There are still three meals of the day, but if you're like me, obsessing over what to eat about them makes it that much harder to stay on track. So, I keep it simple. Keep your breakfast and lunches inexpensive, healthy and goal-oriented. No measuring, no calorie counting, no fussing. Straight to the good stuff.
Breakfast is about one thing: getting as much fiber into your system as possible Find yourself a high-fiber, crunchy breakfast cereal. Throw a little 2% milk over it. Voila! Get to work!
Diana Mirkin has a great list of high fiber, whole grain cereals to choose from: How To Pick A Breakfast Cereal
Lunch, on the other hand, is about one other thing: getting as much calcium into you as possible. I recommend plain, non-fat yogurt (with live or active cultures) dressed up with some jam or cinnamon or dill or raisins or ... really, whatever you have lying around. I throw a little wheat germ in for the texture and a little bit more fiber.
The advantages to buying plain, no fat yogurt with live or active cultures is it is extremely low calorie, high in calcium and inexpensive. And you can take it to lunch. Usually a two-pound container lasts me about five days; perfect for storing in the refrigerator at work.
Found this 1994 article from USA Today that has a great deal of good information on yogurts: Yogurt
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Tip #3: Know what you're giving up
Okay. I'm not absolutely positive I should be telling you this, because I didn't know it when I started changing my life to lose weight. I'm slow, I guess, because it is, when I think about it, a no-brainer.
You know how wonderful it is to overeat? I mean, seriously, to enjoy your food and have a big feast at Christmas or Thanksgiving. Watching football through your eyelids because you're too full to look at the TV screen. Or those wonderful lunches with your girlfriends, when you all goad each other into getting desserts to share. You know—you take the chocolate mousse, I'll take the creme brulee, and Sue will take the tiramasu and we'll share! Or when you go to your mom's house and she plops a second helping of mashed potatoes on your plate with a big slab of "I can't believe it's not butter" in the middle and just a lake of roast beast gravy. "Eat, eat, don't ya love me anymore, ya look so thin!"
I can hear Homer Simpson right now. "Donuts!"
But, sadly, I can't do that any more. It's not the diet; you can always cheat on a diet (and in fact I recommend it—more on that later), but I can't, physically, overeat. This was a huge surprise to me—if there was something I could always do it was eat, but now, well, I just can't do it any more. No more clean plate club for you!
Weird, huh? So give it some thought.
That creme brulee picture is from avlxyz. Oh, I can still eat creme brulee. Just not after a huge dinner.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tip #1 Nobody can tell you when to start
When I weighed 175 or so, I knew I was overweight, but I also didn't want to hear about it. Sure, my clothes were tight and, yes, there were lots of things I couldn't wear any more—but they weren't really in style anyway. I avoided mirrors, of course. And we didn't have a scale in the house. My husband kept saying kind things in a gentle voice, and it just enraged me.
But what really got me started was that picture, that picture that my BFF sent me after I'd been to see her. She wasn't trying to be hurtful, in fact I'd asked her to take the picture and send it to me. Yikes!
Here's my theory: You can't lose weight if you feel bad about yourself. If somebody brings it up to you, no matter how kindly or well-meant it's said, it makes you feel like a failure. Oh god, on top of everything else, I'm fat.
But—if you decide, for whatever reason, to lose a bit of weight, that's a good thing—in fact that's an amazing thing. Yay you! You've decided on your own.
Now you can design yourself a plan that has reasonable goals and limited demands on your lifestyle and pocketbook and will reward you in the long term.
Yay us!
But what really got me started was that picture, that picture that my BFF sent me after I'd been to see her. She wasn't trying to be hurtful, in fact I'd asked her to take the picture and send it to me. Yikes!
Here's my theory: You can't lose weight if you feel bad about yourself. If somebody brings it up to you, no matter how kindly or well-meant it's said, it makes you feel like a failure. Oh god, on top of everything else, I'm fat.
But—if you decide, for whatever reason, to lose a bit of weight, that's a good thing—in fact that's an amazing thing. Yay you! You've decided on your own.
Now you can design yourself a plan that has reasonable goals and limited demands on your lifestyle and pocketbook and will reward you in the long term.
Yay us!
Really Losing Weight
I lost a lot of extra weight--about 45 pounds worth--and I did it by myself, without Nutrisystem, or Weight Watchers, or Core Rhythms, or Hoodia. I learned a lot of stuff in the process, and a lot of stuff these companies don't want us to know about losing weight. This blog essentially a bunch of tips I've learned, and it's for anybody who doesn't have the money or interest in dabbling with drugs or excessive exercise regimes or group efforts or expensive frozen dinners.
Now--I'm not knocking those plans, I just don't think they're necessary. And of course--if you start any kind of a weight loss program, you should talk it over with a doctor anyway. This isn't really a diet program, anyway--it's collected knowledge that I picked up, and I feel like I should pass on what I've learned.
This is me with my best friend M; since I didn't ask her permission to use her photo, I blurred out her face. That's me in the front, in 2005.
In the summer of 2005 when that photo was taken, I was 51 years old, I stand 5'4" tall and I weighed 175. That's a BMI of 30. That's obese. It took all of a year to get down to 137. Today, I vary between 130 and 132, and at my height that's a BMI of 22.7, well within normal range. I'll upload a picture later on (I'm considerably grayer but thinner). Hope this helps somebody out!
Now--I'm not knocking those plans, I just don't think they're necessary. And of course--if you start any kind of a weight loss program, you should talk it over with a doctor anyway. This isn't really a diet program, anyway--it's collected knowledge that I picked up, and I feel like I should pass on what I've learned.
This is me with my best friend M; since I didn't ask her permission to use her photo, I blurred out her face. That's me in the front, in 2005.
In the summer of 2005 when that photo was taken, I was 51 years old, I stand 5'4" tall and I weighed 175. That's a BMI of 30. That's obese. It took all of a year to get down to 137. Today, I vary between 130 and 132, and at my height that's a BMI of 22.7, well within normal range. I'll upload a picture later on (I'm considerably grayer but thinner). Hope this helps somebody out!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)