Set Me Free

Loosing weight has been a very personal and important issue for me. A lot of people have been asking me what I’ve been doing.  Well here it is.. not quite in a nutshell..

Here it is:  1)Portion control  2)Water  3)Exercise  … wait… what?!  You mean do everything that doctors always told you to do?  HAH, I know! However I’m going to share a few tips with those of you who are looking to start loosing significant amounts of weight.  These tips are meant for people who are like me.  People with a significant amount to loose, emotional eaters or food addicts.

First things first, this is a lifestyle change.  NOT a diet.  Sure you will be changing your diet, but that’s just one part of what you will be doing.  Remember you need to be 100% committed to a new lifestyle change or else it wont happen.  Give it a few days, a month, a few months but eventually you’ll go back to old habits if you’re not 100% committed. Believe me.

The first thing I’m going to tell you is, is that most of what you see on T.V is true.  You CAN loose weight while eating whatever you want.  But it sucks.  You CAN loose weight eating nothing but pizza.  (that’s where portion control comes in).  But it’s hard.  From an “emotional eater” point of view, it’s absolute agony to be counting calories when you’re trying to eat pizza.  When you want pizza you want the WHOLE DAMN THING.  Or at least enough to make you full.  That’s what always got me about emotional eating.  Is that I was not satisfied until I was full. Now you might start a diet and start calorie counting and you’re constantly depressed because if you’re like me, you want to feel “full”.  Well I’ll tell you about that soon.

Okay I’m getting off track here.  Lets start at how to get you started.  The first thing you need to do is assess your environment.  Are the cupboards filled with junk?  Who brings home the junk?  Do you live close to fast food?  Do co-workers bring junk to share at work?  Make a list of areas where you could possibly “fail”.  I’m serious.  You don’t want you to start, and just fail the next day because of something you can’t control, because of something else that affects you.  Now you need to come up with ways to remove these from your environment.  If you live with family members then you need to set them all down and let them know that you can’t have them bringing junk food around you anymore.  Not in the cupboards, not even in their bedrooms.  (If you’re like me you’d find their stash and munch a few…).  You’re about to enter in to over-eating rehab and you can’t be given a chance to fail.  You need to let them know how important it is that they’re all in on this.  Remember this is a matter of life or death.  Eating unhealthily is bad for everyone whether they’re overweight or not.  You have to let people know that your life and their future with you could depend on how you eat.  The first few weeks are critical to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  Just as you tried to give your children the perfect environment to grow up in, it’s now your families turn to return the favor and help you create a supportive environment for you.  Don’t just shrug this step off.  It’s critical that you do this.

Now what about at work?  Where I work there is a restaurant next door, a pizza place two doors down, and two fast food places across the parking lot.  The hardest part about loosing weight is the accessibility of unhealthy food.  If I forget my lunch at home, then there aren’t many options out there.  Some people say to rely on “will power”.  Well when you’re an addict will power doesn’t have anything to do with it.  Anyways.. Make sure you make a lunch every single day.  So that way you’re not tempted to eat out.  What if you forget your lunch?  Well Keep a stash of healthy food at work.  Keep a tin of nuts or pretzels at work.  Or better yet, take a five minute drive to the grocery and buy an apple and water to go with it too.  Or even buy a lean cuisine.  They’re not especially healthy for you, but the point is, is to STAY AWAY from these fast food places.  You go once and you’ll crave it again.  Guaranteed.

Tips:
1) Toss anything that is quick to make or grab & eat.  No more pizza pockets, no more Kraft Dinner, no ice cream.  If you’re an emotional eater or addicted then this type of food is lethal.  The only grab & go food you should have is fruit and veggies.  If you’re okay with the packages of 100 calorie snacks then those are fine.  But even I had to toss those out because I would eat the whole box because I could.

2) Find yourself going to buy snacks anyways even though you brought a healthy lunch?  Leave your money at home!  Or give your debit/credit card to someone you trust.

3) It’s alright to have bad days.  You just need a back up plan and someone you can trust.  I could never loose weight without the support of my husband.  When I’m having an especially bad day, he’ll take my debit/credit cards (even spare change laying around the house cause you know it doesn’t take much money to buy chips!) and then he’ll make a healthy supper.  It’s amazing how having support really helps. Remember you just need to make it through one meal at a time.

4) Plan your meals.  If you take out chicken the night before for supper, then you’re more inclined to not “waste” the chicken by eating out.

5) Sit at the table to eat and eat slowly.  If you’re an emotional eater/addict then you need to learn to really appreciate your food.  Sit back and think about what you’re eating.  Think of the flavour, the texture the healthiness of it.  If you sit at the couch at eat while watching TV you don’t have even time to recognize that you’re eating.  If you’re a mental eater then it’s even worse.  You’re not taking time to check eating off your mental check-list.  Basically, make meal time important to you.

6) Find out the healthy facts about what you’re eating.  Is your meal full of Vitamin C? Then look it up and find out exactly does for your body.  It’s amazing how much better you feel about your food when you know exactly what it does!  Do you subscribe to readers digest?  Did you know that in every issue they talk about a new food item?  Look it up at readersdigest.ca

Okay, so now you have a heat start on changing your physical environment.  That’s GREAT, but what about the emotional aspect?  Well you need a support group plain and simple.  You need people you can relate to and you need people to go to when you have questions.  If you can’t think of anyone, then you’re wrong.  You know ME.  You can call me day or night, because I know this is hard.  Even zip me a line on Facebook if you have a question.  I don’t always know the answers but I might be able to point you in the right direction.  A great site (one that I recommend to EVERYONE) is www.sparkpeople.com.  It tracks your food and fitness level, plus there are lots of articles on everything!  Even recipes!  There are also a lot of support groups for every type of person.

Okay, so you worked out your environment and you know where to go if you have questions or a problem.  But where do you start now?  What foods to buy, which ones to avoid?  What about exercise?  Well that’s why I recommend Spark People.  They give you meal plans and easy starter work outs.  However it can be a bit daunting.  Here are a few more tips to get you started:

Tips:

1) Eat Chicken.  Not just any kind of chicken, but chicken breast.  It’s lower in fat than other meats and high in protein.  Also Turkey breast is great too.  (make sure the label reads “breast” on it to get the best meat.  Ive boughten turkey that just read “turkey meat”.  That stuff is usually higher in fat than the breast.  Also never buy chicken with the skin on it.

2) Get rid of your ketchup and bbq sauce.  Okay, you don’t HAVE to, but seriously there is a lot of sugar and calories in ketchup & bbq sauce.  Use Mustard.  Everyone has it and it’s lower in calories.

3)  Start by making healthier alternatives of your favourite food.  Switch to “low sodium” versions of soups etc.

4) Read the labels of the food your buying. You DO NOT want anything with Trans fats in it!  You don’t even want Saturated fats!  You want healthy fats in your foods. You want foods with EFA’s (essential fatty acids) or Omega’s.

5) Get rid of your oils and buy Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  This oil can be expensive, so the next best kind is Canola Oil.  I use Canola for baking and Olive oil for everything else.

5) Eat Whole Grain everything!  Whole grain rice, whole wheat bread.  You do not want “enriched white flour” in the ingredients list.

6) Drink Water!  It’s amazing how much better you feel when you drink 8 cups of water a day.  This one is so important I should have made it #1!!  Some people do not like to drink the full 8cups a day because they pee too much.  Well you have to expect that for the first week or so.  What happens is, is that your body was starved for water before so it stored some (water weight!).  When you start drinking more water your body goes “WTF?! holy water batman!” and it panics and starts to get rid of all your water weight.  After about a week your body will regulate itself and you wont have to pee so often.  Cool hey?

7) Follow Canada’s Food guide.  http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/order-commander/index-eng.php#1     Seriously, it’s there for a reason.

Count your calories!  I know some people watch the fat they consume, some watch carbs, well I’m telling you that you also need to count your calories!  It’s important to know how many your burning and how many you’re consuming.  (Also watching fats, carbs etc is a very good idea!)

9) Eat Fruit/Veggies and eat LOTS! A woman needs 7-8 Servings a day (Men need 8-10!!).  This is where the Canadian Food guide is good, you can determine exactly how big a serving size is!

10) Okay, so you ate your 2 1/2 oz serving of chicken and 1/2 cup (cooked) Whole Grain Rice.  “That wasn’t much food, I’m so hungry!!”  Well, that was my downfall in my previous diet attempts earlier.  There are a few things wrong with this.  First of all.. are you actually eating enough?  Make sure you are eating enough calories.  A healthy woman should be eating up to 1500 calories, but you if you weigh 280lbs you should probably be eating more, even if you’re trying to loose weight.  You don’t want to starve yourself!  If you starve yourself you end up gaining weight.  Your body does a mini freak out and starts saving all that food as fat for a rainy day.  But that’s not all.. what else is wrong with this meal?  How about.. Vegetables?  With this meal I would eat 1.5-2 cups of steamed vegetables.  If that’s not enough to fill you up, then have that glass of water that you should have with every  meal!

11) Although I have not done it myself, I do recommend visiting a dietitian.  Obviously they could shed much more light on what you should/should not do.

12) No More Soda!  I know I’m bad with this one and I struggle daily with this one.  An easy switch however is to switch to coffee or sugarless Iced Tea..  Also, a great tip Sarah gave me was this:  Every time she had one cup of pop, she would match it with one cup of water.

13) Celebrate your weight loss like you just won the Stanley Cup! OMG YOU LOST 2 LBS!! YAY!  Facebook me and I’ll congratulate you!  You need to be praised, because it’s hard to loose weight.  There is so much more to loosing weight than “just 2lbs lost”.  It’s mental also.

14) Make sure when you read the label on the products you buy, you know exactly what every ingredient is.  You’ve probably seen this on TV a million times but it’s true.  If you don’t know what it is, then don’t buy it.  Even frozen fruit can have preservatives in it!  Also, although I’m an advocate for Splenda as a zero calorie alternative, don’t use it excessively.  Seriously, if you need sugar use Honey, it’s full of anti-oxidants and it’s natural.

15) Avoid Creamy sauces.  This includes salad dressings (such as Caesar dressing etc), Hollandaise sauce, Alfredo sauce etc.  Use vinaigrette’s instead for salad dressing.  What I really reccomend is making your own.  That way you know exactly what’s in it and you can change it to suit your tastes!  If that’s not possible, then use Kraft calorie-wise dressings to begin with.

16) Get rid of all the pasta in your cupboard.  Especially if it’s not whole wheat pasta.  Pasta is extremelly high in calories.  A healthier alternative is whole grain rice.

17) Things like “Spinach pasta” or “60% whole grain” are just ways to trick you, don’t give in!

18) Buy in bulk.  It’s cheaper.  Personally I go to Costco and buy either the huge bags of frozen fruit and veggies or I buy fresh and cut them up and freeze them.  It’s cheaper than buying small amounts at the grocery.

19) Know your body.  Do you have diabetes in your family? How about heart disease?  These issues are Extremely serious and the odds of getting these go up if you’re obese. Find out what you need to do to avoid these. Also, if you use spark people then you know what you’re lacking.  Are you getting enough Iron?

20) Use a supplement.  Whatever you’re not getting from your diet you need to supplement.  Especially if you’re a young woman of child-bearing age, or pregnant.

21) No more butter/margarine.  Okay, I use it occasionally sure.  Make sure it’s the healthiest kind you can find.  It’s easy to go over in calories/fats when you use butter/margarine.  Also, if you use Olive Oil with cooking, make sure you track it, that stuff might be good for you, but it also is high in calories.

22) Track every little morsel of food that goes in your mouth!  If you dip into the chocolate chips and eat a teaspoon full then you need to track it!  Just as in #21 it’s easy to go over your calorie limit with little things here and there.

23) Dont use salt.  Find other ways, creative ways to spice up your food.  Once you cut out salt, after a few weeks you will find that your food starts to taste better.  Your taste buds are no longer “numbed” anymore by too much salt!  It’s amazing to eat just plain fruit and to say “WOW, why didn’t these taste so good when I was younger?!”  It’s probably because your palate has been too numbed by excess salt!  Food will taste great if you get rid of it.

24) Dont make too much food.  Only make what you will eat for that meal.  Especially if you have a tendancy to get up and eat in the evenings.  For a snack you should be having fruit or an ounce of cheese, not another meal!  Don’t worry about not making enough food, because if you plan ahead of time you will know how much to make.  If you’re still not full have more veggies and some water.

25) Try to stay away from high calorie starchy foods.. like potatoes, corn and bananas.  I’ve heard that a good alternative to mashed potatoes is cauliflower!

26) Put yourself in a situation where you’re more likely to work-out.  Let me guess, you already own a treadmill and you never use it?  Well have a work-out party! Invite a bunch of girls over to watch a cheesy 90’s work out video and serve veggies!  If you are at home alone or around people who are not working out, chances are you wont either.

26) Don’t expect anyone to always help you.  Sure, you can rely on your support team, but in the end its you that needs to get up and do it.  Don’t wait for your friend to call you to see if you want to work out, go do it!

Now there is exercise.  I’m not really the one to talk to about exercise.  However what I can tell you is that you do NEED it.  To have a healthy heart to to loose weight you need Cardio workouts.  Cardio works out your heart and burns fat.  What does that mean?  Well that means that you need to get your heart rate up.  Hop on the treadmill, eliptical, go for a run.  Remember, it has to get your heart rate up!  Simply dancing around the house or strength training does not help your heart.  Like I said, I’m not the work-out master, I reccomend talking Sarah or better yet, go to a gym and talk to a trainer!

The Down Low:
1) Change your environment
2) Get support and back up plans
3) Know what your body needs and what it’s getting
4) Get your heart rate up!

Did you know…

- Take the amount of weight that you’ve lost and times that by 4.  Thanks how much pressure has been taken off of your knees! (I’ve lost 44lbs.  So 44×4=176lbs of pressure taken off of my knees!)

- If you’re obese you need to loose 10% of your weight to start drastically improving your health (and riding the chance of cancer, heart disease and diabetes!)

Seriously there are probably a ton of things that I’ve missed and probably a few things that I’ve gotten wrong.  Please leave a comment, especially if I’m giving someone advice that is clearly wrong or unhealthy.   Like I said, I’m here if anybody needs help.  I’d also like to thank MY support team: Dan and Sarah!!
Also, I really need to say this, all of these apply just to maintain a healthy lifestyle, not just to loose weight.  If you want to live healthy then these (in my opinion) are some tips.