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I Can't Control My Portion Sizes

If you want to control your portions, stop depending just on your will power and try some of the tips below:

Start from where you're at-Gradually reduce your portions so it doesn't feel so depriving and overwhelming. Going from three scoops of ice cream to two-and-half, is going to feel more reachable than going from three to one.

Learn what a normal portion is-Don't get bogged down with being accurate. Focus on what a normal portion is generally; and gradually strive toward that.

Take small steps-If it feels overwhelming, make the goal smaller.

Add color to plate-Think of your plate like a color palette. Strive to make it as colorful as possible with greens, yellows, oranges, and reds. The more colorful your plate, the more satisfied your brain will be and the less you will eat.

Add fiber-Fiber is filling, making you feel full faster and eating less. Foods such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains have the most fiber.

Don't put extra food on table-When you put servings platters on the table, it bombards the brain with more food cues and you'll end up eating more. Leave the extra food in the kitchen.

Use small plates, bowls and glasses-Smaller plates and bowls look fuller to the brain and these signals will make the brain feel satisfied with smaller portions.

Slow down-Yes, it's true. It takes about 20 minutes for messages to get to the brain that you are full. If you eat fast, you'll eat more before realizing you've had enough. Chew everything well before swallowing, swallow everything before taking another bite, take a sip of water between bites, and savor your food.

Wait a little-If you're not sure if you're full or not, wait a little (about 20 minutes). Chances are you'll find out you've had enough.

You don't need to have it all now-Remind yourself that there are no rules about food anymore so you don't need to have it all now. You can change your mind at anytime so you can have some later. It doesn't have to be now.

Diet books

We're inundated with diet books in this country. Since I have to review what's going on in the diet world continually, I feel I am a good judge of what's out there. One of my goals is to make consumers smarter about what they will buy into among the huge numbers of diet books, diet programs and diet aids thrown at them almost daily.

Diet books are a good place to start. Basically, if the book has "DIET" in the title, skip it. Almost by definition, the word "diet" implies a beginning and an end. Do you want to go on something that can't be followed for the rest of your life (which is what is needed to manage a healthy weight for a lifetime)? Publishers put "DIET" in the title to grab you immediately. Publishers know that most people are not good consumers of weight management information so they play on that. But you want to be a smart, informed consumer. You won't be fooled by tricks like these.

The other thing many diet books do is include recipes. This makes the book longer but not necessarily more informative. Colored pictures of food are appetizing but the fact is that most people who buy the books never use the recipes.

If the diet book wants you to buy their products such as special foods, supplements, or exercise products, pass it by also. If you buy into the needing special foods, you will only spend a lot of money and end up in the same place you've been before. The truth is that there are no supplements that cause more fat loss. It's a gimmick-don't buy into it. Finally, how many people do you know that buy exercise products before they intend to start a diet and never use them? It's not the product that is going to cause you to lose fat. This again will only get you to spend money that could be used in a better way or not used at all.

If a weight loss book doesn't promise amazingly fast fat loss, doesn't suggest you have to buy their products, makes good logical sense, and teaches a program that you can follow for the rest of your life, that's where you need to start.

The Brain is a Terrible Thing to Waste

One of the major reasons that diets fail and that the dieting industry doesn't have it right, is because of the psychological side of things. I'm not talking about deep seated emotional issues which most people struggling with their weight do not have. No, I'm talking about something we all share-the way our brains naturally think.

The brain resists us when we try to make it do something that is inconsistent with the way it normally thinks. Think of the brain like a child. If you want to teach something new to a child, what is the most effective way to do it? I don't think you would say that threatening the child, abusively punishing her, or chastising her would work very well. It also doesn't work to give the child such large and awesome tasks that he will feel overwhelmed. Add inducing guilt and you have the perfect formula for the child to fail. Instead, if you treat the child with compassion, patience, praise, and help them to focus on one small step at a time, you will have a child who is motivated, relaxed, and enthusiastic. This child will succeed. It's the same with ourselves when we embark on changes to lose or manage our weight.

The more flexible, positive, praising, and patient we are with ourselves the more successful we will be. So don't waste your brain with methods that will lead to failure, use it in ways that it can succeed.

This just doesn't compute.

Americans keep getting fatter, no other country comes out with more diets, diet programs and dieting aids, and the dieting industry is making tons of money. Does this sound right? Who is benefiting here? It doesn't seem to be the consumers. If diets work, why are Americans continuing to get fatter each year? Why are our children fatter than every before?

Perhaps it's time for consumers to get smarter about choosing what or who they are going to believe when it comes to how to how to get lean and fit. It's just not working folks. What they are selling isn't working. It's time to stop depending on the dieting industry to tell you what you should do since you aren't getting what you want from them.

This is the reason I wrote my book. I want people to be smarter consumers. Yes, I do want people to be healthy, lean and fit but I want them to learn what works and doesn't work. The first step, however, is to face up and admit to yourself, and to the dieting industry that if it hasn't worked after so many years, you are going to let go of it. Let go of attempts that haven't ever worked. It's time to find another way--maybe it won't sound like a panacea but maybe if it sounds like a panacea, that's the indication that it's not going to work.

Why do I crave something sweet after every meal?

Most of the time this boils down to habit. Like other animals, humans can be easily conditioned to things. For example, if you grew up always having dessert after dinner, your brain will be conditioned to expect that and it will prepare your body for eating sweets after dinner. That usually means not feeling satisfied at the end of the meal, feeling a craving for something sweet. You will salivate, preparing for the delicious treat. This doesn't mean you can't get rid of the habit, but that it takes some time and an effective strategy to get there.

I used to have a habit of drinking Diet Coke. I only drank one per day but my body expected it anytime between 11 and 2 each day. That's the time that my office schedule allowed it in the beginning. I was so conditioned that my body and mind wouldn't leave me alone until I got one. Even when I could honestly say that I didn't quite enjoy drinking them as much as in the beginning, I still craved it. It's been over 6 years since I've had any soda but it took a conscious effort and some time to get past the cravings.

Without knowing what your individual efforts have been to get rid of the habit or what your history is, I couldn't give you an answer that would apply only to you. However, this is what it usually is.

Psychologically and physiologically, the best way to get rid of sweet cravings is to:

• improve what you eat in general--eat more nutritiously. This makes sure that you're not lacking anything.
• wait 20 minutes after a meal before having your sweet. If the cravings are due to having gone too long without eating so that your blood sugar is low, it gives your body enough time to raise the blood sugar so that you don't have the cravings.
• Don't try to go "cold turkey" with your attempts to get rid of sweets after meals. Gradually change the type of sweets you eat by having desserts that are made with fruit so that you're having more natural sugars and less granulated or high fructose sugar, cut down on processed foods and sweets. Also reduce the quantities of the sweets gradually until you have the habit licked.
• You can even try this little (temporary) trick I used once with a patient and it worked nicely for them. Eat your small dessert first. Make it a small amount-then have your meal. This does two things-if low blood sugar is the problem, you start stabilizing it sooner and the meal keeps it there. If habit is the problem, you will disrupt things just enough to weaken the habit for sweets after the meal.
  

Remember, all that is said here is assuming that you do not have any medical problem that prohibits you from taking the above steps. Your doctor should be able to tell you.

What is set-point?

Basically "set point" is the weight range that your body is physiologically programmed to maintain. For example, if your set point is between 140 and 145 pounds, your body will try to do whatever it can to stay within that range. If you go under the range, you may feel hungrier so that you eat more food or become less active so that the body can get back within the range. If you go over the range, you can lose appetite so that you eat less and, again, get back into the set point range. Everyone has their own set point range.

That is one of the biggest problems with the "one size fits all" approach to dieting that the dieting industry takes. People are led to believe that they should be able to lose all the weight they want to lose or that a weight chart says they should lose. This is a disservice to people. How frustrating to not know about set point and make endless attempts to lose a particular amount of weight when your body will be working against you if you go outside your range!

If you look back through the years at your weight history you can get an idea of your set point. Most likely it's around the weight that your body seemed to stabilize at when you weren't dieting stringently. For some people this is too hard to figure out because they have constantly dieted for years.

Having a set point is actually a good thing. It's just another wonderful survival mechanism that the body has. Accepting that you have a set point and becoming familiar with it will help you be more successful with your attempts to be more fit. That's because you won't continue to fail at unrealistic attempts to lose weight. You will choose methods of losing weight that are doable for you and you will be more relaxed while you're making changes.

Finally, there is one way that you can semi-permanently change your set point to a lower range. That is with consistent, aerobic exercise. When you engage in this type of exercise, your metabolism increases temporarily for hours after the exercise has ended. If you do this consistently, you can see that you will keep your metabolism and, therefore, your set point at a lower range. If you stop doing consistent, aerobic exercise your body will go back to it's original set point range. So when you exercise think about the fact that you're not only burning more while you're exercising, but for hours afterwards (even if you're sleeping)! That's nice, huh?

I will lose all control

If I'm not strict with myself I feel that I will lose all control and never be able to stop eating. What do I do?

This is a fear that many people have. However, the data doesn't support it. In practice, when people work on letting go of their restrictive rules of dieting that tell them they cannot eat certain foods and that they are bad if they break a rule, the opposite happens. As you get rid of the psychological deprivation that you have set up through constant, rigid dieting, you become more and more of a normal eating person who's body signals when you've had enough and tells you that it doesn't want any more. It grows to be satisfied with less and less food until it reaches a normal appetite level. In my book, Mind Over Fat Matters: Conquering Psychological Barriers to Weight Management, I explain what psychological deprivation is, how we create it through rigid dieting and rules, and how to eliminate it so that you can follow through with eating in a way that will cause fat burning instead of leading to compulsive eating.

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I weigh 157 lbs. I should weigh 130. What should I do?

Now this is a very broad question but I will attempt to highlight the most important issues about it. This person had been looking at charts that said she should weigh 130 pounds. Without considering anything else, she was telling herself that she should weigh 130 lbs. Before jumping to any specific number for weight you should consider the following:

• What are you doing (with food, activity, etc.) to encourage your body to burn fat?
• How consistent are you in engaging in these activities?
• Are you or have you dieted stringently in the past (which reduces metabolism and makes it more difficult to lose fat)?
• Psychologically, what are you doing to focus on the positive and encourage yourself rather than beat yourself up about your attempts to be leaner?
• What does your normal body type and that of your family tend to be?

1. If you aren't engaging in behaviors that encourage fat burning, it makes no sense to expect yourself to be at a lower weight.
2. If you aren't being consistent with these behaviors, it makes no sense to expect yourself to be at a lower weight.
3. If you are dieting stringently (undereating) and have engaged in a lot of this type of dieting in the past, you have encouraged your body to slow it's metabolism making it easier to gain fat and harder to burn it. First you have to work on increasing metabolism through increased activity instead of focusing on a number.
4. If you're beating yourself up a lot and being generally negative about your weight, you're going to make it harder to reach any kind of goal. Work on this first and fat burning will become easier--focus on behaviors, not numbers.
5. If your set-point (the inherited weight range that everyone's body tries to maintain) is above 130 (more about set point in another blog entry), you'll have to rethink your goal because it may be unattainable. Regular exercise of an aerobic nature is the only way to increase metabolism and, therefore, decrease ones set-point semi-permanently (until you quit being a regular exerciser).

Considering all of the above (and more that we haven't mentioned), it makes more sense to focus on behaviors, not numbers. Keep it simple by setting your mind and your goals on all of the behaviors that will lead to your body burning more fat. Then you're doing everything in your power to produce the leanest body that is possible for you. The number isn't important. Your body doesn't need you except to follow through with the behaviors. It will take care of the rest. If you're going in the direction of getting leaner, then you're doing the right thing--relax and stop being so hard on yourself.

That Time of the Year Again

It's that time of the year again. All the TV shows that give advice to people are having segments on starting your 2009 diet, how to lose those pounds from the holidays and so on. This could be the first year in a long time that you will decide that you will not buy into the gimmicks anymore. This time you will focus on gradually changing your lifestyle to one that will take you, not only in the direction of getting leaner and fitter, but more importantly, in the direction of making these changes last a lifetime. Remember the tortoise and hare? The hare is like the people who go on diet after diet only to lose weight and regain it time and time again. The tortoise knows exactly what he is doing and keeps his focus even when the hare seems to be passing him by. The tortoise will reach the goal before the hare even if at a slower pace. The tortoise wins.