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I am not qualified to say the following definitely works but here are some thoughts:
- Don't entertain yourself with food when you are alone. Eating is one pleasure that is immediate and it feels good to gorge on food in front of TV after a stressful day. Food as a primary emotional lever requires you to eat way more frequently. So, try to find other ways to entertain yourself. Eat to live these days so that you can live to eat once a while.
- Enjoy feasts (with meat, dessert, alcohol etc.) when it serves as a social lubricant. That is: when you go out with your friends you don't need to hold back. Enjoying food together is a fundamental part of our human experience after all. Obviously if you go out everyday, this above rule does not work. But you can afford this once maybe twice a week, no problem. When you divide those extra calories you intake over a week you'll see that they are insignificant, especially when you watch what you eat other days.
- Replace one meal a day with freshly-squeezed vegetable juice. This will make your happy by giving you plenty of nutrients and cut back on calories. A 500ml veggie juice has 250cals or so) If you replace breakfast, your digestive system will take a break from say 7pm until 12pm the next day until you have lunch. Your body will thank you.
I got a lot of questions asking what kind of juicer I use and my favorite juice recipe. I have a Breville JE98XL, which has been great. (see link below) Highly recommended! And you can see in the following picture the veggies and fruits I use for juicing. It has kale, swiss chard, zucchini, celery, ginger, apple, carrots and spinach. You might also add collard greens, broccoli, pear, parsley, dill and bok choy.
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- Either completely remove or dramatically reduce red meat and chicken intake on most days. Treat meat as delicacy and eat it sparingly. Lentils, peas, tofu and alike are good substitutes.
- You are not going to lose weight by working out alone. Research shows that 80% of the weight loss comes from diet changes and the rest from sports. If you do boxing for one full hour you will lose about 700 calories. With that increased appetite it's very easy to eat at least 300-400 calories more than what you would have eaten otherwise. However, if you moderate bread and sugar in your daily diet you can lose so many more calories. (A year ago, I intensely worked out for 30 days every other day and didn't lose a single pound!). Also, you get used to eating more when working out and it's very hard to cut back on eating when you are not. So yeah, work out for healthy living but not for losing weight.
- Don't try to lose weight fast. You'll gain it back. You probably haven't put on those weights in a month so don't expect to lose them much faster than you put them on. The trick is changing your eating habits so that you don't feel deprived of food. When you feel deprived it takes energy to say no to foods which you can only sustain for so long. Habits form around 6 months, hence pace yourself such that the changes in your diet don't take huge toll on your mental stamina until you form that habit.
- Realize that there is a real trade-off between eating as your heart pleases vs. being in shape and healthy. Can't have both. Sorry. Those people who have great bodies, those people who live long and healthy lives, choose these qualities over the pleasure of eating anything and everything. Donut tastes good to most of us but some of us just say no to it. Can you be that person?
- No diet will help you keep off that weight you just lost in the long run. A life-style change will. You need to realize that there are so many ways to lose weight. You can starve yourself to death, run everyday crazy hours, or do one of the diets offered by so-called nutritionists/doctors (Atkins, south beach etc.). But ask yourself if you can see yourself doing that for a year. How about 10 years? Are you going to keep ordering that microwaveable broccoli dish every day for the rest of your life? The answer is likely to be no. The only way to have a sustainable and healthy weight is to understand the trade-offs and redefine your relationship with food. Really think about why you are eating. Is it fun, is it a necessity, is it an experience?
- Don't eat any food that is advertised on TV or anything that your grandma would not recognize. So, granola bars, snickers, hershey's kisses, chicken nuggets even granola bars are out. Discover non-fat yogurt parfait with granola as a tasty alternative. Michale Pollan, my favorite writer on food, lays out these and many other easy to follow rules in his book Food Rules.
- Recognize when having that extra bite is not worth the calories. Last bite of food is much less pleasurable but has the same calories as the first bite.
- When you eat less and don't snack between meals, food will taste much better. It's just human nature. You enjoy water more when you are thirsty and so on. Hence, having ample time between meals not only saves you precious calories, but also makes you enjoy your food. Guilt free...
- If you are not really hungry in the morning, you probably have eaten more and later than you should have the night before. Breakfast means "break" "fast". So you should feel like you have been fasting before your breakfast.
- Know the Glycemic Index of foods. (a comprehensive table is here) It helps you predict how long you will feel full after the meal. Carbohydrates that break down quickly during digestion and release glucose rapidly into the bloodstream have a high GI. The faster your glucose level rises the faster and lower it goes down, which makes you want to eat that donut you coworker brought so badly.
- Veggies fill your stomach, which makes you feel full for fewer calories than meat and grains. Salads are great alternatives for meals. You can eat the whole backyard for 500 calories or so. Few things to note, however; easy on the salad dressing, blue cheese or steak toppings. They could double the calories without you feeling it.
- Reducing your plate size is a great way to feel full. Many people, especially dominant in American culture, feel full when their plates are empty, not when their body tells them so. Then it's only logical to have smaller plates which would give you the feeling of completion. Ask yourself: Do you stop eating when you feel you've had enough or when there is nothing else to eat?
- Reduce your sugar intake. Sugar not only has a lot of calories but it also helps clog your arteries when combined with fat. There are better kinds of sugar; the kind you get from fruit vs. high-fructose corn syrup but sugar is still sugar so don't consume in access even thought fruits. Below is a good resource to judge the sugar content of everyday food items
Here is to a healthy and happy living!
Taylan
