Put the Cookie Down and Back Away!!!!

What SHOULD You Be Eating? Consider these Choices...           

            A  lot of dieters start out by trying to control their calories through skipping meals.  If you want to lose weight one of the very best strategies is to eat more frequent, smaller meal portions and avoid skipping meals.  Skipping will make you more hungry later on and possibly lead to overeating so just say No!  You want to keep your calories above 1200 calories

per day.  To find out how many calories you need in a day to
maintain your current weight you can use a basal metabolic
rate calculator to determine that number.  Here's a link and some explanations of BMR and a calculator so you can figure out your BMR:  http://walking.about.com/cs/calories/l/blcalcalc.htm

Start your day with a healthy breakfast. Please understand that

I'm going to try to give you principles and how you choose to apply them depends on what your preferences are and what your resources are.  If you've decided to adopt a full meal plan with one of the more popular weight loss programs stick to it.  If you're doing this on your own, you can check out these choices. 

 

BREAKFAST

Choose an "entree".  This should be a cereal such as granola or oatmeal, yogurt or eggs, a muffin or pancakes.  Look carefully at the calorie count and do your best to maximize the ratio between protein and carbs.  The higher the protein amount the longer you'll keep that "full" feeling.  Add a serving of dairy or protein and a serving of fruit. So as an example:
1/3 cup of granola
4 oz. of fat free milk [when you use milk on your cereal you still get a protein/dairy serving]
3/4 cup of fresh blueberries
Coffee ( mine is black and therefore I can drink as much as I want)/Tea

I typically save my breakfast protein/dairy serving and eat it about halfway between breakfast and lunch.  A low fat string cheese or a wedge of the "Light, Laughing Cow Cheese" works great and helps keep away hunger pangs.  You could eat yours at breakfast if desired.

I'm sure you're reading this going pancakes?  Consider this.  If you take 1/4 - 1/3 cup of "Heart Smart" Bisquick and add 1/4  - 1/3 cup of low fat milk you can make 3 small pancakes.   If you want to use your protein mix in an egg.  Add 3/4 of a cup of blueberries inside  or 5 medium strawberries sliced on the top and you no longer need any syrup or toppings and you have a great tasting breakfast.  You can also add cinnamon to the batter with a small box of raisins (the little ones) and have cinnamon raisin pancakes.  If you just have to have butter and syrup I recommend "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" and some sort of sugar free syrup.

By the way while you're transitioning over from calorie laden items to less you can use the weaning method.  For instance if you're used to cream and two sugars, gradually reduce them or replace one of your sugars with Splenda for a few days and keep the other, etc. so you gradually transition rather than cold turkey if that helps you.

Don't forget your water.  I try to add my first 16 oz. in with my mid-morning "saved" protein serving.  Depending on how you construct your breakfast you may come up with another strategy that works well.

You should also know that some fruits have a higher glycemic index than others which makes sense because some are sweeter than others.  What that means is you can still eat them, you just get less of them than you would of something less sweet.  Here's a link to some information about low glycemic index fruits that you can read about to give you some hints about smart choices:
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/whattoeat/a/glycemicindlist_3.htm

My personal favorites are apples, blueberries, strawberries, pineapples, watermelon, and for portability, raisins.  I get the tiny boxes and keep two in my purse in case I'm really hungry for a quick snack.  You can also drink fruit juice but the serving size is typically 1/2 cup so I tend to go for the whole fruits when I can.

Put the cookie down and try this instead, won't you?  More about the other meals of the day in my next post.  Stretch, move and drink water and before you know it the pounds will begin coming off.
Use all the usual strategies you've learned for weight loss like drink a glass of water before a meal, chew slowly, really taste your food, use a small plate and leave the table when you're done eating.  Clean up your kitchen and get out of it at night.  Go do something else like walk, fold laundry, read a book in a separate room of the house, play a game with your kids but keep yourself distracted.  The first couple weeks are hard because you're changing what you're doing and you have to think about it but soon enough if you stick with it, this becomes second nature and you won't even have to think and you'll reach for the right things.

Cheers,
HV 13