One of the worst changes was I went from pleasantly plump to morbidly obese seemingly overnight. I was frantic because I do not want to be this way, mostly because it is unhealthy and frankly uncomfortable to move, sit, sleep or just BE. Being unable to do things really made it worse and going from a decent income to being on the government disability meant a HUGE drop in income. That meant cuts across the board including eating well.
So I tried to do my best as I sat day by day at the computer. I started coming across advertising for this gimmick or that to lose weight, (almost as many as there were for work at home scams). I looked at each one hoping to find something I could do, not just feasible but affordable. I tried a few... OK I tried a LOT of them. Nothing worked and some actually made me ill. All of them dented my already ailing pocket book!
I find more and more trouble breathing and my chronic pain is getting worse and all of it I can see clearly stems from the weight. Maybe not the cause and maybe losing the weight won't fix them, but I will lay money that losing the weight will improve them all dramatically! So I grumbled and complained and then I started to read... and read and read and READ! I found things that are old and things that are new and I developed a system that I feel will really and truly work for a lot of people.
What I want to do, though, is I want to give this system away truly free! Not like the ones that say free until you get to the bottom and there is some trick, like a ton for 'processing and handling' or the ones that offer some download for free that is all pep talk and gets you excited and dangles the carrot just beyond your reach or gives half the program but you need to sign up for their pricey 'support' program.My personal favorite are the ones that offer a really low priced item and then at the bottom you find it is that price for X amount of time, (usually VERY short and not of much help) but if you want it longer than that, it is a HUGE cost!
So I found these ideas and I have compiled them all into a set of guidelines. None of them are steadfast rules because too many people have too many different issues with their weight and their lifestyles and personal preferences and the list goes on and on as to why. I am not here to create a get rich quick (or ever) scheme with this. I want people to have FREE information, ideas and support... from each other! You see, I am no specialist. I have no degrees, I am not here touting nutrition. I am not bashing nutrition either, as you will see. I am giving tips and ideas to help bring nutrition to the most difficult situation and I want to do so without taking someones money if they aren't even sure it is going to work.
I also want to clear up some stereotypes. This is my 'soapbox'
Overweight people are NOT:
lazy, stupid, stubborn, greedy, unwilling to change, ignorant of the damage and effect of obesity, immune to the barbs and name calling thrown around so easily. They... WE... do not need you to point out the obvious about the weight and what it means. We know you mean well but you are probably hurting more than helping.
Overweight people are:
in need of help and support, many times are fighting medical issues that complicate the weight problem, often scared, desiring to change this part of their life, sometimes panicked sometimes manic and sometimes out of control but most of all they are HUMAN BEINGS with rights and emotions.
We need you, our friends, family and loved ones; our doctors, neighbors and strangers passing us on the streets, to care and be supportive while we struggle; to be understanding when we have moments of weakness (as we ALL tend to do). Don't call us names or remind us of the issues when we don't follow the regimen every single time! Cheer us on when we have even a small success and cheer us up when we feel frustrated or defeated.
OK no more soapbox, for now.
Now, first and foremost, I would like it if you introduce yourself, tell us something about you and your weight story, tell us your height and weight IF you are comfortable doing so and at least your weight loss goal. I personally have mine set up in stages because my final goal seems out of reach and depressing! If you do not want to do that, feel free just to read. I think the chatting helps each other but if reading this stuff is all you want and it helps, do not feel like you HAVE to talk, or in talking that there is anything you HAVE to reveal. That kind of thing causes stressors and that is a part of what we are all battling in this issue.
You are welcome to print and bring this to your health professional for consideration.
So, want to hear my ideas?
I call this the 10 second diet.
(Not because it takes ten seconds, this is going to take time and some work. We did not get this way overnight, changing it will take even longer. You will see why I call it that before we are done here!)
Step 1
I want you to call a 'family' meeting. If this is not feasible, have private discussions, but I feel the more that are involved at one time the better, and easier, it is. Not to mention the time saving factor in doing it all at once.
This is something you need to do whether you live with that family, or even are technically related to that person or not. Anyone close to you needs to have a conversation about the changes in your life. I do not mean just family that are blood or marriage relatives I mean significant others, their kids, close friends,etc. Anyone that affects your life on a regular and personal level. What you are going to say is that you are now taking charge of the weight issue in your life and you NEED to have them support you. This support may mean changes in the way they do things or their own eating habits but for your sake, for your health, for your LIFE (and maybe even theirs), it HAS to happen. Read to them my little soapbox above about what overweight people are, are not and what you need from them. That change may be something as simple as not pressuring you about your weight, your progress or the program (unless they are wanting to start using it themselves and for that simply send them here). If they, or you, have concerns on a medical level, by all means feel free to print this out and discuss it with your doctor.
Step 2
The next part is a conversation with yourself. One of the biggest faults of a diet is it's inflexibility. These steps here are to be considered IDEAS and GUIDES. If one of them doesn't work for you, you don't want to try it or you just do not like the first word in the sentence that is OK, try one of the others. There are a lot to try. You may even find that NOTHING here works. Do NOT beat yourself up if it turns out that way. NOTHING works for EVERYONE!
I do encourage you to stop in here to chat about it though, maybe some encouragement from others doing the same steps will be just that little boost you need to feel re-inspired to try some more! Either way, the key here is FLEXIBILITY! Flexibility and forgiveness. If you 'slip' do not despair and do not give up, just try again. Practice makes perfect, they say and even the greatest pianist made mistakes in the beginning of their training. Our habits are often deeply ingrained and our brains do not like to change habits easily. If you keep running into problems, instead of trying to do it every time or even most of the time, try reversing it and doing it a few times when you really FEEL like you want to do that step. Now this means it will take longer but it also reduces the chance of setting yourself up to fail yet again. We do not want to fight the resistances in our minds, we want to flow with them and bend them slowly.
Step 3
If you do not already own the following items, go and get them. You can purchase them all fairly inexpensively at dollar stores, retail stores, yard sales, etc. You might even find friends and relatives with some they are not using for you to try this step with before buying them.
2-3 sugar spoons
2-3 relish forks
2-3 pairs of chop sticks (don't panic just trust me, OK?)
2-3 salad plates or saucers
2-3 teaspoons (regular 'eating' spoons not the measuring teaspoons)
as many small to medium containers with lids as you can manage to gather together. Make sure that you can use them in the microwave and fridge
Step 4
Take all serving spoons, full sized plates, serving dishes, crock pots, dutch ovens and other large pans and large food containers and wrap them up and put them in storage somewhere not easily gotten to. Do NOT throw or give them away... not yet.
Step 5
Stop using your regular eating utensils in favor of the chopsticks. If you do not know how to use chop sticks, try asking a local Asian restaurant (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc) if they have someone that might be willing to show you some tricks and guide you in learning. In the meantime do not panic, that is something you can work on as you go.
Now, if you are really, really adverse to the chopsticks because you just do not think you can learn how, or as you are learning how, use the other utensils but play with the chopsticks a little at a time. Find someone to show you the basics. Google a step-by-step. Go to an Asian restaurant and watch someone use them. Ask one of the staff at an Asian restaurant to help show you the basics. If you cannot find anything, ask me I will try to walk you through the basics. Then practice every day a few minutes, make it something fun the whole family can play at, turn it into a contest. (Go ahead, try the fly trick I dare ya!)
Step 6
Now, I know this one a lot are going to balk at, I know I resisted this one for decades! But here again, trust me please and if it doesn't work for you, then it doesn't and you can eliminate this part.
Find and set up for drinking water of some kind.
OK now stop the cringing and don't panic, I am not asking you to give up your regular drinks in favor of water. In fact at first it is going to be barely noticeable to you, I hope. What you are going to do is start taking it like you would a medicine, make it two cups in the morning and drink your regular drinks in between. You will probably find this isn't so bad and if you keep increasing the amount pretty soon you may find your body actually starts craving it. The reason that happens, is because quite simply we are meant to drink water but like a kid that is only given candy to eat his body doesn't recognize regular food as actually being good not just for it but good tasting We have gotten so far away from water that we do not like it even its most natural, tasty state. When we wean ourselves back to it, we actually find the body craves it,
Side note: This one here was one of my BIGGEST issues. I knew I needed to drink water. Not just more water, water period but I HATED the stuff! Then one day I, who hate doctors and hospitals, gave in to the burning and increasing pain of what I thought was a very nasty UTI. It wasn't, sadly, it was in fact a kidney stone.
(I'd rather give birth again without anesthesia and I had some HARD births!)
I drank nothing but water for a week but I still hated it and found myself back to soda in no time but now I was worried. I never want to do that again so I bought some bottled water and sat it on my desk next to my soda. Every once in a while I took a sip, sometimes I followed it immediately with a sip of soda cuz all I thought was YUCK! Know what happened though? This almost 50 year old woman that swore she wouldn't ever drink water because it was gross, started liking it, a bit at least. I now drink about 40 ozs. a day in between my sodas. There are some days I don't even drink my soda because I WANT the water. NO ONE will be more surprised of that than I was. I do not delude myself that I will ever give up my sodas altogether but if I can get to drinking even half water and half soda I will be one step closer to another goal. If it happens that I end up drinking even more than that, all the better, but I won't force myself.
Step 7
This one you have to use a lot of flexibility in because we all have busy lives and families that affect this step, but do this as best as you can.
Cut your meal size in half and double the frequency.
(I hear a lot of "HUH?" going on. It is OK, I will give examples here too).
If you are used to 3 regular size meals, turn it into 6 half sized meals.If you are used to two, make it four. Now if you only eat one actual meal a day I do actually suggest you go to three and work your way up to the six. Try your best to make them at the same time every day or as close as possible. I hear you groaning and saying you do not have time. So, how much time do you think you will have when the weight makes YOU disabled?
Side note:
NO! I am not getting on your case or trying to make things impossible. I am just trying to cover all of the excuses that have gone from being legitimate to being a pat answer. Think about this really, REALLY hard. Are you sure you cannot find a way to squeeze a little extra time into your routine. Wait, (I hear you laugh at the few minutes), you will see that some of the further down steps are going to cut out some time so what you are adding will only be a little bit more than what was saved.
You may have to start working on setting up quick-to-fix half meals and find some grazing foods (I will get into grazing later). The point here is that you want to NEVER let your body be hungry! When you actually get the signal from your stomach that you FEEL hungry, the body has already shifted into 'starvation' mode. Now this is sort of a misnomer because you are obviously not really starving, but what happens is the body recognizes the signal to refuel and it stops processing the fats already stored. This is the beginning of the vicious cycle because now you're not only eating to refuel but your body wants to take and store some of what you are bringing in again because it is sort of panicked. So just eating when you are hungry can actually make you gain weight. This is another purpose in these steps is to retrain our bodies to work for us not against us.
Step 8
Since you are going to be eating half sized meals, the logical step to start that is to FIX half as much as you are used to fixing. This is obviously going to take getting used to and if sometimes you slip or some recipes just do not half easily, that is OK, this is what you do. As soon as the meal is done cooking IMMEDIATELY (BEFORE eating) take and put half of it into storage containers. If they need to cool first, put the covers loosely over them and put them somewhere like in the microwave while you are eating. This is sort of an 'out of sight out of mind' concept that might not work for you at first because you KNOW it is there and available. That is OK too, remember: flexibility. Oh and in case you didn't get it, this is one of the reasons to pack away all those big pots and pans you use. It is much harder to make over sized portions in a smaller pan. Similar concept applies in the next step.
Step 9
Serving and eating. Never use the same dish you have prepared food in. Even if it is something from the microwave. Serve using only teaspoons. Put them on the saucer or salad plates. Do NOT overload your plates. No item should touch another food item, including being stacked on top of other items. Try to eat in a location as far from the kitchen as possible. You can return for more helpings but the same no overloading applies every time.
Eat using the chop sticks if you can. If you cannot yet do so, use the relish fork for everything you possibly can, (even if it something you usually prefer to use a spoon for) and only use the soup spoon for things you just cannot use the chopsticks or a fork for, like soups. Do not overload your utensil and if food drops off of it, do NOT reload or pick up the dropped portion unless it drops the entire portion. If it does drop the entire portion make the next one a little smaller. It will seem as if what is on the utensil is doll sized but you will get used to it in time. We have become overused to giant sized servings even on our utensils.
As mentioned earlier, you can return for extra helpings, but after clearing your plate, wait no less than 5 minutes before returning to do so.
Now I bet you are saying WOW all these steps and still no mention of ten seconds and no way THAT is all ten seconds of stuff so why the name? Well the wait is over, here you go 10 steps and 10 seconds:
Step 10
Now that we are working on portions let's work on one of the biggest things I have seen happening to us in this culture. We have become a nation of fast everything: fast food, fast cars, fast service and FAST EATING! So, what we are going to do is let our stomachs work like they were designed to do and stop trying to race them. Ready for this? It is big, it is awesome, it is so simple and obvious that no one thinks about it!
After you have taken a portion of food, put the utensil DOWN! Chew the food as well as you can manage to retrain yourself into doing and once you have swallowed, (let me emphasize that part: AFTER you have swallowed, not while you are chewing or any time before you have completely swallowed that bite), count to ten. I do not care if you use the 1-one thousand or the 1-Mississippi method or use a stop watch. Just use some way to count seconds to ten. Once you have reached the count of ten then and only then can you PICK UP! your utensil to get your next mouthful.
Now if this is just way beyond your will power, do not fret, it was mine too! I went down to 5 and still struggled so I went down to just placing the utensil down and counting until I couldn't take it but NOT letting myself feel panicky or stressed and slowly working my way up to ten. One thing that does help in the counting is sipping a drink. Obviously water is the best one but, well we covered that already. Try to make anything you do drink with your meal be at room temperature, it aids in digestion. I know this is a hard thing to change but again try the weaning into it concept and if you just cannot do it, do not fret it!
Now earlier in various places I have made references to things that just were not covered in the steps. The reason is that these things are even more simply suggestions at this point than a part of the actual steps.
First and foremost do not get the idea that I am not advocating trying to eat healthier foods. If that is something someone can do, then by all means, please do so. I find some basic things that happen with people and eating better. First, they try to do a complete change over all at once, almost putting the body in type of shock, (I previously mentioned the body's resistance to change, something so radical is asking for failure more often than not. Going from a junk food junkie to a health nut, or any variation along that scale, is NOT going to work for the majority of people.) Then comes the backsliding and the feeling of failure and then giving up and thinking it isn't possible. If you want to work on moving towards better foods at the same time as this program, do it slowly. Something like I talked about with the water. Add a small salad with one meal a few times a week or step down in milk percentage one step.
Ah, that reminds me, if you find that going to something just one step better is just not tasty, try mixing your level with the next one down and slowly reduce yours. For an example, let's stick with the milk. If you use 2% and want to go to 1% but it just does not taste good enough for you, buy two smaller containers (one of each), saving one of the bigger size your are using now:
If you are currently using gallons save one and wash it out real well. Buy a half gallon of 1% and a half gallon of 2% and combine them in the washed out gallon container. Now you have 1.5% and probably will not notice a great deal of difference in taste. You can also experiment with the ratio to find the lowest level one you can live with. After a week or two, try increasing the ratio of the lower level one until you are pretty much just drinking the 1%.
Another, and far more challenging problem I find is one of the issues I have and that is that eating properly is just flat out EXPENSIVE! I do not have an answer to that one. I try to get what I can afford to get and will eat and hope that things improve in the future. Maybe if I can change my eating habits enough I can eliminate some other costs or maybe I can help heal myself enough to return to work (oh how I hope!!!) or at least get healthy enough to actually exercise to help make up for that part.
Another thing I mentioned is grazing. Now before you get offended, don't please, it is actually a good thing here. Or it can be if done right. Remember when I talked about not letting the body get hungry? Sometimes having an actual meal is just not feasible throughout the day. Most of us, however, can find a way to get a few minutes break to munch on something. Sometimes we have something we nibble on at our desks or tucked into a pocket. This is called grazing, the little bits of food eaten over a long stretch of time. The trick here is WHAT you are grazing on. Don't panic, if you do not want to do celery and rice cakes, you won't get an argument from me there! ( Although I was intrigued recently to learn that celery is a negative calorie food: It burns more calories to eat it than it provides). However, this is a perfect place to start a slow change over! Think seriously about what it is you graze on and try to take it a step in the healthy direction.
For example, if you graze on candies and sweets, try replacing it with dry sweetened cereal. I know you are saying wait isn't that just one sweet for another? Not really, let me explain a few things about cereal. First, even the high sugar ones have some kind of grains in them. Grains are a great source of fiber which we all know helps us eliminate foods. If you just cannot think of something, try asking in here, someone might have some ideas to help you. Second even though they are indeed sweet, they do not have near the pure sugar and fat content that sweets do. Then of course almost every cereal has added vitamins in them and that is always a good thing!
A similar idea is changing chips for nuts. Yes I know that nuts have fats and salts in them, but what do you think is in that chip you are stuffing? The nuts replace the starch that most chips carry and add some proteins and are actually more filling per ozs. than chips.
So as you can see, moving towards healthier foods doesn't and shouldn't be a giant step.
Again, this is simply one obese person, a layman, offering ideas that she found by researching more learned heads. I am not claiming a miracle cure/diet. I am not claiming anything except that most of these ideas have been known to help and some ideas of my own and put them together to make a system that is less stressful and hopefully more successful than trying to starve or deprive our bodies.
The first post is my own wight goals and I will do updates as I get people actually reading and posting in here as well. I do ask that all posts are respectful and refrain from obscenities, biases, bashing, and controversial or off topic subjects, thanks!
