Long Bones

Okay, this sounds incredibly hippy dippy trippy (yes, I watch What Not to Wear), but I’m serious. One of the best ways to stick with this weight loss journey is to find an aspect of it that you love. Because this is a lifestyle change and not a diet and I can’t reasonably advocate you to do something that you hate, (almost) every day, forever. Because there will be parts of it that you hate you have to find the thing that balences them. I was going to say you could try to find a really good work around, but you can’t work around exercise, or eating vegetables.

So finding the thing you love can’t be that difficult, right? Yeah, maybe, not so much. It takes a lot of trying different things. You can think something is your passion one week and then grow bored with it the next. We are fickle creatures, human beings.

For Nelly it’s exercise, going to the gym isn’t a chore for her – in fact it’s one of the sweetest parts of her day. Aulika reports sex, reading on the bike and dancing. For me it’s cooking excellent healthy foods. Ten years ago I had to call Nelly to ask her how to make spaghetti. As in “boil water, add pasta, wait, drain, pour on sauce” make spaghetti. These days the transformation from ingredients to food comes naturally and I love how under my hand a simple blend of mushrooms, leeks, a touch of butter, salt and a splash of wine can become something transcendental.

So a large part of losing weight is exercise. And it isn’t just helpful for losing weight, it is apparently imperative for looking good once you’ve lost weight. But not everybody enjoys exercise. And by not everybody, I mean me. Seriously. I have never gotten one of those exercise highs people talk about no matter how hard I’ve pushed myself. I just don’t get them I guess. My main source of exercise these days is walking to work and back, but it’s getting cold and dark and sometimes I’m running late (like yesterday) and sometimes I need my car to run work errands, and sometimes I need to bring more than I can carry to work (like today).

But all is not lost! Even if it’s 40 below for two weeks like last winter there will still be exercise! Yes, I have a gym membership and I do hit the gym, but even if I didn’t there are plenty of non-gym things that count as exercise:

Housework. I put hand weights in the bottom of my laundry basket and my washer and dryer are downstairs.
Shopping. Just don’t spring for fast food while you’re out refreshing your wardrobe because all your clothes are too big.
Dancing. Rocks.
Shovelling snow. Doesn’t rock, but is necessary.
Playing with kids/animals/friends who act like kids. Also known as wrastling. The ‘A’ is intentional.

If you have fun with it the more likely you are to do it.

This could alo be called a love song to Gladware 3 cup/24 oz containers.  I work in downtown Fairbanks Alaska and while Fairbanks is quite a small city at the lunch hour I am still within walking distance (one mile) of a barbecue joint, an awesome Italian place, a Greek restaurant, two Thai places, a Korean food restaurant, three coffee shops, two diners, a really nice restaurant/wine bar, and three bars. At least – I just thought of another restaurant that I’m not sure how to classify. Lots and lots of food options. In fact, Big Daddy’s Bar-B-Q and Banquet Hall is literally one parking lot away from my window. So we can say the temptation to eat out is insistent.

Office View - the orange building is Big Daddy's

Thank goodness for my perpetual lack of financial skills in this one area. I cannot afford to eat out all the time – I could if I budgeted right but there’s always a book or a skirt or a movie…and then all of a sudden I can’t. So I was already not in the habit of eating out every day when I started losing weight last April.

Gladware sealed the deal. Here’s my tip – when you are at home at night preparing a clean and healthy meal for you and your family (if you have one – I don’t), make one extra portion, immediately toss it into a gladware/tupperware/genericware container and put it in the fridge. That way someone won’t accidentally munch on it as a second helping or a snack. You could label it “My Lunch” if that’s a problem in your house. Then put the container in the fridge and grab it as you leave. You don’t have to worry about packing a lunch in the morning before work or trying to scrounge a meal from the condiments drawer at the office (or, the horror, ordering take-out Chinese!!).

Now I know that there are these crazy people out there who are not enthusiastic about left overs. I know people who just refuse to eat them, they throw away whatever is left over from dinner and never look back. While I don’t quite understand these people I do say there are plenty of low calorie solutions that still involve bringing lunch to work with you. For instance, toss together a salad – hold the dressing out so it doesn’t get soggy. (In fact, I keep a bottle of balsamic vinegar on my desk). Make sure you measure out your portion of dressing – it adds up fast!! Or you could make a whole wheat sandwich with lots of vegetables and hummus and low-sodium cold cuts. Add some fruit and you’re set. None of these take up a lot of time in the morning and all will save you from huge restaurant portions.

Take this optical illusion:

Now you know, even if your eyes deceive you that the center circle is the same size in both pictures, right? Because otherwise it wouldn’t be an optical illusion. Use the same principal when you are dishing up dinner. Pretend that the circle in the center is your food and the perimeter around the outside circles is the edge of your plate. One potato on a small plate looks bigger than one potato on a big plate.

Brian Wansink, Ph.D., the author of Mindless Eating (which I highly highly recommend and nobody paid me to say that) goes into this in detail. Unfortunately I lent my copy of the book to Shondar so I can’t quote him exactly, but it is scientifically proven that you eat less if you eat off small plates.

In my house the salad plates are always dirty first, followed by the bowls. I do have to warn you about eating from bowls though, what they lack in diameter they make up for in depth most of the time, so if you eat from bowls make sure they’re shallow.

I had a bingy day yesterday. Most of the time I’m the Mary Poppins of calorie counting – practically perfect in every way. For weeks I’ll go without busting through my allotted calories per day. And then I’ll have a day like yesterday.

To be fair, I think I may have been eating too little since I started exercising more frequently. Unfortunately the exercise tracker at www.livestrong.com says you burn way way way more calories than you actually do with exercise so I’ve been estimating. And I’ve been really tired lately (clue 1). And I’ve had these weird cravings which I don’t normally get (clue 2). And then yesterday I had a lot of chips and nacho cheese dip. As Nelly, Aulika or Jess could tell you – I hate fake cheese. Absolutely abhor velveeta, american slices or cheese whiz. Anything that has the phrase “Pasturized Processed Food Product.”

And yet I noshed on the bright orange monstrosity as if I was about to go into hibernation.

I believe the moral of the story is for me: eat more good stuff and you’ll eat less bad stuff. Pretty simple. I hope.

To be fair, it was only after I dropped those first forty pounds that I became a calorie counting convert. The thing with counting calories is that you become very aware of your habits and your vices very quickly. It is enlightening.

Of course this tip has other important factors in weight-loss wrapped up into it. I’m thinking of portion control specifically. After all, how are you supposed to measure how much you are eating if you can’t tell a cup from an ounce?

First, I don’t really actually bother to check portion sizes on not-starchy veggies and greens. Seriously, take spinach. Wonderful yummy awesome spinach is 7 calories per cup. So I’m going to eyeball it.

Anything more calorie dense, such as grains, proteins, fruit, chocolate, starchy or fatty vegetables, drinks – juice, soda and alcohol, dairy and cooking fat.

Some things will surprise you. For instance, say you’re being very conscientious about your diet and you’ve switched from coke to cranberry juice. Good for you! Cranberry juice has lots of vitamins and nutrients and all of that. But when you start looking at calories – 12 ounces of coke has 140 calories – 12 ounces of cranberry juice has 210 calories. One third more than the coke!

I’m not saying don’t drink cranberry juice! I’m saying be aware of how much you’re drinking over the course of a day.

There are lots of good websites out there for counting calories. I am a devotee of www.livestrong.com. A google search will help you find the one that’s best for you.

This is a tip that has been very near to my heart over the course of the past two years. It is one of those things I have to keep on telling myself over and over again so I don’t get discouraged.

Do not worry about the small gains.

Most people I know who have been successful at weight loss either weigh themselves once a week or once a day. I have heard arguments for both and personally I am a once a day girl. But weighing yourself once a day has its hazards. You see, weight loss is never going to be a smooth slope downwards. You won’t see the scale go down by .2 on Monday, .2 on Tuesday, .2 on Wednesday on through to Sunday. For me I’ll have a week or two of really rapid weight loss, then a modest gain, then slow weight loss, another modest gain and then we’re back to rapid loss.

I could be eating perfectly, the exact number of calories a day that I need, and exercising regularly, and I would still see that pattern. There are several culprits for this weird weight gain, two of which I’m going to review here.

1. Watch your Sodium.

This is a biggie. Seemingly healthy meals can be rife with excess sodium. Salt makes everything taste better true, and sodium is a very good preservative so lots of prepared foods rely a lot on it. So keep an eye on how much sodium you’re taking in and try to keep it at a healthy level. What is a healthy level you ask? The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute says less than 2,400mg per day and that 1,500mg seems to be more helpful. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/hbp/prevent/sodium/sodium.htm Decreasing your sodium intake will make you retain less water and have less random weight spikes because of it.

2. Watch your Hormones.

The second cause of random weight gains is your hormones. Both men and women (though obviously more apparent for menstrating women) go through monthly hormonal cycles which do very much affect how much you are going to gain or lose on a daily basis. There is nothing you can do to fight it. As far as I know. And even if there were I don’t think I would recommend it. Let your body do its thing and if you have a small gain and can’t get rid of it for a week, remember it isn’t your fault, it’s your body being human.

So you want to lose some weight? Found yourself on the wrong side of the scale? Your old “fat jeans” have become your “every day jeans” and even those are getting tight. You don’t have the endurance or energy to go out hiking or play very long with your friend’s kids and you’ve pretty much stopped having sex because that involves being naked. With another person.

I’m here to help. I’ve been pretty successful so far in my weight loss journey and honestly the things that have worked are not necessarily the things that they say will work.

So my first tip for you: Start today. Start right now. Do not wait for the right time, tomorrow isn’t the right time. Neither is next week. I don’t care if you have half a cake at home waiting to be eaten. Stick it in the freezer and forget about it. Or if you can’t (I couldn’t when this first started) stick it in the trash. And then cover it with used kitty litter. If you are meeting friends for lunch today get a sane option and skip the soda. Eat half and write down the calories. Take a walk after work. Start this moment.