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6 Comments

1. Chris:

   Tip #1

   Buy small containers. Not only does this mean you will have room for a variety of different condiments, drinks, toppings etc., but you will avoid getting int the situation of eating something just to use it up. It might cost a bit more, but compared to $130 a month for blood pressure medication or worse … its a small price for better health.

   As a bonus, when you spread jam or miracle whip on bread, it looks bigger when you take it out of a smaller jar. You will use less … trust me.

   5 July 2009, 6:57 pm

2. Chris:

   Tip #2

   Diet is a noun, not a verb. Think of it like the word ‘culture’. You have a culture, you might change your culture, but you would never say you are ‘cultureing’.

   Diet is not something you do; it is a description of what you eat all the time. That means if you are going to make a change - make it permanently. If you change the way you eat just to reach a temporary goal you will only have temporary results. And the human body tends to not take well to being mucked around with. Dieting to loose ‘X’ number of pounds will fail because once you reach X, you will quit the diet and rebound with a vengeance.

   Yes, be aware of your weight and where you would like to be when modifying your diet to a healthier one, but realize also those modifications are permanent. That means only make changes you can live with … even if it means not losing as much weight ( or putting on as much bulk. )

   5 July 2009, 7:06 pm

3. chris:

   Tip #3, Pre-package

   People are lazy. Well intentioned or not, if we are tired, pressed for time we will grab whatever is quick. Even an orange takes more preparation than a bag of chips, instead of making a salad, a some fruit and nuts and a small sandwich , we will make two sandwiches … or skip the lettuce and tomato and put more meat and cheese in.

   So, prepare. Make up 4-5 salads in advance sealed in Tupperware. Keep the dressing off and put some cheese, especially Parmesan in and they will keep for 4 days. Pre portion veggies and side dishes. Pre section oranges and keep them in ziplock bags. Always have a few hardboiled eggs on hand. That way you can through together a “good” snack or meal quickly and easily. Make laziness work for you

   22 August 2009, 3:17 pm

4. chris:

   Tip #4: Stairs are our friends

   It doesn’t take much to tip the balance from too many calories to too few. And simply put, you need to exercise to loose weight, otherwise your body goes into starvation mode, saves fat, looses muscle and then rebounds when you calorie intake goes up.

   For me, the best exercise is something that I don’t know I’m doing. And stairs work wonderfully for that. If I have to go up a couple of floors, I take the stairs. I’m now back to the state of being able to go up 3 floors 2 stairs at a time and not be breathing heavy at the top.

   Walk when you can, park farther from the door, take the stairs where possible, you get your exercise without the mental drudgery of standing on a stair machine for 40 minutes, and without the expense.

   22 August 2009, 3:25 pm

5. chris:

   Tip #5: It’s a game of averages.

   If you look at the side bar you will find a link to a site called “calorie count”. It has a lot of good info like the nutritional label info on 1000,s of foods. It also has a calculator that will tell roughly how many calories you should be eating given our activity label to reach and maintain a particular weight.

   The thing to remember to make good use of this I find, is that it’s a game of averages. Average activity. Average calorie intake.

   Don’t worry about going over on a particular day, or weekend. Don’t exercise like mad to make up for “going over the limit.” As long as over a couple of weeks your calories add up to less than what you’ve burned, you will lose weight. Not a lot. Not fast. But you don’t want to loose lots of weight fast.

   That said, it helps to monitor and keep track of your weight (I use an excel spreadsheet for weight and BP and graph the results.) because you can creep p just as slowly and quietly. And if you notice you are creeping up, again, don’t starve for a day or two or exercise till exhaustion… adjust your average.

   Think of it as fine tuning the cruise control on your car rather than stomping on the gas or the brake.

   22 August 2009, 3:35 pm

6. Chris:

   Tip #6: The 100 calorie “snack”

   Remember I said I wasn’t giving up anything? Remember I say it’s a game of averages?

   Well, that’s where the 100 calorie snack comes in. You can take, say, a bag of potato chips with a 1200 calories in it … and it takes you over 2 weeks to eat it all then on average you have 85 calories a day.

   That’s a slice of bread, an apple, or an orange. Less than a glass of juice.

   Of course how does one eat 1/14th of a bag of potato chips?

   Well what I’m learning to do is to repackage my “junk food” into 100 calorie portions. (Well, sometimes 200 for things like nuts.) I can take a toblerone, cut it into sections of about 125 cal each. I Took a bag of baked chips (500 cal) and split it into 5 smaller bags.

   What that does is give me a ‘vending machine’ supply of cheese, chocolate, jello fruit cups, chips, party mix, yogurt, fruits (apples, oranges, grapes, bananas, plums etc.) that all average out to about 100 calories.

   And you notice that in that list, most of the stuff actually is reasonably “healthy”.

   This way I can snack, and not really have to worry too much about calories or portions because it’s all been done in advance - fairly simply just by reading the labels and doing some rough guestimation. No complex math.

   Yeah, 100 calories of chips isn’t much. But if you have them with a yogurt and an apple it is very filling, fairly healthy and under 300 calories. In actual fact, I find 100 calories of any “snack” quite sufficient, because I’m usually not hungry. But I do sometimes still get munchies.

   But, this way I don’t start eating a chip, and half an hour later suddenly realize the whole bag is empty

   25 August 2009, 8:23 pm

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