My dear friend Angela has allowed me to blog
about her fitness/weightloss journey. My hope
is that in her own successes and struggles you
too will be inspired to do better!
Here is her story !
I am a mother to three beautiful children, Cameron 14, Mikayla 11 & Hunter 5. Growing up I never had a weight problem. After I had my son Cameron at the age of 18 I weighed 155lbs. At the time I thought I was heavy. Then at the age of 21 I had my daughter and I weighed 235lbs, and this is when my weight was never the same. I could not lose weight. I tried taebo, the gym, core secrets, if it was out there I tried it. I finally started Power 90 and weight watchers in the middle of 2004. In January 2005 I got down to 202lbs, I was so excited I was almost under 200lbs for the first time in 5 years. I then got promoted at work and became pregnant with my third child. I shot up to 265lbs but within 6 weeks of having my son I was back down to 215lbs. But then it was back to work. The stress of work, two kids in elementary school, a new born and going to school for my masters degree was too much. I shot back up to 250lbs. I stopped caring about myself. It was all about my kids, school and work. I graduated with my MBA, my oldest is getting ready for high school, my daughter is in 5th grade and my youngest starts kindergarten in the fall. I finally decided its time to take care of me. I bought P90X and signed up in Beach Body. This is where I met Pria and things have slowly changed. When I really feel like quiting I talk to Pria and I get my motivation back. I tried P90X for a week and decided my body really is not ready for P90X. Then it was onto Power 90 but the cardio was too much for my knees. So I decided to go to the gym and start writing down what I eat. Since the beginning of the year I am down 15lbs. I am up to doing the gym 4 days a week, 1600 - 1800 calories and 96oz of water. I have not given up diet coke completely, I do one a day. My journey definitely has its ups and downs but I am hoping to be at 200lbs by Halloween.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Saturday, December 18, 2010
8 Misleading Fitness "Facts"
8 Misleading Fitness "Facts"
By Steve Edwards
When it comes to our well-being, not much pricks up our ears like the word miracle. But when referring to health and fitness, the word miracle is generally synonymous with the word scam. That is unless finding yourself suddenly motivated to exercise and eat better is something you would consider a miracle. Other than that, miracles don't exist.
At Beachbody®, we're always on the lookout for the next great thing. We analyze every diet, every workout, and every medical breakthrough that promises to reverse the obesity epidemic and make the real world look like, well, the set of The Real World. What we find, without fail, is that the only "miracle" breakthroughs are those that expand on what we already know—that only through exercise and diet will you effectively change your body and your health for good. Let's take a look at eight marketing miracles that fail to do much more considered miraculous than make their creators rich. We'll interpret each one and then let you know how each claim may have a positive effect on your life.
1.You can get thin with a supplement. One of the most common questions we get is whether or not our programs will work without the supplements. Given how many claims there are about miracle cures involving a pill, this question makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that when we tell people that diet and exercise are the major components of our programs, they often become skeptical. We've been led to believe by advertisers that the reason we're overweight or out of shape is because there's a secret ingredient in some supplement that we've been missing. This, to put it a noninflammatory way, is not how it works. The obesity epidemic is the result of two rather simple numbers: we eat about 5 percent more calories than we once did, and we exercise about 20 percent less.
This in no way means that supplements are worthless. While there are many shady supplement manufacturers in the marketplace, the reason that we have supplements at all is because they can be effective in keeping us healthy. The use of supplements goes back thousands of years. Traditional medicines were the original supplements. There have been many advancements in the modern world, but basically, those same herbs and nutrients that aided people's health once upon a time have the same effects today. But they weren't miracle cures in the old days, and they still aren't. This is the reason we refer to our programs as being supplement-assisted exercises.
2. Medicine can make you healthy. Medicine can make you not sick, but it can't make you healthy. Along with curing us from diseases and injuries, doctors now inject, alter, and prescribe us into becoming healthier-appearing beings. Cosmetic medical advancements are indeed impressive, but let's not lose sight of the facts. The human body needs exercise and nutrients to run smoothly. There is no way to chemically change this. There are certainly medical alterations that can be done to change our bodies once they've been misused and started to fall apart. And there are drugs and other chemical alterations that can reverse certain conditions. But try as they might, scientists have still yet to come up with a way for us not to need to exercise and eat properly so that we can perform to the best of our abilities. We may be able to increase our natural abilities using medicine, but without the fundamental groundwork that is exercise and what we eat, no amount of medical help will allow us to live long and vibrant lives.
3. You can get ripped with the right diet. With the "Flat Belly Diet" on the bestseller list and the "Abs Diet" on the cover of Men's Health, it may be hard to believe that no diet alone is going to land you on the cover of a Joe Weider publication. Dieting can help you lose weight and greatly improve your health. But since that isn't what marketers like to spin, it's generally not what they pitch. The only diet that will give you ripped abs is a starvation diet. And that one comes with a lot of undesirable side effects.
Many of these diets, including the two referenced above, are basically very healthy. But if you want your body to look ripped, you need to exercise and diet in combination. A healthy body can look lean but rarely ripped. A muscular body with too much fat won't look ripped, either. Only a healthy and muscular body can allow you to both look ripped and perform well. A starved body will be both lean and ripped in appearance, but this is not due to your body being healthy—rather, it's due to the catabolic state you enter as your body feeds on its muscle for survival.
4. You can have a six-pack by only working out your abs. Ab work will make your abdominal muscles strong, but you won't be able to see them unless your diet is in line with your exercise expenditure. The easiest and quickest way to see your abs is to work your entire body intensely and eat well. The more muscle you add to your frame—your entire frame—the more your metabolism will increase, the more fat your body will burn at rest, and the sooner your ab muscles will appear. And, of course, the cleaner you eat, the faster you will make this happen.
Six-pack abs—like most things used to gauge fitness—are a function of one's overall health and condition. They won't pop up on their own.¹ But you're also not wasting your time working on them. Your core, which is in part your abs, is the foundation that all of your movements are based on. Having a strong core is the single most important aspect to being physically fit.
5. One supplement can make up for a bad diet. We love miracles, especially when they don't require much work on our part. That's why we're always looking for a pill we can take that will make up for our bad habits. Supposed muscle-enhancing supplements have been available since Jack LaLanne invented the Universal Gym, but in the last decade, we've also been bombarded with things promising the opposite. Fat blockers, carb blockers, diet pills, cleansing pills, and so on all promise to rid us of something we wished we hadn't eaten in the first place. This, unfortunately, can't be done.
There are many good dietary supplements, but heed the word "dietary." Supplements work along with the other factors of your diet. Nothing can even hint at offsetting a poor diet. In fact, one of the main advantages of supplements is exactly the opposite: they make the biggest difference when you're dieting already. Supplements are, basically, condensed nutrients. When you're exercising and also attempting to lose weight, it becomes difficult to get all of the nutrients that your body requires to recover from exercise. This is the realm of the highly effective supplement. Proper supplementation can allow you to eat fewer calories than you normally could and still allow you to recover from hard workouts, which greatly enhances your results. Beachbody's ActiVit® Multivitaminis a great way to make sure you get the nutrients you need each day to get the most out of your fitness program.
6. Cardio is the only exercise you need. Cardio isn't even a scientific term for a type of exercise, yet it's still often trumpeted as the be-all and end-all for exercise effectiveness. This, in my experience, is often a cop-out by medical practitioners who feel the need to recommend exercise but don't want to risk being specific. Cardio as a general term means anything affecting the heart. The problem with interpreting the term is that everything you do has an effect on your heart. And although intense exercise works the heart much more than easy aerobic exercise does, it seems that most people define cardio as aerobic, meaning low-level movement. And low-level movement is not the only exercise you need, unless your physical state inhibits you from doing something more intense.
The key to changing your body composition, staying young, and remaining healthy is to do short bouts of high-intensity exercise. If done correctly, this is all the "cardio" you need. It also promotes muscle breakdown and hormonal releases that have a pronounced effect on your health. All "cardio" training is good, including low-level aerobic training. It just should, however, not be the only exercise you do.
7. You can plug in and get ripped. Remember the old exercise machine that had a strap you placed around your butt that would vibrate like a washing machine? Back in the 60s, this odd contraption filled fitness centers worldwide and, undoubtedly, made someone a lot of money. It also never shed a pound off of anyone. And even though it's used in many gimmick jokes, we just can't stop trying to replicate it. If you ever see an advertisement for something that does all the work for you and claims you'll look better because of it, start searching for the remote. The calories you burn looking for it will exceed any amount you'll burn using the device.
As is the case with most gimmicks, there is a scientific example at their root somewhere. Most of these modern contraptions are some type of electronic muscle stimulation (EMS) device. These machines use electrodes to contract your muscles while you do nothing. They were designed for physical therapy and work well within this application of keeping your muscle tissue from atrophying when you can't work your muscles naturally. So, yes, these machines do build muscle. But they lack the ability to stimulate anything near what you would do naturally. To keep the type of physique you would acquire in a round of P90X® would require you to be plugged in for most of any given 24-hour period. And if you're going to go to this much trouble, you'll save yourself a lot of effort by doing any 30-minute exercise video—shoot, one 10-Minute Trainer® workout will do a lot more for you than a full night on an EMS machine!
8. A single type of workout will make you fit. Beware of exercise that promises to be "the only workout you'll ever need." Even if one workout did cover all of your energy systems using each workout modality, it still would not be all you need. The reasons are many, but, primarily, it's because your body adapts over time to any exercise regimen. To achieve continued progress, you need to alter what you do from time to time. The more planned out this is the better.
There is a reason that Beachbody designs fitness programs. For best results, you should train your body progressively and periodizationally. That is to say that you need to progressively overload your system as it becomes used to any one thing. Then, you should change the focus of your program to target various energy systems. By doing this, you keep your body stimulated and your progress curve will continually ascend.
There is, actually, a medical procedure that removes the fat from your abdominals to make them visible. It does nothing for the rest of your body, does not help your fitness, and has potentially damaging effects over time.
By Steve Edwards
When it comes to our well-being, not much pricks up our ears like the word miracle. But when referring to health and fitness, the word miracle is generally synonymous with the word scam. That is unless finding yourself suddenly motivated to exercise and eat better is something you would consider a miracle. Other than that, miracles don't exist.
At Beachbody®, we're always on the lookout for the next great thing. We analyze every diet, every workout, and every medical breakthrough that promises to reverse the obesity epidemic and make the real world look like, well, the set of The Real World. What we find, without fail, is that the only "miracle" breakthroughs are those that expand on what we already know—that only through exercise and diet will you effectively change your body and your health for good. Let's take a look at eight marketing miracles that fail to do much more considered miraculous than make their creators rich. We'll interpret each one and then let you know how each claim may have a positive effect on your life.
1.You can get thin with a supplement. One of the most common questions we get is whether or not our programs will work without the supplements. Given how many claims there are about miracle cures involving a pill, this question makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that when we tell people that diet and exercise are the major components of our programs, they often become skeptical. We've been led to believe by advertisers that the reason we're overweight or out of shape is because there's a secret ingredient in some supplement that we've been missing. This, to put it a noninflammatory way, is not how it works. The obesity epidemic is the result of two rather simple numbers: we eat about 5 percent more calories than we once did, and we exercise about 20 percent less.
This in no way means that supplements are worthless. While there are many shady supplement manufacturers in the marketplace, the reason that we have supplements at all is because they can be effective in keeping us healthy. The use of supplements goes back thousands of years. Traditional medicines were the original supplements. There have been many advancements in the modern world, but basically, those same herbs and nutrients that aided people's health once upon a time have the same effects today. But they weren't miracle cures in the old days, and they still aren't. This is the reason we refer to our programs as being supplement-assisted exercises.
2. Medicine can make you healthy. Medicine can make you not sick, but it can't make you healthy. Along with curing us from diseases and injuries, doctors now inject, alter, and prescribe us into becoming healthier-appearing beings. Cosmetic medical advancements are indeed impressive, but let's not lose sight of the facts. The human body needs exercise and nutrients to run smoothly. There is no way to chemically change this. There are certainly medical alterations that can be done to change our bodies once they've been misused and started to fall apart. And there are drugs and other chemical alterations that can reverse certain conditions. But try as they might, scientists have still yet to come up with a way for us not to need to exercise and eat properly so that we can perform to the best of our abilities. We may be able to increase our natural abilities using medicine, but without the fundamental groundwork that is exercise and what we eat, no amount of medical help will allow us to live long and vibrant lives.
3. You can get ripped with the right diet. With the "Flat Belly Diet" on the bestseller list and the "Abs Diet" on the cover of Men's Health, it may be hard to believe that no diet alone is going to land you on the cover of a Joe Weider publication. Dieting can help you lose weight and greatly improve your health. But since that isn't what marketers like to spin, it's generally not what they pitch. The only diet that will give you ripped abs is a starvation diet. And that one comes with a lot of undesirable side effects.
Many of these diets, including the two referenced above, are basically very healthy. But if you want your body to look ripped, you need to exercise and diet in combination. A healthy body can look lean but rarely ripped. A muscular body with too much fat won't look ripped, either. Only a healthy and muscular body can allow you to both look ripped and perform well. A starved body will be both lean and ripped in appearance, but this is not due to your body being healthy—rather, it's due to the catabolic state you enter as your body feeds on its muscle for survival.
4. You can have a six-pack by only working out your abs. Ab work will make your abdominal muscles strong, but you won't be able to see them unless your diet is in line with your exercise expenditure. The easiest and quickest way to see your abs is to work your entire body intensely and eat well. The more muscle you add to your frame—your entire frame—the more your metabolism will increase, the more fat your body will burn at rest, and the sooner your ab muscles will appear. And, of course, the cleaner you eat, the faster you will make this happen.
Six-pack abs—like most things used to gauge fitness—are a function of one's overall health and condition. They won't pop up on their own.¹ But you're also not wasting your time working on them. Your core, which is in part your abs, is the foundation that all of your movements are based on. Having a strong core is the single most important aspect to being physically fit.
5. One supplement can make up for a bad diet. We love miracles, especially when they don't require much work on our part. That's why we're always looking for a pill we can take that will make up for our bad habits. Supposed muscle-enhancing supplements have been available since Jack LaLanne invented the Universal Gym, but in the last decade, we've also been bombarded with things promising the opposite. Fat blockers, carb blockers, diet pills, cleansing pills, and so on all promise to rid us of something we wished we hadn't eaten in the first place. This, unfortunately, can't be done.
There are many good dietary supplements, but heed the word "dietary." Supplements work along with the other factors of your diet. Nothing can even hint at offsetting a poor diet. In fact, one of the main advantages of supplements is exactly the opposite: they make the biggest difference when you're dieting already. Supplements are, basically, condensed nutrients. When you're exercising and also attempting to lose weight, it becomes difficult to get all of the nutrients that your body requires to recover from exercise. This is the realm of the highly effective supplement. Proper supplementation can allow you to eat fewer calories than you normally could and still allow you to recover from hard workouts, which greatly enhances your results. Beachbody's ActiVit® Multivitaminis a great way to make sure you get the nutrients you need each day to get the most out of your fitness program.
6. Cardio is the only exercise you need. Cardio isn't even a scientific term for a type of exercise, yet it's still often trumpeted as the be-all and end-all for exercise effectiveness. This, in my experience, is often a cop-out by medical practitioners who feel the need to recommend exercise but don't want to risk being specific. Cardio as a general term means anything affecting the heart. The problem with interpreting the term is that everything you do has an effect on your heart. And although intense exercise works the heart much more than easy aerobic exercise does, it seems that most people define cardio as aerobic, meaning low-level movement. And low-level movement is not the only exercise you need, unless your physical state inhibits you from doing something more intense.
The key to changing your body composition, staying young, and remaining healthy is to do short bouts of high-intensity exercise. If done correctly, this is all the "cardio" you need. It also promotes muscle breakdown and hormonal releases that have a pronounced effect on your health. All "cardio" training is good, including low-level aerobic training. It just should, however, not be the only exercise you do.
7. You can plug in and get ripped. Remember the old exercise machine that had a strap you placed around your butt that would vibrate like a washing machine? Back in the 60s, this odd contraption filled fitness centers worldwide and, undoubtedly, made someone a lot of money. It also never shed a pound off of anyone. And even though it's used in many gimmick jokes, we just can't stop trying to replicate it. If you ever see an advertisement for something that does all the work for you and claims you'll look better because of it, start searching for the remote. The calories you burn looking for it will exceed any amount you'll burn using the device.
As is the case with most gimmicks, there is a scientific example at their root somewhere. Most of these modern contraptions are some type of electronic muscle stimulation (EMS) device. These machines use electrodes to contract your muscles while you do nothing. They were designed for physical therapy and work well within this application of keeping your muscle tissue from atrophying when you can't work your muscles naturally. So, yes, these machines do build muscle. But they lack the ability to stimulate anything near what you would do naturally. To keep the type of physique you would acquire in a round of P90X® would require you to be plugged in for most of any given 24-hour period. And if you're going to go to this much trouble, you'll save yourself a lot of effort by doing any 30-minute exercise video—shoot, one 10-Minute Trainer® workout will do a lot more for you than a full night on an EMS machine!
8. A single type of workout will make you fit. Beware of exercise that promises to be "the only workout you'll ever need." Even if one workout did cover all of your energy systems using each workout modality, it still would not be all you need. The reasons are many, but, primarily, it's because your body adapts over time to any exercise regimen. To achieve continued progress, you need to alter what you do from time to time. The more planned out this is the better.
There is a reason that Beachbody designs fitness programs. For best results, you should train your body progressively and periodizationally. That is to say that you need to progressively overload your system as it becomes used to any one thing. Then, you should change the focus of your program to target various energy systems. By doing this, you keep your body stimulated and your progress curve will continually ascend.
There is, actually, a medical procedure that removes the fat from your abdominals to make them visible. It does nothing for the rest of your body, does not help your fitness, and has potentially damaging effects over time.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Tips to Avoid Holiday Overeating
Many of us say “good-bye” to healthy eating on Thanksgiving. The holidays are fun and celebratory – and this includes food. At the same time, cultural expectations for feasting can create fear, anxiety, and stress when they conflict with our internal desire for moderation.
How can you enjoy the holiday season without overeating? Here are 15 tips:
Find “enough.” It’s easy to get into the trap of, “It’s the holidays, I can eat whatever I want!” This is all or nothing thinking, overdoing it now and then “punishing” yourself with a diet in January. On the other hand, feeling deprived – not allowing yourself to enjoy special holiday foods – will lead to overeating. The solution is to embrace “enough.” Find that sweet spot where you feel treated – maybe it’s your mother in law’s famous mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie – and then stop. Enjoy what feels good without overdoing it. This is healthy indulgence.
Relax your anxiety about holiday eating. 500 extra calories of potatoes and stuffing is not going to harm your body. What harms your body is anxiety about those extra calories. Scientists even have a name for this: pleasure anxiety. When we label foods as good or bad, we feel bad when we eat “bad” foods. Then every time we eat a slice of pie or a hunk of bread, we feel guilty. According to Marc David, author of The Slow Down Diet, this anxiety about eating treat foods puts our bodies in a stressful state, translating into weight gain. By contrast, when you relax and enjoy your food without guilt, you put your body into a state of optimal digestion – instead of sending your treat foods straight to your hips.
Listen to your body. Part of the reason we feel guilty for eating pleasurable foods is that we overeat them. Don’t throw all your limits out the window. Honor the subtle difference between healthy and unhealthy indulgence: when the extra bite of pie makes you feel overstuffed, or when an extra serving makes you sleepy and groggy. Listen to your body: it will tell you when you’ve had enough. Your mind, however, we tell you to keep eating. Separate the two by feeling your hunger or growing fullness instead of listening to your mind’s desire for more.
Savor your food. When we shovel our food down without tasting it, our brain interprets this as, “I haven’t been fed.” It will continue to seek out food so that it feels full and nourished – leading you to overeat. Changing this behavior isn’t a question of willpower, but of awareness, nutritionist Marc David says. Slow down. Savoring your food will make you satisfied with less. Get out of your thoughts – anxieties not only about food but also about the family dynamics that pop up during the holidays. Pay attention to the taste, texture, and aroma of your food. When you’re eating, focus on eating.
Start small. There is some truth to the adage, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” Mindless Eating author Brian Wansink has conducted numerous studies showing that large plates, large serving sizes and eating without visual cues (not putting food on a plate so you can see how much you’re eating) will cause us to eat more. Instead of loading up your plate with huge mounds of food, start small. Start with a smaller serving, and then give yourself permission to eat more if you’re hungry. We tend to do the opposite: We give ourselves too much food and then eat it all, feeling overstuffed.
Honor the power of leftovers. Part of the appeal of holidays is that we eat special foods that we reserve for this time of year. This can lead to feelings of scarcity, where we hoard the turkey, sweet potatoes, and apple pie because they only come around once every 12 months. As Scarlett O’ Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day.” Instead of doing your feasting all in one day, spread it out over the course of the holidays. Save the leftovers and have turkey again the day after the holiday. Having your favorites more than once quiets feelings of, “I have to have it all right now.”
Be prepared. Don’t make healthy eating any harder than it needs to be. Plan your day if you know that you typically overeat on holidays. For example, if you know that there won’t be any fresh veggies at the meal, bring a salad. If you’re a vegetarian, bring a dish that you can eat while everyone else is eating turkey.
Eat regularly and earlier. You may think that “saving up” your calories for dinner will allow you to splurge at dinner, but this strategy backfires. (This is how sumo wrestlers gain pounds of flab.) Eat regular meals, even with the approaching feast. If you can, move your holiday meals earlier in the day, when your digestion is strongest. If your family traditionally eats at 6 p.m., then eat a regular lunch and breakfast. This keeps you from overeating at dinner because you’re famished.
Put yourself first. You cannot keep everyone else happy and honor your body’s limits. You must choose. If someone insists you try something you don’t want to eat it, or loads your plate with food, you can say no. You can put half of the food in a doggy bag. You can save half for later. Put yourself first. Honor your needs before you honor your hostess. It’s okay to kindly say no to food – most of the time, no one else notices. And if they do notice, this is their issue: not yours.
Find your center. If you’re someone who uses external cues to eat – if you eat when other people do, even if you’re not hungry, for example – then it may be hard to stop eating when others are overindulging. Find your center by tapping into your needs. Do you need to leave the table and sit in front of the fireplace instead? Do you want to go to the bathroom to brush your teeth to signal that you’re done eating? Do what you need to take care of yourself. This is another example of how putting yourself first can stem the tide of overeating.
Leave the kitchen. When you’re surrounded by temptation, it’s helpful to get away from the food. Go outside. Instead of watching football, play a pick up game in the backyard. Go on a walk after the big meal – take a plate of turkey to an elderly neighbor or take the leftover pie to the police station. These activities get you moving, help your digestion, and change the day’s focus from being solely about the food.
Focus on things besides food. We use food to connect with our friends and family and to celebrate. But there are a million other ways to create a holiday spirit that don’t involve eating. Create a ritual of sharing what you’re thankful for. Play board or card games. Watch a holiday movie. Look through old family photo albums with grandma. Help wash the dishes and bond with your aunts in the kitchen. Create those feelings of love and connection without focusing on the food.
Love your family for who they are. Often, what fuels our overeating isn’t the food itself, but all the mental baggage we bring with us to holiday gatherings. Release your expectations for your family. Love them for who they are. If your sister gets tipsy and critical every holiday, prepare for this. Ask yourself, “What do I need to do to take care of myself so I don’t overeat?” instead of trying to change her.
Create pleasure in non-food ways. Food is a primary way that we give ourselves pleasure. But it doesn’t have to be the only way. Spend some time thinking about what a celebratory, rich, festive holiday means to you. I love sleeping in on holidays: it feels like a Saturday to sleep past 7 a.m. I also enjoy talking to friends and family on the phone and watching movies. These acts make me feel pampered, so that I don’t have to make food my only outlet for joy. How can you add joy to your holidays without food?
Give up on perfection. If there’s anything that we can learn from the French paradox, it’s that enjoying our food goes a long way towards making us healthy. No one eats perfectly. It’s an impossible goal to strive for. You will drive yourself insane trying. Drop this expectation. Let it go. Relax. Food isn’t just about calories or protein or fat grams but also about joy and nourishment. Create a food culture that listens to your body (it will tell you when it’s hungry and will tell you when it’s full), honors the nourishing act of eating, and honors your very human need for food. Find freedom from the diet mentality: a culture of rigidity, fear, restriction, body size, measuring, and weighing. Even if you eat “perfectly” with this mindset, you’ll never be at peace: because you’re obsessed with food and with an impossible goal: perfection.
Imagine how good it will feel not fearing the holidays, not fixating on the food. Focus on slowing down, listening to your body and enjoying your food. Spend some time visualizing yourself waking up every day feeling great: and use that desire as something to hook onto during the holiday, to keep you focused on what you want to be, how you want to feel, and how you want to treat your body.
How can you enjoy the holiday season without overeating? Here are 15 tips:
Find “enough.” It’s easy to get into the trap of, “It’s the holidays, I can eat whatever I want!” This is all or nothing thinking, overdoing it now and then “punishing” yourself with a diet in January. On the other hand, feeling deprived – not allowing yourself to enjoy special holiday foods – will lead to overeating. The solution is to embrace “enough.” Find that sweet spot where you feel treated – maybe it’s your mother in law’s famous mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie – and then stop. Enjoy what feels good without overdoing it. This is healthy indulgence.
Relax your anxiety about holiday eating. 500 extra calories of potatoes and stuffing is not going to harm your body. What harms your body is anxiety about those extra calories. Scientists even have a name for this: pleasure anxiety. When we label foods as good or bad, we feel bad when we eat “bad” foods. Then every time we eat a slice of pie or a hunk of bread, we feel guilty. According to Marc David, author of The Slow Down Diet, this anxiety about eating treat foods puts our bodies in a stressful state, translating into weight gain. By contrast, when you relax and enjoy your food without guilt, you put your body into a state of optimal digestion – instead of sending your treat foods straight to your hips.
Listen to your body. Part of the reason we feel guilty for eating pleasurable foods is that we overeat them. Don’t throw all your limits out the window. Honor the subtle difference between healthy and unhealthy indulgence: when the extra bite of pie makes you feel overstuffed, or when an extra serving makes you sleepy and groggy. Listen to your body: it will tell you when you’ve had enough. Your mind, however, we tell you to keep eating. Separate the two by feeling your hunger or growing fullness instead of listening to your mind’s desire for more.
Savor your food. When we shovel our food down without tasting it, our brain interprets this as, “I haven’t been fed.” It will continue to seek out food so that it feels full and nourished – leading you to overeat. Changing this behavior isn’t a question of willpower, but of awareness, nutritionist Marc David says. Slow down. Savoring your food will make you satisfied with less. Get out of your thoughts – anxieties not only about food but also about the family dynamics that pop up during the holidays. Pay attention to the taste, texture, and aroma of your food. When you’re eating, focus on eating.
Start small. There is some truth to the adage, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” Mindless Eating author Brian Wansink has conducted numerous studies showing that large plates, large serving sizes and eating without visual cues (not putting food on a plate so you can see how much you’re eating) will cause us to eat more. Instead of loading up your plate with huge mounds of food, start small. Start with a smaller serving, and then give yourself permission to eat more if you’re hungry. We tend to do the opposite: We give ourselves too much food and then eat it all, feeling overstuffed.
Honor the power of leftovers. Part of the appeal of holidays is that we eat special foods that we reserve for this time of year. This can lead to feelings of scarcity, where we hoard the turkey, sweet potatoes, and apple pie because they only come around once every 12 months. As Scarlett O’ Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day.” Instead of doing your feasting all in one day, spread it out over the course of the holidays. Save the leftovers and have turkey again the day after the holiday. Having your favorites more than once quiets feelings of, “I have to have it all right now.”
Be prepared. Don’t make healthy eating any harder than it needs to be. Plan your day if you know that you typically overeat on holidays. For example, if you know that there won’t be any fresh veggies at the meal, bring a salad. If you’re a vegetarian, bring a dish that you can eat while everyone else is eating turkey.
Eat regularly and earlier. You may think that “saving up” your calories for dinner will allow you to splurge at dinner, but this strategy backfires. (This is how sumo wrestlers gain pounds of flab.) Eat regular meals, even with the approaching feast. If you can, move your holiday meals earlier in the day, when your digestion is strongest. If your family traditionally eats at 6 p.m., then eat a regular lunch and breakfast. This keeps you from overeating at dinner because you’re famished.
Put yourself first. You cannot keep everyone else happy and honor your body’s limits. You must choose. If someone insists you try something you don’t want to eat it, or loads your plate with food, you can say no. You can put half of the food in a doggy bag. You can save half for later. Put yourself first. Honor your needs before you honor your hostess. It’s okay to kindly say no to food – most of the time, no one else notices. And if they do notice, this is their issue: not yours.
Find your center. If you’re someone who uses external cues to eat – if you eat when other people do, even if you’re not hungry, for example – then it may be hard to stop eating when others are overindulging. Find your center by tapping into your needs. Do you need to leave the table and sit in front of the fireplace instead? Do you want to go to the bathroom to brush your teeth to signal that you’re done eating? Do what you need to take care of yourself. This is another example of how putting yourself first can stem the tide of overeating.
Leave the kitchen. When you’re surrounded by temptation, it’s helpful to get away from the food. Go outside. Instead of watching football, play a pick up game in the backyard. Go on a walk after the big meal – take a plate of turkey to an elderly neighbor or take the leftover pie to the police station. These activities get you moving, help your digestion, and change the day’s focus from being solely about the food.
Focus on things besides food. We use food to connect with our friends and family and to celebrate. But there are a million other ways to create a holiday spirit that don’t involve eating. Create a ritual of sharing what you’re thankful for. Play board or card games. Watch a holiday movie. Look through old family photo albums with grandma. Help wash the dishes and bond with your aunts in the kitchen. Create those feelings of love and connection without focusing on the food.
Love your family for who they are. Often, what fuels our overeating isn’t the food itself, but all the mental baggage we bring with us to holiday gatherings. Release your expectations for your family. Love them for who they are. If your sister gets tipsy and critical every holiday, prepare for this. Ask yourself, “What do I need to do to take care of myself so I don’t overeat?” instead of trying to change her.
Create pleasure in non-food ways. Food is a primary way that we give ourselves pleasure. But it doesn’t have to be the only way. Spend some time thinking about what a celebratory, rich, festive holiday means to you. I love sleeping in on holidays: it feels like a Saturday to sleep past 7 a.m. I also enjoy talking to friends and family on the phone and watching movies. These acts make me feel pampered, so that I don’t have to make food my only outlet for joy. How can you add joy to your holidays without food?
Give up on perfection. If there’s anything that we can learn from the French paradox, it’s that enjoying our food goes a long way towards making us healthy. No one eats perfectly. It’s an impossible goal to strive for. You will drive yourself insane trying. Drop this expectation. Let it go. Relax. Food isn’t just about calories or protein or fat grams but also about joy and nourishment. Create a food culture that listens to your body (it will tell you when it’s hungry and will tell you when it’s full), honors the nourishing act of eating, and honors your very human need for food. Find freedom from the diet mentality: a culture of rigidity, fear, restriction, body size, measuring, and weighing. Even if you eat “perfectly” with this mindset, you’ll never be at peace: because you’re obsessed with food and with an impossible goal: perfection.
Imagine how good it will feel not fearing the holidays, not fixating on the food. Focus on slowing down, listening to your body and enjoying your food. Spend some time visualizing yourself waking up every day feeling great: and use that desire as something to hook onto during the holiday, to keep you focused on what you want to be, how you want to feel, and how you want to treat your body.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Happiness is eating healthy?
“You are what you eat.” We have all heard that phrase. It conjures up pictures of people eating a drumstick and turning into a chicken themselves, but I know it goes much deeper than that. I think it was meant to express the idea that if you eat nothing but junk food, or things that are bad for you, you will not be at your best.
I have also heard it said that “the greatest wealth is health.” I think that is closer to the truth. While financial worries are very stressful, and personal problems can drag you down, there is little more scary than finding out you have a serious health issue.
The way most of us carry on when we have a cold or headache, should serve to remind us that we do not want to have any serious issues, if we can help it. And, you can avoid them to a degree.
While healthy eating in and of itself cannot assure you that you will never get sick, or even have something serious go wrong, overall it is a great guarantee that you will feel the best possible if you eat right.
This is not meant to be a column on what foods to eat, and what foods not to eat, but rather a basic common-sense guide on making healthy food choices so you feel as good as you can.
The basics of eating right~~~
By now we should all know to cut excess fat from our diets and limit the intake of carbohydrates, high-calorie sweets, and junk foods.
Just an increase in the amount of fresh vegetables and fruits will make your body feel better, and after a while, you will start to crave healthy foods more and more.
A lot of people have dietary issues, so be sure you speak with your doctor about making changes if you think there are restrictions.
For the rest of us, let’s all make this our healthiest year yet. And oh yeah, drink plenty of fresh water—it is great for you!
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
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