When I put on my bathing suit last weekend, I discovered I had back flab unlike any I'd seen since my ninth month of pregnancy. Time for me to unfurl my relatively easy, no-fail, slim by summer golden rules and get on track. See, after years of reading books and articles about nutrition, and contributing to the genre a bit myself, I have extracted what I think isa really sound set of weight loss/maintenance rules. These may not work for all of us, but they helped me to lose 18 pounds post-baby. And you can eat this way forever, really.
Friends have been asking me to spill my secrets, so here they are for public consumption, so to speak. They're nothing new. A little bit of Mediterranean diet, the French/Japanese don't get fat stuff, a few research papers. There's no irksome meal planning or calorie counting. You can drink! It's not even a diet, and I don't think you'll get disordered eating from it. Here we go:
1. Snub sugar. I don't mean the occasional sweet. I mean curb addictive stuff, like when I had to eat two chocolate-covered cherries every damn day. Sugar's a simple carb that does nothing for you nutritionally, yummy as it is, so indulge infrequently. Watch for corn syrups lurking on yogurt, bread, spaghetti sauce and the like, too.
2. Avoid refined starches. White bread, crackers, fried potatoes, white rice. Get your carbs from whole grain, flax seed, oatmeal, brown rice, barley, spelt. Of course, you'll want pizza or a burrito from time to time. Enjoy it. Tomorrow is another day.
3. Deep six deep-fried foods. Break this baby only if you are at a restaurant and really want something special, like crab cakes or a battered item.
4. No eating after dinner. Try to eat your last meal after 6:30 p.m. and simply do not eat after. There's no science backing this, but it's a clear but way to cut consumption and avoid snacking.
5.For one meal a day, have the knockout salad. Start with a few handfuls of dark greens — arugula, spinach, mache, watercress — plus a healthy 1/4 or so cup of nuts. For some reason scientists don't yet understand, people who eat nuts are slimmer than those who don't. Walnuts are full of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, but you can use what you have, as long as they're not salted. Add tomatoes, if you like, and celery or cucumbers; maybe a hard cheese like Parmesan, shaved; lean protein if you're a meat eater, like chicken, tuna or boiled eggs, to give the meal some staying power. Plus, you'll be getting your R.D.A. of veggies in one go.
Throw in some avocado, olives or anchovies, perhaps, for some satisfying but healthy fat, and sprinkle the lot with olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice. Have a slice of whole-grain bread on the side if you need it.
6. Weigh yourself every day. At least one study shows that people who weigh themselves every day weigh five to eight pounds less than those who don't. Don't give me that bit about not being hung up on numbers or waiting until your pants get tight. Clothing gives. Scales don't. If you see your weight creeping up and staying up, it's time to cut back on cheats.
7. Eat a little grapefruit before meals, or incorporate it into your meal. One study showed that people who ate grapefruit with or before a meal lost weight without doing anything else. Other animal studies suggest there's some fat-blocking nutrient in the fruit. Seriously. Similar claims have been made for vinegar or lemon in warm water, and hey, they're all worth a try.
8. If you need a snack, go for protein or legumesto keep your metabolism revved. Choose olives with a hunk of hard cheese, or raw carrots with organic ranch dressing, or whole-grain chips with salsa, or edemame (soy beans in the shell). (Sources tell me that French women just have a shot of espresso when they feel hungry. It does work in a pinch to suppress appetite.)
9. When you're 80 percent full, get up from the table. You'll feel satiated when your digestion catches up. It's a Japanese thing, and they're just about the healthiest, slimmest folks out there.
I'm a reductionist kind of gal, and boiling it down like this makes it all so much more palatable, don't you think? If you want to lose weight faster, cut back portions. Reduce your intake of milk, meat or cheese. Restrict alcohol to weekends (ouch!). If you give these a whirl and they work, let me know. I'd love to hear some of your best tips, too.
—BurbMom
Rats, I love all the things I'm not supposed to eat. My fantasy is that if I put on one of those bikinis hanging on the racks that I will magically look as yummy now as I did when I was 18. If you squint your eyes and turn your head sideways, I DO! Thanks for the tips. CalGal
Posted by: CalGal | June 10, 2009 at 04:44 PM