What you eat has the biggest effect on your health, your weight, and your clarity of mind. If you eat junk, you’ll feel like junk and look like, well, a cream puff.
You can start eating healthier today. It’s not hard. Just swap out unhealthy foods for healthier varieties. Here are 10 easy replacements to get you started:
- Whole wheat bread for white bread
- High fiber, low sugar cereal for sweetened cereal
- Light popcorn for chips
- Raw almonds for pretzels
- Fat free milk for 1%, 2% or whole milk
- Plain nonfat yogurt for sweetened yogurt
- Skinless chicken breast fillets for breaded chicken
- Low sodium canned tuna for lunch meat
- Low sugar protein bar for candy bar
- Water with lemon/lime for soda
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Is food mastering you?
For a lot of people with weight issues, food is the main problem. It’s often easier to start walking during your lunch break than it is to control the food that goes into your mouth all day.
Food is supposed to be used for sustenance and strength. It’s meant to give nutrition to the body. Unfortunately, especially in the U.S. and developed countries, food is used for entertainment, stress relief, pleasure, and instant gratification.
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Some people are born thin. Other people have to work to be thin. Some people eat just when they’re hungry. Other people eat all the time, hungry or not. Some people are natural movers and exercises. Other people have to force themselves to move.
For those of us who struggle with our weight, we are the “others.” The ones who have to work so hard be thin, to keep from overeating, and to stay committed to exercising.
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Have you worked really, really hard all week expecting a great number on the scale – only to find out you lost one measly pound?
This is frustrating and disappointing. All that hard work should’ve earned you more than a pound!
When this happens, I’d like you to consider a few things. First of all, when you go to the grocery store pick up a pound of butter. Hold it on your hand and look at it. Imagine the equivalent of that pound of butter coming off your body in fat. Pretty impressive, right!
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When you start comparing yourself to others, it can be a dangerous game.
One, you can always find someone who looks better than you, has more stuff than you do, can do more than you can, etc. if there is a weak area in your life or an area you’re not happy with, it’s easy to look at someone who “has what you want” and see your lack. This causes discouragement and feelings of insecurity.
On the flip side, you can always find someone who has more weight to lose than you, has less money than you, and doesn’t exercise like you do. This makes it easy to say, “Well, at least I’m not like so-and-so.” This causes apathy, excuses, and lack of motivation.
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Don’t get stuck in a rut! With exercise that is easy to do. Same walk, same class, same DVD, etc.
Your body adapts to exercise. Before you know it, you’re exercising at a lower intensity – even though you’re doing the same thing you did three months ago and it was hard back then. Your body has just gotten used to it.
So now it’s time to throw the challenge back into exercise. Try these 7 ways to ramp it up: [More]
With working evenings, I often have to eat my dinner at 9:00 at night. I don’t want to eat anything heavy, and I certainly don’t want to put much work into it!
I’ve found a really easy and tasty way to make a late night dinner. And I’ve found that eating fish and veggies at night doesn’t affect my weight.
Here’s what I do:
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I ran into a past client and walked around the track with him so we could catch up. He told me that after an injury, he couldn’t exercise for awhile and fell off the wagon. He put some weight on, and was feeling pretty miserable about his eating habits and his lack of exercise.
I told him to not be discouraged. “In my career, I have seen people cycle with their weight and exercise. They do well, then they slide down the slippery slope. Then they come back again.”
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I often hear complaints, such as, “I’m doing so good. I’m not cheating, but my weight is stuck. I don’t know what is wrong!”
Sometimes people truly hit a plateau in their weight loss while the body makes adjustments and resets. This usually ends after two or three weeks.
However, the culprit of stagnant weight loss is more often a little relaxing of the diet.
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None of us likes to look in the mirror and see our fat rolls. We don’t like to feel them either when we zip up our jeans.
Fat, however, is much deeper than skin deep. It is not only about outward discomfort. Too much fat puts us at greater risk for pre-diabetes, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, gall bladder and liver disease, sleep apnea, stroke, heart attack, and joint problems.
So how do you know if your weight is too much? How do you know if your weight is putting you in the disease danger zone?
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Genetics play a powerful role in body weight. How you’re made up can make it really easy to stay slim, or make it very difficult to stay at a healthy weight.
One reason is metabolism. This is basically the rate at which you burn calories. Someone with a high metabolism can eat a lot of calories and burn them off quickly. Someone with a slow metabolism will burn calories very slowly and will not need as many each day. Unfortunately, you inherit your metabolism.
Another reason is your fat cells. If you are over overweight (by about 25 pounds or more) your body manufactures fat cells to hold the extra fat. When you lose weight, the fat cells empty out, but they never go away. They are constantly “wanting” to fill back up.
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I was really frustrated with my weight. Those stubborn pounds just wouldn’t come off. Then I had my physical and the doctor ordered full blood work since it had been five years since it’d been done. The results were encouraging. My numbers were “ideal” the nurse told me. It made all the exercising and food control worthwhile.
You may not be at your ideal body weight. In fact, you may be struggling with your weight right now, feeling like you’ll never reach your goal.
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Though it’s tempting to “let your hair down” on the weekend, two days of overeating can mess up your whole week. It’s pretty easy to eat so many calories over the weekend that you spend the whole next week trying to burn them off. And trying to get your weight back down!
Instead of letting your food control go for the whole weekend, try limiting your splurges to one or two meals. This will help keep your calories consumption from getting out of hand.
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How many times during the day do you eat when you’re not hungry?
If you stop and check the status of your stomach before you reach for food, you may find you’re often eating for reasons other than hunger.
During these times, you probably experience strong cravings for salty snacks, sweets, or fatty foods. (It’s doubtful that you’ll crave a salad with tuna.)
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It’s really frustrating to get on the scale and see the number up instead of down when you know you had a really good week. You wonder, “Why is my weight up when I did so well?”
If you know you did great with your diet and you exercised consistently, then there is something else going on. There can be several reasons for this.
- Too much sodium. If you had a meal the day before with sauce or seasoning, it could have been loaded with salt. This causes your body to retain water and it takes a day or two before that goes away.
- Carbs or sugar. Things like potatoes, pasta, popcorn, sweets, etc., all cause you to retain water and weigh more. This is especially noticeable if you eat carbs or sugar the night before you weigh in.
- Bowel backup. How much waste product you have packed in your bowels can make a big difference on the scale. Make sure you are having regular bowel movements.
- Water logged. Water weighs a lot and if you drink before you weigh it’ll show, especially if you weigh later in the day and you’ve been drinking water all day. Of course, drinking water helps flush fluid out of your body, but drinking it too close to weigh-in will affect your number.
- PMS. It’s normal for a woman’s cycle to cause weight fluctuations throughout the month. Know where you are in your cycle so you won’t feel discouraged if your weight is up while PMSing.
- Plateau. Sometimes the body just takes a little time to adjust. You may hit a week or two when your weight holds steady. Just keep on course and your body will adjust.
- Diet denial. Often, when our weight isn’t coming down as we’d like, we didn’t do as well on our diet as we thought. We may have had four good days, but blew three days. No matter how good we did on our good days, those bad days will cancel them out!
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People mistakenly think that since I’ve lost weight it’s not hard for me anymore. They’re surprised that I still journal my food, weigh in daily, and exercise daily. Why? Because it’s a daily fight to keep the weight off.
Recently I came across an article that confirmed this. (It was also somewhat discouraging.) The article said: [More]
Gaining weight back is a terribly disappointing setback. Ten pounds is uncomfortable, but 50 pounds or more is nearly debilitating. It makes the person feel like she’s out of control going in the wrong direction. She wants to put on the brakes, but seems unable to do so. She’s embarrassed and distressed.
Finally, she hits a breaking point. She is ready to begin again.
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Recently a client told me, “I realized that I have been resentful toward people who can eat whatever they want and stay thin.” She felt angry because weight has been such a difficult issue for her, yet she sees others who appear to not watch their food at all and do not gain.
I totally understand. In high school I used to tell my best friend, “I just don’t understand why I am so heavy. I eat the same thing as everybody else, but they’re all skinny.” I saw my friends eating pizza and ice cream and French fries – yet they were thin. I ate all that junk too and was 190 pounds.
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When I think back to my “fat” days, food was purely for my enjoyment. I had no awareness of how many calories or fat grams my food contained. I had no awareness of proper portion size. I simply ate whenever, whatever, and however much I wanted.
This kept me 60 pounds overweight.
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Everybody needs to exercise. It’s good for your heart, lungs, muscles, bones, psyche, weight, and attitude.
But it can be hard to get in the exercise groove – and it can be hard to stay committed.
I see so many people jump into exercise gung-ho. Oh, they’re getting on the elliptical, trying new exercise classes, and learning the weight circuit. Three weeks later, hmmm, where did they go? Or maybe they even made it three months. Then, bam, they fall off track and don’t come back.
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I love Thanksgiving. It’s so restful for me because we go to my mom’s house for dinner. I don’t have to mega clean my house or cook a huge meal. She wants to make everything herself and is only “allowing” me to bring a dessert.
I get to go into the gym in the morning and have a kick-butt workout. (The goal is to burn at least 800 calories.) Then I can put my feet up and catch some of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV before we leave.
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I ran into a past client today. He had lost a lot of weight when he worked with me and got into great shape.
He told me that several months ago his wife said, “After three years, you shouldn’t need the food scale anymore.” And she put it away.
He started eating larger portions because he was no longer weighing and measuring his foods. In three months time, he put 30 pounds on.
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When I’m really stressed out or overly tired, that’s when I want to eat. The problem is, I know too much information about emotional eating. So I have this whole internal conversation with myself – while debating whether or not I’m going to keep eating.
“Lis, you know food doesn’t fix anything. You’re just going to feel worse if you eat that. So, why do you want to eat anyway? What’s going on?”
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Food journaling and weighing/measuring your foods are some of the best ways to stay on track with your eating. If you want to lose weight, you need to know what and how much is going into your body. Yet measuring foods all the time can be time consuming.
If you find you never “get around” to measuring your foods, make it easier. Don’t worry about lower calorie foods. Just eat a moderate portion of them. High calorie foods, however, you should always measure and pre-portion. It’s way too easy to overeat them and pack on extra calories.
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Tonight was the first time I saw someone walking the track while reading a magazine. She was strolling slowly along, flipping through the pages, glancing up from time to time. She looked genuinely relaxed.
Then another person meandered along, cell phone to her ear, while she talked and laughed. She looked like she was having social time not workout time.
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