Day 49 – Break It Down Now

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, tell me mirror what is wrong?
Can it be my de la clothes or is it just my de la soul?”

~ De La Soul

200.6 lbs.

I shouldn’t have written that title. Now I have early 90′s rap/dance music stuck in my head *facepalm*. Does anyone have a cure for Fu Schnickens?

Anyhow, back on day 43 I wrote about 10 tips for healthy, effective weight loss including eat 5-6 times a day, watch your portions, drink lots of water,  drink tomato juice, and don’t buy black market uranium.

Okay, one of those is a lie. Nobody drinks tomato juice. Except on airplanes. Or in a Bloody Mary. (For my fellow Canucks: a Bloody Mary is the somewhat bland, non-zesty version of a Caesar drink)

Where was I? Right. Nintey’s rap, weight loss… ah, there we go; my train of thought is back on the rails.

Don't do it! You have so much to live for!

When most people hear the word “diet” they think cutting out a bunch of foods they like temporarily in order to lose weight, then go “off the diet” and resume eating as they were before. The problem with that is pretty obvious when you think about it; if the way you were eating before was fine, why do you need to “diet”?

We often use diet as a verb, meaning something you do, but diet also just means what you eat. If you drastically shift what you eat it will take willpower to maintain it, which is fine if you’re motivated by a sudden realization and desire to make a big change. But the key to eating healthier is it should be something you’re willing to live by for the long term.

So as a followup to my weight loss tips article from day 43 I figured I’d list a few tips for how you can make a few easy changes for healthier eating habits. A few small steps in decision making, a giant leap in your overall well being!

1. Smart Snacking

If you have a lot of “sin food” snacks in the house, like bags of cookies, potato chips, chocolate bars, etc. they’re going to sit there as demonic little temptations, their siren call getting to you day by day as you have some… then more… then more…

An easy shift is to stop buying these sorts of snacks and have a few sweet or crunchy but healthy choices around instead. Fruit may not sound as sinful as chocolate bars, but did chocolate bars get us kicked out of Eden? I kid, I kid. But really, fruit is great when you crave sweets. Loaded with natural sugars and far better for your teeth, your waist line, and your guilt complex. Stock a variety so you have plenty of choice: apples, grapes, oranges, bananas, etc. Nuts and granola bars are good for crunchy cravings, and yogurt is delicious by itself, poured over a bit of dry granola, or as a dipping sauce for apples.

2. Patrol the Perimeter

When you go grocery shopping you’ll notice milk, fresh fruits and veggies,fish, and so on are all around the outer edges of the store whereas marshmallows, packaged cookies, processed foods, and so on are in the aisles. Spend more time in that outer ring to find foods lower in saturated fats, refined sugars, preservatives, and bad cholesterol (yes, there is good cholesterol, but that’s for another article).

3.Literacy is your friend

Read the labels on the foods you eat. Low fat isn’t always good for you. As I’ve said before, when manufacturers drop the fat content they find it removes a lot of the flavour so they boost it with added salt or HFCS.Other things listed as low in sugar may be high in fat – and usually the bad fats, such as hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Don’t worry about carefully scrutinizing every package next time you go shopping; the goal here is for easy changes. Just start by reading some of the labels on foodstuffs in your cupboards, and you’ll start to get the idea.

Also, don’t focus strictly on the calorie amount. Yes, if you want to lose weight you’ll want to watch calories… but even zero calorie diet soda pop can have a surprising amount of sodium in it. If the calorie count is very important to you, be careful to also read the serving size – there are no real standards requiring manufacturers to list an actual serving, as in what an average person would eat, so they play with the numbers and list a portion of what is in the package to make the calorie count sound reasonable… even if it’s a “serving” of three chips or something.

4. Portion control is in the palm of your hand

Having 5 or 6 smaller meals throughout the day is better for your metabolic burn, and keeps you feeling “full”, but what about portion sizes? Easy. The size of your fist, or the food that would fit in your cupped hand, is about one measuring cup. If you’re having a side of rice or risotto with your salmon steak, and you have more than a palmful, it’s probably a bit much. Of course this is just a rough guide. if you’re a petite woman your hands will be smaller than the paws I’ve got, but I’m more than six feet tall and male, so I require more calories than a petite woman anyhow. This makes the palm method of portion control “self adjusting” to size and gender. Neat, huh?

5. Hitting the Reset button

This one will take a bit of willpower for a couple of weeks, but fear not; it’s really not that much of a hardship. If you’ve been eating a lot of sweets like chocolate bars, sugary soda pop, etc. your palate is set to expect very sweet flavours. At first, switching to alternatives like fruit, with their natural sugars, is going to seem less sweet because it is. It’ll take a few weeks for your taste buds to relearn, but they do learn. When I would do a low carb diet, which doesn’t have many sweets, then try to reintroduce carbs I would find that store bought bread tasted as sweet to me at that moment as I remembered doughnuts tasting. My taste buds and brain had rewired themselves to new thresholds of sweet.

6. Not all fat is evil

We’re so conditioned by the “low fat” propaganda that has been hammered into us for almost 3 decades that it’s hard to think beyond it. Fat from processed meats, hydrogenated oils, and so on are bad for you. Natural fats such as the ones in nuts, avocados, olives, and fish, however are very good for you. Watch out for bad fats added in preparation though; choose baked or broiled over fried or deep fried, and easy on the creamy sauces and high calorie condiments like mayo.

You can also try alternatives that taste just as good as the “regular”, but are prepared in a way to have less of the bad fat and fewer calories like this low fat fettuccini alfredo.

7. Keep things colourful

If everything on your plate is as brown as a UPS brochure, it’s probably a lot of pan fried or deep fried stuff. Not only does having more colour on your plate keep things more interesting, the easiest way to get it like that is by adding healthy food. A stir fry served with rice can have red, green, and yellow peppers in it for a natural sweetness that compliments the meat strips, but adds that splash of colour. Or have salad on the side instead of a baked potato obscured by a mountain of sour cream.

8. Denial is bad in so many ways

When you restrict your diet to only a few things, as many fad diets have you do (cottage cheese twice a day? Really?) not only do you get bored, your tastebuds do too.Want bacon? Have some. But maybe once a month, not every morning.

Denial is also bad when it comes to skipping meals. Skipping meals (breakfast being the most common) puts your brain and metabolism into starvation mode so when you do eat, more of it gets stored as energy. Guess how we store energy? Mainly as fat.

3 meals is common, 5 or 6 smaller meals is better, but skipping meals sucks for your appetite, your metabolism, and your health. (I know this first-hand)

9. Know when to stop

Foraging throughout the day keeps your metabolism humming along nicely, but eating nonstop from wakey-wakey to bedtime means you’re likely eating a lot of calories. Watch your portions and overall calorie intake; but yes, spreading it out throughout the day is fine.

Some diet advisers say to stop eating 2 or 3 hours before bedtime so your body can burn up the last of it’s fuel before shutting down for the night. Um… that’s not how our bodies work. You still metabolize food overnight, and studies show you burn more calories while asleep than while watching TV or using the computer. Why is skipping breakfast, making your body go a few hours without food after a night’s sleep, considered bad but making your body go a few hours without food before sleep is recommended? I’m going to call that myth busted.

10. Think long term

Remember, a diet isn’t something you do for a few weeks or months, but what you eat in your lifetime. Sticking to these tips will help you maintain a healthy weight, and you can concentrate on worrying about your retirement, nuclear war, or whatever; but you won’t need to worry about your waistline anymore.