Food, Weight Loss & Alternative Choices

Instead of jumping on the next fad diet wagon and riding it out of town, how about just being practical about what you eat and how you exercise?  It sounds so easy doesn't it?

On any given day, you can pick up any diet book in existence, take a bottle of diet pills off the shelf and read the label and you will see the same thing: "This book (or pill) combined with diet and exercise will help you lose weight."

A diet is defined as a controlled intake of food. Guess who has that control? YOU do! No one else is responsible for what type of food goes into your mouth. So if you are an out-of-control eater, how do you gain that control back?

Keep a food journal- no one has to see it but you. Be brutally honest with yourself and don't cheat. If something happens in your world to upset you and you reach for a Dove Bar, write  it down and record how you felt before you ate it and afterwards. You may find that you eat almost mindlessly. Out of habit, boredom or to stop a mood and comfort yourself. Give yourself some credit too, the weight didn't just appear overnight, it took years to accumulate. And during those years, you may have developed some bad eating habits. I know I did. Any time I was stressed, I reached for chocolate or ice cream. Watching movies on television there was always potato chips, or popcorn nearby. Soda was consumed by the gallons and I bought more junk food than healthy foods on my shopping junkets.

Plan your meals in advance. There is great satisfaction cooking your own food and controlling your portions. My husband has a weight problem; one he has fought his entire life. While preparing this website, I started implementing some of the ideas I ran across. I read two diet books that made a huge difference in how I look at food. Mindless Eating and Volumemetrics. So far in two weeks, Mike has lost 7 pounds. I have lost 4.

The ideas I gained were:

• Switching our large dinner plates for smaller, salad plates.
• Cutting up the meat before serving it. Tricks your mind into thinking you are getting more food than you actually are- and you have leftovers!
• For every glass of soda consumed, an equal glass of water follows.
• Eating six small meals a day.
• Shopping only in the meat and produce section.
• Trying out the newest vegetables in recipes most of the recipes I found on the Internet.
• Eating protein in the morning- no more fried eggs and bacon and sausage.
• Decreasing how much coffee we drink
• We now avoid beige food- staying with foods with color and substance

The exercise part is another challenge. He broke both his ankles a few years ago. Since that time, he doesn't walk much because it hurts him. I am hoping that once he drops more weight, that pain will go away and his Diabetes will too!

I found that cutting out bread and potatoes; I had a lot more energy during the day. My biggest challenge was drinking coffee without sugar.

Did you know that the average American uses 27 ½ tablespoons of sugar a DAY?  That's 31kg of sugar a year! And that is refined sugar, not the sugar found naturally occurring in foods. It's also a lot of cavities!

Some of our snacking foods:

• Celery and carrot sticks
• Cottage Cheese
• Fruit
• Vegetables either steamed or raw
• Low-fat yogurt
• Herbal teas in the afternoon.
• Fiber enriched cereal eaten dry, no milk.