3 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL DIETING

I've never been a fan of fad diets. Cutting out an essential part of the diet, such as carbs or fat, never seemed like a good idea to me. If you try a diet in which you have to drastically alter what you eat, you're probably not going to stick to it. You can't keep not eating carbs forever. 

So what happens when you start eating carbs again? You gain back the weight.

Why? Because you have not made a maintainable, long-term change to your eating behavior. 

Fad diets make things complicated. The best approach to dieting is a simple one: keep a food journal and count your calories.

Your main focus should be setting a calorie goal and sticking to it. For more information about working out how many calories you should be eating, see here.

Let's get a little scientific for a minute. I promise it won't  be too horrible :)

Last year a study was conducted on the impact of a wide range of diet-related behaviors and meal patterns and their effect on weight change. These were the main conclusions of the study:

In the study, women who kept food journals lost about 6 lb more than those who did not.

It's pretty dang hard to change your eating behavior if you don't pay attention to what you're eating.

I know that there have been days in the past where I have assumed that I wasn't eating a lot of calories when I was actually eating a ridiculous amount.

Example: 

I love Chili's. When we go there John and I usually share a half order of Texas Cheese Fries and then I get a Classic Bacon Burger with a side order of fries. Yep, that's a lot of fries for one night.

I never really thought about how many calories I was eating. I guessed it was a lot but I wasn't sure exactly how much.

I decided to look it up one day. Guess how many calories that meal was.

2350

I could not believe this. I had been eating way more calories than I thought I was

Using a diet journal is easy. It doesn't take a lot of time. You don't have to use it every day for the rest of your life if you don't want to. It's good to track your calories for a few weeks every day. Then you will gain a sense for how many calories different foods contain. Then you can just use a diet journal every now and then to stay on track or you can continue to use it every day. 

Tips for using a diet journal:

Measure your servings. When you're counting calories it is important to pay attention to serving size. Don't just assume that you are just having one serving. Read labels and measure it out. For example, one serving of milk isn't a large glass of milk. It is one cup of milk.

Be honest. Record everything that you eat. Those fries that you stole off your boyfriend/husband's plate do count. Make sure you include toppings and condiments in your calorie count.

Be conscientious. Take your diet journal with you everywhere so you don't have to try to remember what you ate later. Use it every day for at least a couple of weeks.

Here a few printable food journal pages that I made that you are welcome to download.

 Blue Food Journal

 Green Food Journal

Pink Food Journal

There are also some good apps for counting calories. My favorite is MyFitnessPal.

In the study, women who skipped meals lost almost 8 fewer pounds than women who didn't. 

Skipping meals is a bad idea. We all know it's not very fun to be really hungry. Often when you skip a meal you end up binging later on in the day and making up the calories from the skipped meal. 

There's also the issue with your metabolism. You burn calories most efficiently when you eat at regular intervals throughout the day. The best thing to do is to eat five or six small meals a day. 

Skipping meals is also thought to cause you to respond more favorably to high-calorie foods. This means that  you will probably end up eating more calories than you would have if you hadn't skipped the meal.

In the study, women who ate out for lunch at least weekly lost an average of 5 fewer pounds than women who ate out less frequently.

I don't mean never eat out. It's fun to eat out every once and a while. Just make sure to limit how often you eat out. Also, when you do eat out, pay attention to the number of calories you are eating. Maybe only eat half of your meal that day. 

Kong A., Beresford S.A.A., Alfano C.M., Foster-Schubert K.E., Neuhouser M.L., Johnson D.B., Duggan C., (...), McTiernan A. Self-Monitoring and Eating-Related Behaviors Are Associated with 12-Month Weight Loss in Postmenopausal Overweight-to-Obese Women (2012)  Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,  112  (9) , pp. 1428-1435.

TIPS FOR PREVENTING EXCESS EATING

1. When you're craving an unhealthy food, tell yourself that you have to eat a healthy snack before you can have the unhealthy food. Eating the healthy food first will hopefully mean that you will eat less of the unhealthy food in the end because the healthy food will help to fill your stomach.

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2. Try to eat some protein in each meal that you eat. Protein helps you to fill full and will help to keep you feeling full for longer. Often if I'm hungry at the end of the day I will have a glass of milk because it's not a lot of calories and it contains protein.

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3. If you're trying to stave off a craving, try chewing some sugar-free gum.

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4. Prevent giving into food cravings by brushing your teeth or using mouthwash. Nothing tastes good right after you brush your teeth. 

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5. You can also try drinking water when you feel hungry. Apparently some people confuse being thirsty with being hungry. 

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6. Try distracting yourself when you're craving food. One way in which you can do this is forehead tracking. Tap your pointer finger across your forehead from temple to temple. Tap once per second, moving across one centimeter at a time. Follow your finger with your eyes and focus your eyes on the first joint of your pointer finger.

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7. Another idea for resisting food cravings is to start a stopwatch when your craving starts and then stop it when the craving subsides. Next time you feel the craving you will know how much time you'll have to wait before the craving will go away. It makes it a lot easier to resist a craving when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

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CHOCOLATE & WEIGHT LOSS

I think that most of us have always assumed that eating chocolate would lead to gaining weight. I know that I certainly did. Since I'm not a huge fan of chocolate to begin with (I know, I'm crazy) I've generally avoided it in the past. Lately I've started to add a little more chocolate to my diet. Why? Because of an article I read recently about a study on the effects that chocolate consumption has on body weight.

This study found that those who ate chocolate more frequently had significantly lower body masses than those who ate chocolate less frequently! I was pretty surprised by this. 

It's hypothesized that the metabolic benefits of modest amounts of chocolate might result in less fat being deposited per calorie. This means that chocolate might be calorie neutral! Pretty cool, huh?

This is not the only benefit of chocolate either. It has also been found that chocolate has positive effects on blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, and cholesterol level!

So go ahead and eat a few pieces of chocolate, just don't binge and eat a whole giant bar!

You can read the article for yourself here

THE BASICS OF WEIGHT LOSS

There are a hundreds of different weight loss programs and diets out there. The issue is that many of these only work for a select few people and if they do work, they are usually only a temporary solution. Most people regain the weight they have lost because they haven't made lifestyle changes which they can maintain. 

Today, I want to share with you some basics of weight loss that will lead to a successful weight loss program for anyone.
The key is making maintainable, healthy changes to your lifestyle..

How often should I work out?

5 days per week!

This is the goal you should be shooting for. It will bring you the most health benefits and will increase your chances of becoming thin and staying that way.

If you have been inactive this is going to be too much for you at first. Start out at 3 days per week and progress to 5. 

How long should I work out?

60 minutes!

If you are working out 5 days a week, you should do 60 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per workout session. 

If you have been inactive you should start at 15-20 minutes and gradually increase to 60 minutes.

Why do I need to work out that much?

Studies have shown that this much physical activity is required to maintain healthy body weight.

This means that even if you work out for 300 minutes each week (60 min, 5 days/wk), you probably won't lose weight.

You will receive significant health benefits from working out this much. 

How can I lose weight then?

Exercise + dieting. 

You probably already guessed this.

You need to watch what you eat as well as exercise. If you cut back on your calories and exercise, you will lose weight. 

What if I work out at a higher intensity? 

Do I still need to do 300 minutes of exercise per week?

No!

If you are doing vigorous-intensity exercise instead of moderate, you can significantly cut back the amount of time spent exercising to about 150 minutes/week.

What is considered moderate-intensity exercise?

Exercise that causes a noticeable increase in your heart rate and lasts for longer than 10 minutes.

On a scale from 1-10, you should feel like the difficulty is a 5-6.

What about vigorous-intensity?

Results in rapid breathing and a substantial increase in heart rate.

On a scale from 1-10, you should feel like the difficulty is a 7-8.

This is when we work out!

How many calories should I be consuming?

It varies.

It depends on your age, gender, weight, height, and activity. 

You can use an online calorie calculator to find out how many calories you should be eating per day. Here is a link to one that I like: http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm.

The nice thing about these calculators is that they will tell you how many calories to cut down to lose weight. 

What is the minimum number of calories that I should eat?

1200 Cal/day for women and 1600 Cal/day for men

If a weight loss calculator tells you to eat less than this, don't follow it!

You need at least this many calories to get the vitamins and minerals you need to be healthy.

If I'm working can I eat more calories?

It depends.

If you are just trying to maintain your current weight, then yes, you can eat more calories. If you are trying to lose weight, then probably not. You can check this using a calorie calculator. 

However, if you are working out for more than 60 minutes, 5 times per week DO NOT follow the amount that the calorie counter tells you. It will overestimate how many calories you are able to eat.

What type of diet should I use?

Don't use any extreme diets.

The best diet to follow is one that is one in which you eat less calories than you need to maintain your weight. 

Fad diets in which you drastically alter what you eat generally DON'T WORK. They are too hard to maintain and you usually don't enjoy them.

Just eat a diet that includes fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, dairy. In other words, get all the necessary vitamins and minerals.

Eat your favorite treats, just in moderation

The key is to make sure that you know how many calories you should eat and try to stick to that.

I find that I am most succesful in dieting when I write down how many calories I eat during the day.

Do you exercise for 60 minutes, 5 days per week?

At the moment I do not because I just had a baby. I didn't work out very intensely while I was pregnant. I just did yoga and water aerobics. This means that I'm not jumping straight in to this much exercise. I do 60 minutes of exercise about 3 days per week.