Happy Friday Eve everyone. Just one more day to the coveted weekend!!! Yay!! Time to kick-back and chill - when I can for roughly 48 hours! Thank God!
Well, we're not there yet, so let's get this ball rolling, shall we?
I am always looking for way to eat better ands spend less. Everyone knows it costs and arm and leg to eat healthy - but you run the risk of paying the price with your life if you don't. As I was preparing to write to you today, I could not stop wrestling with something my doctor said to me yesterday. And that is .. "you might want to think about losing 10 pounds." I wanted to hit the roof - and I know my blood pressure went sky high when she said that. You see, for those of you who know me personally, you know my health struggles over the last year and a half. I underwent 3 surgeries in a span of four months from the end of 2010 thru April of 2011. I was on every steroid and pain medication in the books. I was immobile, incapable of working out and ballooned up to a weight I don't even publicly want to put in black and white. What I will tell you is this. After I healed from my last surgery and was cleared to start working-out again, I lost 65 pounds in the last 7 months!
My doctor, who I started seeing at just 7 pounds shy of my heaviest weight - never said one word to me about shedding a pound. It was not until yesterday - that she made the "you might want to lose weight" remark without even looking back at how far I had come. She initially started to say 20 pounds, but retracted her statement when she saw my head, neck and eyes roll around to look her in the face with that "I know you trippin' " expression that only certain people can give (you know who you are ..LOL). For me to to lose another 10 pounds would be pushing it. I would officially be too skinny! I'm already wearing single digit clothing that is falling off of me. Not to mention, my husband has jokingly started calling me a lollipop! Boy, do I love him! Well, I am happy with the way I look and am proud of what I have achieved in the last 7 months. It took a lot of hard work and determination to get my body back.
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| Me, Nov. 2011 - I am actually 12 pounds smaller than this now!!! |
There are at least two lessons that I have learned in life and throughout my journey to become healthy and wealthy that I will remember forever. They are: Everything doesn't work for everybody and don't reinvent the wheel. I have people asking me all the time how I lost weight. But, I already know, what works for me - may not and in many case will not work for them. So I am hesitant to share all my details. Mainly because I know their faith/belief level isn't where it should be - nor have they truly submitted and committed to the reality that they need to lose weight. That's why today, I am sharing with you a very interesting and informative article I came across in Fitness Magazine. Together, we'll learn easy tips for eating better and spending less. Now that's what I call living healthy and wealthy!
by the editors of FITNESS Magazine
If anyone knows
why Americans overeat and how to stop it, it's Brian Wansink, PhD, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab in Ithaca, New York. He pioneered the field of food psychology, and for 20 years he's been studying our oh-so-odd eating behaviors -- how we eat more popcorn, even when it's stale, if the tub is giant; how we underestimate how much soup we've consumed if the bowl is secretly rigged never to empty; even how we enjoy a meal more if we believe the wine we sip alongside it is expensive. These and other findings demonstrate what Wansink calls "mindless eating" -- which is the topic and title of his new book,
Mindless Eating (Bantam). We pulled Wansink out of the lab and asked him to share his strategies for eating healthier for life.
Related: Stick-to-It Weight Loss Strategies
The #1 Reason We Eat Too Much
"We use external cues, like there's no more food left, rather than internal cues, like feeling full, to tell us it's time to stop eating. So we're out of sync with our bodies. But also these outside, visual cues aren't reliable. For example, if you're relying on what you see, how will you know how much you've eaten once your plate is empty? The answer is you won't -- and as a result, you'll eat more. In one study I did with chicken wings, people whose plates were regularly cleared ate an average of seven wings -- and remembered eating four or five. But people whose chicken bones piled up on the plate ate an average of five wings, or 30 percent less, and they were fairly accurate at estimating how many they'd eaten. This is one reason it's so dangerous for us to eat straight out of a bag or carton. If you see the food in a bowl or on a plate, you'll eat less."
What Else Skews Our Calorie Count
"The bigger a meal, the less accurate
our calorie estimation is. Most of us are fairly good at estimating how many calories
are in a small meal. But with large meals, like at Thanksgiving, we tend to be off by 50 percent, I found. The takeaway here is that instead of looking at a huge burger and fries and chocolate shake and estimating the calories, you should estimate the calories of each individual item, then add them up."
Related: Get Control of Your Calorie Count
Where We Mess Up the Most
"There are five major areas where people tend to overindulge: at dinnertime, while snacking, at restaurants, at parties, and desktop or dashboard dining. The music, the number of dinner companions, how long we're sitting at the table -- all of these factors affect how much we'll eat. But generally, anything that takes our focus off the food makes us more likely to overeat. Before you throw in the towel, though, and decide that reining in your eating is a hopeless cause, you should know that in reality most people have a tendency to overeat in maybe only two of these five areas. In the other areas, they're pretty good."
Why This Is a Very American Problem
"Many of us view food as a means to an end. We eat breakfast quickly so we can get to work, or we eat lunch so we won't be hungry.
Unlike the French, for example, most of us don't see meals as a sensory experience, so we're not cued in to how the food tastes or
how it makes us feel. This isn't true for every American, of course. Likewise, every Frenchman or woman isn't a foodie either. But generally the stereotype is right. When we did a study of Parisians, asking them when they decide during a meal to stop eating, they answered that they stopped when they were no longer hungry, the food no longer tasted good, or the food was cold. When we asked Chicagoans the same question, they said they finished when the TV show they were watching ended, when their friends were through, or when there was no more milk in their cereal bowl. In so many ways, we're eating on autopilot -- our food decisions are unconscious or invisible, like breathing. But hopefully, by becoming aware that we're making these decisions -- and what we're basing them on -- we can start making better eating choices."
Related: Avoid Food Triggers and Stop Mindless Eating
Our Biggest Blind Spot
"Size -- it matters a lot. In study after study, research shows that the larger the plate, the serving bowl, the packaged box, even the serving utensil, the more we'll eat. Our eye judges amounts by using contextual cues, so a helping of mashed potatoes on a 12-inch plate, for example, is going to look like less than it would on an 8-inch plate. If you think you're too smart to be fooled, though, you should know that food experts -- people who think about, research and publish studies on food -- can be tricked too. For a study, I invited professors at one of the three best nutritional science departments in the nation to an ice cream social, where they were given either a 17- or 34-ounce bowl and either a 2- or 3-ounce scoop. What happened? People who were given the bigger bowl took 31 percent more ice cream, and people who'd been given the bigger ice cream scoop took 15 percent more ice cream. This underlines what a difference it can make to change your environment. So:
Mini-size your bowls and plates; replace short, wide glasses with tall, skinny ones; and repackage foods you buy in bulk into small servings."
Smart Food Strategies
Follow Wansick's
advice by using these simple tricks.
How to Reach Your Goal Weight Without Even Trying
"If you cut 100 to 200 calories a day, you'll lose 10 to 20 pounds a year. The great thing about this fact is that 100 to 200 calories is what I call the mindless margin. We found that people don't even notice if they eat that much less. They feel just as full. So one very easy way to cut those calories is to always serve yourself 20 percent less than you normally would. Generally, that's four or five fewer bites dished onto your plate."
Related: Excuse-Proof Your Diet
The Simple Trick for Eating More Veggies
"The more variety there is, the more we eat. This is true at salad bars, so it makes sense that at home, you'll eat more salad if you toss in more healthy, low-calorie things. Likewise, you'll probably
eat more vegetables if you serve a medley of them, and not just, say, a plate of broccoli. Another trick is to keep the salad and vegetables on the table but leave the meat and starches on the stove. The more convenient a food is, the more we'll eat it; and the more hassle it is to get it, the less we'll eat."
The Best Thing You Can Do for Yourself Today
"Think about your
dieting weaknesses or danger zones, and come up with three food trade-offs or policies. For example, if ice cream is your downfall, make a pact with yourself that every time you eat a bowl, you have to walk two miles, or however far you would walk for a bowl. Or if you're not so great about eating fruit, don't allow yourself to eat anything until you've had one piece of fruit. The key is not to say, "I'll never eat ice cream again." Or, "I can eat only an apple for breakfast." For a diet to work, you've got to customize it to your eating tendencies. You've also got to be reasonable, which is why I suggest only three food trade-offs and policies. They're not too burdensome, and if you slip up with one, you've still followed two, which together add up to that 200-fewer-calories goal."
Related: Are You Guilty of These Diet Crimes?
Chew on This
"At the lab, we're surrounded by food all the time, and it's a fact that the more you think of a food, the more likely it is you'll eat it, and the more of it you'll eat. Our secret way to prevent constant snacking: Chew strong mint gum -- we like Dentyne Ice or Wrigley's Xtra. It's so overpowering that all other foods lose their appeal because nothing goes well with that flavor."
More from
FITNESS Magazine:
The Lose 10 Pounds Diet: Low-Calorie Breakfast Recipes
See How Many Calories You're Burning
Outsmart These 5 Diet Downfalls
Peel Off the Pounds This Month
4 Crash Diets - Tested!
Let me know your thoughts on today's entry. And if you need more advice on eating better and spending less, drop me line. In the meantime, click the link below and check out some of the extraordinary products that keep me living healthy and wealthy everyday. Until next time!
http://www.reduce3sizesin10mins.com
The future depends on what we do in the present. 
