The Healthy Lifestyle Diet: Eat What You Want, When You Want
Jul 24 '00
People look at me and say, “Oh, you’ve never had a weight problem… you can’t possibly understand.” Well, they’re wrong. I have had to struggle with my weight, and I do understand. My solution to this has evolved over the past twenty-some years, and continues to work for me. I’d like to share both some insights into my background, and the guidelines that I followed to lose weight and keep it off for years.
My Story
I am lucky to be tall, and have small bones so I appear “lean”. However, my bones are so small that they appear disproportionate – my wrist, for example, is only 5-1/8” around. (Seriously, I just measured them). My bone structure is basically the exact right size, according to my doctor, for a woman of 5 feet tall, or less, and even then it would be considered small boned.
Since I’m 5’9, this leaves me in an interesting quandary. There is nowhere on my body to “hide” fat. When I gain five pounds, I go up two dress sizes. During college, when I gained not only the freshman five but also the sophomore 15 (aided by going on the pill at this time), I jumped from a size 6 to a size 12 in less than a year. This was also a time when the only exercise I was getting was walking to class, and the rest of the time I was studying, working or eating.
I started on a diet, and exercising again, and found that I could lose the weight, if I put my mind to it. I lost it, and kept it off, got married, got my first job, and started travelling (for business). After a few years of business travel, lunches out, and take-out dinners, I looked at myself in the mirror – really looked – and realized that I had shot back up, passing size 12 and was now in a size 14. On my frame, this looked very heavy, and when a free cholesterol check at work indicated I was in a high-risk group (coinciding approximately with my father’s first heart attack) I realized I had to make a change. I looked at my diet – and my patterns – and realized that I had slowly edged off the program that kept me at a healthy weight for my size over the past few years. Again, over the course of the next year, I was able to lose the weight, and keep it off…. Until I got pregnant.
I was in my thirties with my first pregnancy, and active at the gym. I ate healthy foods, and exercised normally but not strenuously, being careful not to let my heart rate exceed 140 beats per minute. When I had only gained 2 pounds at my three-month checkup, my doctor threatened me with protein drinks if I didn’t gain at least two pounds by the next checkup. She needn’t have worried, though; even without any change in my relatively healthy diet I gained 38 pounds with my son, and 40 pounds with my daughter three years later!
Although I had to modify my diet to allow enough fat and calories for breastfeeding, I did lose the baby weight (both times), and even toned up my muscle tone as well. I did it without any major changes in diet, and for the most part, without any major sacrifices.
My diet is a life-style diet, and except for the little side trip I took to explore the Atkins diet, I have stuck to this same formula that I found worked for me in college, and maintained my weight and body at a healthy size and condition. I’ve discussed this with my doctor, who commented that if she could get more of her patients to follow this type of diet, she’d have a lot less unhappy patients. In any case, here are my guidelines for weight loss, and permanent weight management.
My Guidelines: The Healthy Lifestyle Diet
The core guidelines I have for healthy weight loss (when needed) are the same as for healthy weight management. These include: eat when you want to, eat what you want to, do both aerobic and strength exercise, control your opportunities, and be realistic about your body and goals. Let’s walk through these, one at a time. I assume you all know how to count calories, and this isn’t usually the hardest part of setting up a successful diet. What’s harder is to find an eating pattern that makes you feel satisfied, so you can stick with it.
Eat When You Want To:
You know your body better than almost anyone else. Are you a late-night snacker? Do you hate eating breakfast? Are you starving by 4 p.m.? Everyone is different, and strict diets that tell you to eat XXX for breakfast and YYY for dinner don’t work for everyone because of this. In the long run, you need to know what your body needs in terms of meal timing, and think about why that is. If you’ve tried to starve your body all day, it’s likely that by dinner time (or evening) your body will be in full hunger mode, and sending you cravings for all sorts of decadent snacks.
You can help yourself avoid these battles by just listening to your body. That means that if you’re typically hungry at 4 p.m., and know you won’t be eating until 7 p.m., go ahead and have a snack. A small snack now will stem the urges, and help you feel less stifled/restricted by your “diet”. It will also help put off eating a huge dinner.
I’ve seen great diets (on paper) that call for eating your biggest meal of the day for breakfast, less for lunch, and even less for dinner. These never work for me, because I’m not a big breakfast fan. I eat just enough to prevent me from passing out at the gym, then usually have a small late-morning snack. That works for me, it might not work for you. The key is to listen to what your body is asking for. If you’ve eaten a full day’s worth of calories, however, and three healthy meals (plus a snack or two), and your body is still sending you “snack” impulses late at night, it could be a comfort issue, or just a pattern you’ve set up. My body likes a snack late in the afternoon, and I notice that even if I’ve eaten lunch late in the day, I’ll get my “snack” signal about 3:30 p.m. anyway.
Eat What You Want to Eat:
In addition to eating when you want to eat, you should eat what you want to eat. If I want a piece of cheesecake, I’ll have one – but not every day. I try to eat healthy, relatively low-fat and protein rich foods. I pour over Weight Watchers cookbooks, looking for delicious looking meals that won’t leave me feeling “cheated”. My husband is always amazed when I tell him an especially satisfying meal came out of a healthy cookbook.
That doesn’t mean, however, that we live “on a diet”. We don’t follow a particular diet plan, or maintain our weight by limiting our intake every day. What a miserable existence that would be… worrying about every calorie, every day, after the weight is lost! Rather, we watch our general patterns, and try to cut calories and fat where we can, so that we can really enjoy our meals. We’re both big eaters, so a small serving usually won’t hold either one of us – hence the food we eat needs to be relatively healthy to allow us to eat larger portions. I also use a bodyfat scale (see my review on this, if you're interested!) that helps me watch my overall bodyfat patterns.
When I was actively trying to lose weight, I did try to make sure that I tracked my intake, to some extent, over time, and correlated that with my results. The big key, though, to sticking to a healthy diet, whether it’s to lose weight or maintain once it’s lost, is to allow yourself those treats that you crave. A slice of cheesecake is not going to blow your entire week’s worth of eating well; nor is a hamburger, even with French fries! The important part is to allow yourself indulgences, and realize that these are treats to yourself, but not part of your everyday pattern. If you can split the cheesecake with a friend, even better… I’ve often found that five forkfuls of cheesecake (or crème brulee or whatever the special decadent dessert is!) tastes fabulous, and I can resist the rest as long as I allowed myself to have some.
As for snacking – have an apple, a nutrition bar, a slice of cheese and some crackers, any small snack that meets your need for nutrients will work. Don’t try to get by on celery sticks and carrots alone. Generally your body is asking for food to fill a nutritional need, and you should listen to it. Build this into your daily schedule (see above) and balance your day accordingly. If you find you’re craving sweets late in the day, buy a pack of snack sized m&m’s. A tiny bag will fill that need, without adding hundreds of calories. Craving salt? A small bag of popcorn or pretzels can fill that need, without blowing your day’s calorie allotment out the window.
Integrate Exercise Into Your Day
You already know you should exercise. It’s drummed into us with every single diet that we look at. I have plenty of experience with people on diets – myself included – who “know” that they ought to exercise. Why is this, and how do you take it from “should” to “do”?
• Calorie Burning: The first primary benefit of exercising is that it’s a calorie burner. An hour of kickboxing can burn up to 500 calories, even moderate walking can burn up to 278 Calories per hour (based on a 130 pound woman). When the basic formula for weight loss is calories consumed – calories burned, there are clearly two ways to make sure that the end result is a negative (weight loss) or neutral (weight maintenance). The first is to eat fewer calories; the second is to increase the calories burned. Integrating exercise into your day can help dramatically increase the calories you burn each day, and help you burn off those snacks (and that cheesecake that I told you was okay to have!) <GRIN>
• Self-Esteem: There’s something about working out that affects your self esteem. I don’t know why this is, but it seems like even a light workout will leave me feeling good about myself. Even when I can’t see the results, I start feeling better about my body when I know I’m proactively doing something good for myself. I’ve talked to many others who feel the same way.
I said above that you need to incorporate both aerobic and strength exercise. The aerobic exercise is for your heart, and is exercise that gets your heart up to a certain level (which varies based on your age & condition) where it has to work aerobically. I believe that fat burning occurs at 60 – 80% of your target heartrate. You should shoot for 20 minutes of aerobic level work per session, at least three times a week – although if you can only fit in once per week at first, don’t give up. If you can only go for five minutes, don’t quit – do what you can, and strive to add more. You should always talk to your doctor before beginning a new aerobics program.
Strength training is non-cardiovascular exercise that seeks to make the muscles stronger. Typically, this is done with weights, either hand weights or using machines. Weight training helps specific muscle groups grow stronger, and gives you that nice definition that you want. If you’re afraid of getting huge bulky muscles, don’t be – see a personal trainer or specialist in this area if you need to. Using low weights and high repetitions, you can tone your muscles without adding any major bulk to them. Depending on your muscular makeup, you may want to adjust your weight training workout to meet your specific goals. Again, this is a good thing to ask your doctor about before beginning.
I can tell you that having some sore and aching muscles the day (or two days) after a workout is annoying… and oddly satisfying. You feel the hard work you put into your body, even before your body starts changing so you can see it. It’s very rewarding when you suddenly look in the mirror, and see a little muscular definition where there was none before. In addition, while not a cardiovascular workout, weight training does burn calories… an added plus. In conjunction with a regular aerobics program, you will probably start to see results within the first month or so… which hopefully will motivate you to tune into your diet more, and adjust your exercise program to better help you achieve your goals.
Avoid Temptations/Control Your Opportunities
Got a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer? Half a bag of Oreo’s in the cupboard? If you’re hungry and depressed, these are easy targets for a late night snack. Alcohol is another easy culprit – it adds calories and decreases your inhibitions (and is usually to blame for any late night foraging I do!).
What I try to do is to set myself up for success. That means I try not to buy food that I know will tempt me – and if I do, I try to get rid of them quickly (ideally in the kids lunches or sending them to work with my husband… his hungry engineers will eat anything!). I try not to shop when I’m hungry, lest I buy the high-fat snack foods that call to me as I pass them. “Really, you can eat just one….” call the sour cream and cheese Ruffles. I didn’t, I ate about half the bag, then sent it to school in little Baggies in my son’s lunch for a week until they were all gone. Whew! Leftover Halloween candy – including whatever the kids didn’t eat the first night – goes to work with my husband (same with Easter candy and Christmas candy). The kids don’t expect it to last, and the engineers my husband works with are always grateful.
I chew gum when I’m cooking, to avoid all of the sampling that can add up to as many calories as the whole meal! More than once, I’ve taken leftover cake or dessert, and run it down the disposal to keep from eating it. Wasteful? Probably… but I can’t eat it once it got all wet, and it isn’t planted on my hips. My husband walked in one time as I was upending a platter of stale cookies – which I had been nibbling on, despite the fact that they were stale – into the sink and stood there running water on them. “Why didn’t you just put those in the trash?” he asked. “I won’t eat them this way…” I answered, somewhat lamely, but it was true. And it works.
I personally know that I need a late afternoon snack, almost every day, to carry me over from lunch to dinner (which we eat between 6-7 p.m.). I’m especially hungry if I’ve exercised earlier in the day, which I do 4-5 times on an average week. So I stock nutrition bars and pull them out each day when I want a snack (you didn’t think I bought all these bars just so I could review them for Epinions, did you? <GRIN>). This keeps me from prowling through the cupboards, looking at those chips, or going to a drive-through and ordering something incredibly unhealthy.
I also find that I sometimes eat when I’m bored – such as when I’m watching TV, or waiting for something. I started doing crossword puzzles back in my first job (when I’d gained weight, and wanted to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t snack). Now when I’m reaching for a snack – and realize I’m not really hungry, I can reach for the TV guide and do a crossword puzzle, or polish my toenails, or even ::gasp:: clean up a little – almost anything to keep my hands busy and my mind occupied.
This isn’t, again, to say that I don’t eat cookies, or cake, or Ruffles. I do, and I enjoy them. I just don’t want to eat them every day, especially not out of boredom. I’d rather choose when and where I want to splurge.
Speaking of splurges, one thing we all have to get over is the “I fell off of the wagon, I might as well go for it!” theory. We all splurge. When you do, remember you chose to splurge, and that’s okay. Now choose to eat healthy for the rest of the day, don’t punish yourself, and don’t feel guilty. But don’t use it as an excuse, either, to go hog-wild. It’s easy to say, “Well, I had one brownie, I broke my diet, I might as well finish the pan…. Or have ice cream to go with it… etc.” Just accept that you chose to have a brownie, that it tasted good, and that this is a normal part of integrating your wants into your lifestyle diet. When you can do this, you’re on your way!
Be Realistic About Your Body and Goals
I have several friends who look at me and sigh. “You’re naturally thin…” they say, “I’ll never look like that, no matter how much I diet.” No, they probably won’t – because most of them are far shorter than I am, and many have larger frames than I have. The same weight – on my 5’9 frame – that has me looking chunky in a size 14 would have several of my 5’4 –5’6 friends looking svelte in a size 8-10. It’s just not fair. But the fact is, they don’t have my body, I don’t have their bodies, and there’s nothing that’s going to change that.
Understanding our bodies, what we do and don’t have going for us, as well as being perfectly honest about what we like and dislike about our bodies, is the first step. You might want those long legs of your friend, or those curvaceous curves of your co-worker, but the bottom line is, ya got what ya got. So short of some extremely expensive (and not, from what I’ve seen, always successful) surgery, we have to accept the gifts that God gave us and make the best of them.
In addition, when you have 25 pounds to lose (or more), this can be an extremely intimidating goal. Weight Watchers, I am told, tells you to set your goal at 10% of your body weight. I always set mine in 5 pound increments, with a little reward at the end. If I’d set larger goals, I might have given up, especially when I hit a plateau. But I could always reach five pounds – eventually – and rewarded myself with something special that I wanted (a manicure, a sweater I’d been eyeing, etc.). And in the long run, the biggest reward was the slowly accumulated weight loss, and the fact that my lifestyle and eating habits had changed as well, and I was able to maintain my weight without sacrificing or worrying about every meal, every calorie, every snack.
Summary
I hope that this has been helpful to you in some way. I know that each person has his or her own needs, and I would very seriously advise you to talk to your doctor before starting any weight loss or exercise program. I still bounce things off of my doctor, and make sure that I’m on track with my lifestyle and fitness levels.
The bottom line to me is that there are a lot of fad diets out there, and some of them – to be fair - may work. But in the long run, it’s not enough just to lose the weight – although that’s a good start! If you can learn to change your lifestyle, and your thinking, so that you have a smooth transition from “weight loss” to “weight management”, once your goals are met, you are in a far better position to keep that new figure.
The steps above have really worked for me – eating when I want to, eating what I want to, integrating exercise into my life, limiting my temptations, and setting realistic goals. I found that if I could eat food that tasted good, satisfied my hunger, and didn’t leave me feeling like I was constantly being deprived, I could stick with it. And that, in my mind, is the key to a healthy lifestyle. I’d love to hear your comments, and suggestions you might want to share as well!
Some Interesting Websites for you to surf:
http://onhealth.com/fitness/home/index,7.asp (Onhealth Food & Fitness Website – includes a weight analysis, food guide, BMI calculator, etc. A very nice website!)
http://vortxweb.net/getfit/bmi.html (A Body Mass Index calculator, from Get Fit)
http://www.atozfitness.com/ghf/ghfinfo.html A free fitness analysis profile, done online for you
http://www.fitteen.com/ Fitteen is a website for teenagers who want to get into shape
http://www.fitnesslink.com/ Fitnesslink is a good all-around website, dealing with nutrition, exercise, and motivation
http://www.healthchecksystems.com/ Yes, it’s sponsored by Tanita (the bodyfat scale people, I own one and love it!) but they have a LOT of great info on nutrition, exercise, heartrate and more!
http://www.dietriot.com/ A fun & informative diet oriented website, including amusing cartoons & useful information
http://www.shapeup.org/ A great online resource for shaping up – includes a BMI calculator, recipes, an online assessment, and support groups
http://www.highnrg.com/ A weightloss/fitness website oriented to women only, this is a nicely laid out website that includes training info, nutrition, etc.
http://www.acefitness.org/fitfacts/fitfacts_list.cfm American Council on Exercise Official website, including a lot on fitness and getting into shape, nicely laid out website with full length articles
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Epinions.com ID:
WorkingMomof2
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Member: Amy
Location: Southern California
Reviews written: 313
Trusted by: 539 members
About Me:
Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.
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