Tips to Help you Stay within your Calories

One of the things that most if not all people on calorie restricted diets will run into are times when they just seem hungry even though they have eaten. For some this is a constant struggle. For others it happens from time to time with a day or two where they just don't feel satisfied no matter how much they eat. When those times come what can you do to help you stay within your calorie allowance?

First if you do overeat, don't beat yourself up. Instead get back to eating well as quickly as possible. The only true failure is when you give up completely. A momentary failure will not destroy everything. In fact you can use this as a learning experience.

That leads to the first piece of advice. Examine what you have eaten to see if it might be the cause of this hunger. If there is something that was different from your normal eating that may have been the trigger. In general triggers can be sugary foods, foods low in protein and fiber, or for some food with artificial sweeteners. If you ate foods like this they may have triggered your hunger. If you see a food, even one not mentioned here, that may be linked to your hunger because it is different from what you normally eat., cut it out for a while and see if it helps.

Related to this look at what you are eating. Is it high in fiber and nutrients? Are you eating sufficient protein and fat. Often "diet food" is high in carbohydrates, but very low in fat and protein. The reason for low fat is both the misunderstanding the fat will make you fat, and the fact that fat has a lot more calories per gram than both carbohydrates and protein. The thing is protein and fat will both help you feel full longer. My personal preference for them is 40% of your Calories from carbohydrates, 30% of them from protein and 30% from fats combined with eating at least 30 grams of fiber (more is better).

The other possible trigger is emotional stress. Many people, myself included, have an unhealthy tendency to deal with stress by eating. When stress comes, they want to eat and eat and eat. If this is you I can suggest what often works for me. I exercise. I take that stress energy, and put it toward something positive for my health. Often this will be enough to get rid of that desire to eat. So do something physical.

All this is fine, you may say, but what about when I am hungry? Is there anything I can do to help? As stated exercise can help, especially more endurance types like jogging, cycling or even a long walk. Also try drinking several large glasses of straight water. Sometimes people mistake thirst for hunger, and water will deal with the thirst not to mention fill your stomach. Another thing that can help is brushing your teeth with a minty toothpaste. This will often remove the desire to eat, and will make food that you might eat after brushing taste much less appetizing.

Hopefully these hints help you. Do you have any to add?

Eat Stop Eat

I have now done two fast days, and so far the results are very positive. On the fast days I find I still have lots of energy, and frankly going from 6PM to 6PM for a fast is not that difficult. Think about it for a minute and you will realize that for 8 hours of that time, give of take, you are sleeping. Keep busy through the day, and 6PM comes before you know it.

The results so far are that I have come down from 196.8Lbs to 193.0Lbs. Now some will say that is all water weight, but it clearly isn't because on the days I eat the weight does not come back. Others will say it is all muscle, but based on the fat percentage, the majority of the weight loss is fat.

Now I realize this is but one week. Having said that, I am thinking this is something that I could do for the rest of my life, and in the end it will not require constant measuring of food and a careful diet. I still have to watch my sodium consumption due to my high blood pressure, but with Eat Stop Eat it has come down consistently this week. I am hoping the trend continues and I can get off more medication for the blood pressure.

Revolution in Diet? I'm Think So.

Recently I was at Coach Lauren and read this post. In it she points to an e-book by Brad Pilon called Eat Stop Eat. Lauren does an excellent job outlining the major points of this program, but it all boils down to intermittent fasting, basically 24 hours once or twice a week.

I have not tried this as of yet, but am seriously considering it, as constant measuring of calories consumed gets tiring and difficult after doing it for 6 months. I can only imagine what it would be lie to do it forever. Yes, during that time you can learn to eat healthy, but even "healthy" food if eaten in excess, ie. eating more calories than you burn, will cause you to get fat. This approach has the advantage of allowing your body to use its own God given abilities to keep your weight under control and even loose weight.

It is well worth giving it a look. I am going to try it in the near future once I get used to my new exercise routine.

My Weight Loss - Diet

My weight loss started when I we ill first with pneumonia and then with my stroke and its attendant high blood pressure. The first 10 pounds were a result of the diuretic I was put on for my blood pressure, as in the week following being put on it I lost that weight while changing nothing in my diet. That just shows how much fluid my body was retaining. The next 10 pounds came with the stroke and my time in hospital. So basically the first 20 pounds came off in 2 weeks or so.

Following that I did not lose anything for a couple of months even though I was eating "healthy" and exercising. Part of that was simply a result of losing so much weight so quickly, but a bigger part was my buying into the eat healthy food and you will lose weight while forgetting the number of calories consumed compared to the number burned is what determines weight loss.

The thing is, there is some truth to the "healthy" food belief, but it is not that you can eat as much of that so called healthy food and still lose weight. The grain of truth is this, healthy food generally contains more fiber and is less calorie dense. By that I mean for a fairly large serving of beans, you are actually consuming less calories and will feel more full than and similar sized serving of say white flour pasta with a fatty ground beef in tomato sauce. Furthermore, with the healthy food, you will probably also consume more vitamins and minerals your body needs to stay strong and healthy. From this, the myth that you can eat healthy food and not gain weight developed. Don't get caught by this one. What matters is consuming less calories than you burn.

Eventually I realized that and seriously started counting calories at the beginning of June. At that point I was about 230 pounds. Counting calories by carefully measuring everything I eat has resulted in me dropping my weight to 197 as of a couple of weeks back. Better yet in that time my body composition changed dramatically. I started out at 230 pounds total, but that weight was made up of a fat mass of 102 pounds and a lean mass of 128 pounds. When I reached 197 my body composition changed to a fat mass of 59 pounds and a lean mass of 138 pounds. What that means is in that time where I lost 33 pounds total I really lost 43 pounds of body fat and gained 10 pounds of muscle. I still have more weight and fat to get rid of, but this is certainly a great start.

Just as a side note here, a scale that measures your body fat percentage or getting something else to do so is a very valuable tool to help in healthy weight reduction. It will give you a good picture of what is happening in your body, and can help you realize that even though you seem to be losing weight slowly, you may be losing fat quickly.

From all this there are a couple of lessons I would point to. First and probably most important, watch how many calories you eat. You need to create a deficit of calories burning more than you consume. Without measuring calories and recording them you will have a great deal of difficulty doing this. What can help is reading the nutrition labels, and actually measuring out your servings. At first I was surprised at what a serving was, but now I am used to it. A kitchen scale, especially and digital one, can be a great help in this. Second, remember that the quality of food matters. High fiber in particular, is very helpful in weigh loss. Yes you can get rid of the pounds eating whatever you want, but I find with the low fiber, highly processed stuff I would get more hungry and be more inclined to cheat than with the less processed, more natural, high fiber stuff.

With all this I also exercised a great deal, but that is a topic for another post.