if you are obsessive it’s difficult to get calorie counting right without being wired up to scientific measuring equipment.

Sure, there are calculations you can do where you input your age, your sex, your height, your weight and your level of activity but it will all still depend on your own metabolism (rate of burning calories).

And of course the amount you need changes (gets less) as you lose weight - and also changes day to day with the activities you do.

So it’s best that none of us get obsessive about calories - though it sometimes helps to have an idea of the rough amount you use each day if only to help put you off eating mega amounts of fast food or a big plate of cakes.

If you follow a few simple guidelines you can usually forget about calories altogether and still lose weight

a) eat your calories rather than drinking them - it’s quite easy to drink a whole day’s worth of calories in an evening out or throughout the day and not feel like you’ve had anything to eat (you haven’t)

b) eat only when you are physically hungry - not just because food is there or because you feel like nibbling something

c) stop eating before you are full - once you are full you have eaten too much. As a guideline serve lean protein about the size of the palm of your hand, a handful of carbohydrate (pasta, rice or potatoes) and fill up on veggies or salad

d) choose healthy food (low fat, whole grain, fruit) over unhealthy (fried, white bread/pasta/rice, dessert)

e) eat unhealthy food (chocolate, snacks) in very small doses - and no more than once a day

f) move your body whenever you can - if it needs doing, do it, if an errand needs to be run, run it, if a dog needs to be walked, you walk it…I’m sure you get the idea

I don’t generally advise low-calorie substitutes for foods - to my mind you are better eating smaller quantities of real foods and enjoying them than eating chemicals or even poor substitutes in terms of taste. But if you’re happy with that it’s one other way to reduce calories without counting.

How can I control my chocolate consumption (I don’t eat any other ’sweet’ items!)?

I’m very fond of chocolate myself so I’m with you on that - there’s nothing quite like the mixture of sugar, fat and cocoa beans in the world and I would not want to give it up. I do control the urge to eat too much of it though by

a) not banning it - putting something on a forbidden food list just makes it more attractive

b) establishing a habit where I eat 4 squares of chocolate for dessert most nights with coffee - something I look forward to - you may want to eat less if you are trying to lose weight - I am just maintaining mine

c) buying the best chocolate ( i.e. the brand I like the most) so that it is a real treat

d) eating the chocolate slowly and truly enjoying it - when I eat chocolate I know I’m eating it (so much food we feel guilty about is stuffed down almost without tasting it)

If this is enough for you to control your consumption then that’s fine but if you truly can’t stop eating chocolate and tend to binge on it then you may want to take this further.

I read an interesting experiment in an Anthony Robbins book a few years ago (can’t remember which one - “Awaken the Giants Within” I think) where he cured someone of their self-professed chocolate addiction by challenging them to eat nothing but chocolate for two days - apparently after eating nothing but chocolate for that time the guy couldn’t face another chocolate without feeling sick.

You’ll also find an effective (though less dramatic) approach in Jason Vale’s book “Chocolate Busters” which is a whole program to help you stop eating chocolate. You might be able to get it in your local library and it’s also available on Amazon.com (see below)

For the UK:-

I follow my diet exactly and I can’t seem to lose any weight. What could be wrong? (Weight watchers core and SBD)

There are a few things which could be wrong here because, normally, if you have the will power (though few of us have) to follow a diet exactly you SHOULD lose weight.

I am a bit concerned that you find it necessary to stick to two plans. Is that even possible? Assuming that SBD is South Beach Diet can these diets even work together? Why not just concentrate on one if you’re going to diet? Because as I say both have been known to work if you stick to them to the letter. (My problem with diets is that even if you stick to them while you lose weight most of us can’t or won’t stick with them forever and you just gain the weight back unless you change your habits).

The other thing I need to ask (because it’s all too easy to avoid being honest with ourselves) - are you really sticking to your diet exactly? to every dish? to every amount/portion size (by measuring not guesswork)? to every exercise session etc? A little slip here and there doesn’t seem like much but it may be the difference between losing weight and not.

But if you are following your diet exactly and not losing weight then it may be that

a) you have not got much weight to lose and so your body is resistant to weight loss - it is much harder to lose weight if you are already around the normal weight range.

b) you have been on a very low calorie diet in the past and your metabolism is sluggish as a result - this is just your body’s way of protecting itself when you try to starve it

c) you have a slow metabolism due to a medical problem such as an underactive thyroid. Best to check this out with your doctor.

Only you can really know what applies in your circumstances - once you do you can take it from there.