Oh, the year begins and the season to be jolly has left a reason to be sorry. You’ve gained weight!
Disgust drives you to the gym and propels you into the latest fad or celebrity diet. You’re going to jettison the flab in a flurry of pedaling, running, pumping, and starving.
Take a lesson from Oprah. Remember her OptiFast Diet, circa 1990? Off went 70-some pounds and out came her skinny jeans.
A year later, back came the weight and mum went the talk-show queen.
In more recent years, she’s hooked up with Bob Green and his “Best Life” program, produced a cookbook for her personal chef, and spawned Dr. Oz.
Despite this sensible dietary counsel, Oprah remains obese.
“My drug of choice is food,” she said in O Magazine, January 2009 edition. “I use food for the same reasons an addict uses drugs: to comfort, to soothe, to ease stress.”
It’s unlikely anyone reading this can match Oprah’s resources nor would you have a reason for wantingto look good that rivals the scrutiny of millions of eyeballs daily.
What hope is there for us mere mortals?
The Oprah illustration is a precaution. Understand how difficult this is.
“The Biggest Loser” makes slenderizing a product of pressure. Keep in mind that these people are plucked from their environment, placed in a totally diet-consumed cocoon, and Jillianized. (If you watch the show, you know what Jillianized means).
But a couple of years afterward, some big losers have truly triumphed in the battle of the bulge. You can, too.
Keep in mind that your figure or physique transformation begins in your inner being. We’ll present countless “how to” strategies, but unless they resonate with that deep part inside you that only you know – they’ll produce only temporary results.
What’s keeping you from being thin? Or, in terminology turned cliché, “it’s not what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating you.”
Oprah may believe food soothes her soul wounds, but it serves a function more like mowing weeds or painting over rust. External strategies only make this an endless battle.
Maybe you and your maker have issues to settle? Or you and someone else? What’s eating you, Oprah? What has massive professional success, an ungodly fortune and reverential fame not satisfied?
Okay, we of meager means believe a robust bank account cures every ill imaginable, and obviously it does not. This isn’t about Oprah, anyway, except for illustration.
Are you operating on temporary disgust encapsulated in a Near Year’s resolution, or are you ready to improve your fitness and lifestyle habits permanently?
Why?
An introspective examination could mean everything. How and why is this important? What are you willing to sacrifice? This is where "Goal Power" in our CD/Podcast package is helpful.
Some people shed pounds by extricating high-calorie favorites – making a forbidden foods list, essentially. This aligns with the most potent diet suggestion: if it tastes good, spit it out.
A more astute approach is to recognize that consuming calories is equivalent biologically to spending money. Overeat and you're fat. Overspend and you’re poor.
But we know a lot more about finance than we do about nutrition. We’re aware, customarily, of the remuneration required for our purchases. But few can even estimate the number of calories in most of the food we consume.
Long-term muscle-to-fat ratio maintenance requires decisive calorie-intake management.
Here are the steps to take:
1. Keep a calorie ledger.
Learn the body-fat cost (aka: calorie content) of the foods you eat. This is much easier with the Internet at our fingertips, or a software application on our smart phone or laptop. The old-fashioned way still works, too, nutrient composition guides can be found at the grocery store, bookstore, and public library. Familiarize yourself with one or more of these.
(Calorie-King-dot-com has a searchable online food database and a pocket calorie counter. We have the 2008 version of this guide available.)
You'll have to know, or estimate, the portion size, which will be indicated in either weight or volume. At a convenient time, look up the calories of every morsel put into your mouth on a particular day. Try to compile a comprehensive week's worth of calorie intake.
This practice ranks right up there with learning a new computer program, making financial projections or devising prime-cost estimates. You'll meet initial frustration as you try to identify what you ate in the listings of calorie-counting guides. Portion sizes are critical, as is the particular cooking method.
A way to make the task easier, incidentally, is to eat only those foods for which you already know the calories. Frozen dinners, for instance, usually list their calorie total. Cereal and other packaged goods are easy. But how much peanut butter did you spread on that cracker? Was it two tablespoons of salad dressing, or three? How large was the apple?
It is worth it to iron out the difficulties.
2. Determine average daily calorie intake.
How many calories do you consume in a typical day? Over the last month have you been gaining weight, losing weight, or staying about the same? Where there surprises in the calorie levels of certain foods?
This is a useful analysis. If you seem to be gaining weight while eating 2,711 calories per day, let's say, you know you have to cut back.
You could try to balance the calorie ledger, also, by increasing your calorie expenditure through activities or exercise. For the moment, however, let's concern ourselves with just intake and not outflow.
3. Cost-benefit analyze what you've eaten.
Examine your food consumption item by item. Try to find calorically economical substitutes, just as you would seek the best price on the goods you buy for your home or business.
Here are a few examples:
One cup of canned green beans (boiled, drained) is 236 calories less than one cup of baked beans.
Eating one plain bagel instead of one croissant conserves 42 calories.
A medium-sized baked potato instead of a serving of french fries saves 174 calories.
Thirteen (1.1 oz) Newman’s Own Organics pretzel sticks is 40 calories less than one ounce Lay’s Classic potato chips.
A 1.9-ounce serving of Oscar Mayer’s Canadian bacon (cooked) is 80 calories less than two ounces of Louis Rich turkey bacon.
A 4-ounce serving of pan-fried 95% extra lean ground beef is 17 calories less than a 4-ounce serving of Filet Mignon, lean, broiled..
There is an “eat this not that” industry of website, blog, book.. Refer to it, or even better, start your own substitution list.
Anyone enrolled in our Fat-to-Muscle Makeover at the first of the year will receive some helpful materials:
The Calorie King Pocket Guide; actually a copy for home and the car.
Cooking Light 2007 annual recipe book.
Dr. Kelly Brownell’s LEARN System of behavior modifications workbook (with weekly lessons by email or online)
A spring-loaded food scale.
(And even if you're not currently in our program, you can obtain these materials at no charge. See below.)
You do not have to switch to all the lower-calorie foods. If you really like glazed doughnuts you won't be satisfied with angel-food cake. This brings up our final point.
4. Work favorites into budget.
How many calories you can consume is just like how much money you have to spend. You probably cannot afford a new house, car, laptop, big-screen high-def TV, a new refrigerator, and a vacation overseas. Maybe you'd be just as satisfied with the vacation and new computer, stick with the old house, buy a used car and have a service call on the refrigerator.
Budget for the calories in foods you really like. Economize on other foods. The choice of how you wish to spend your calorie allotment is up to you. A $500 fishing pole is a bargain to some, an outrage to others.
The only forbidden foods are those for which you cannot control how much you eat. Addictions require abstinence. Otherwise, everything in moderation is acceptable; moderation defined as a balanced calorie ledger.
5. Use the Buddy System.
Support and accountability matter. Just make sure choose a buddy who lifts your standards and not one that drags you down. With our Cooking Light recipe book, perhaps, you and a friend could get together on weekends for a cooking fest. Freeze meals to use during the week. Such a system was used quite successfully decades ago in Florida.
Anyone willing to submit to photos and measurements may receive our previously listed diet materials at no charge, in the hope that you'll be available as a buddy. We can also set up an economical self-directed or partner workout program. Just call 288-2235.
We trust you've resolved to make the new year your best ever!
We've got our blogger. Follow the progress of Larry Hagen, DDS, as he sheds 20 pounds in 12 weeks in preparation for one of the most gruelling cycing events in thecountry -- "Blood, Sweat, and Gears."
