Simple & doable works in fat loss....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 1-19-2010

Today, Tuesday, 1-19-2010, HealthDay News had this headline & subhead.:

“Complex Weight-Loss Plans Erode Dieters' Resolve
--The more complex a person's diet plan, the sooner the person will abandon it, a new study finds."

To put that study into positive & usable terms, simple & doable works in successful fat loss.

The research a good plan is based upon can be quite complex. Your planning can be moderately complex.

But if you can’t DO it day in and day out without huge amounts of futzing -- or it always feels overly complicated and hard, that’s a problem.

If you learn the basics of successful fat loss; put the ones into practice that you can already do; & then gradually build a customized version that allows you to keep doing more parts of that plan and doing each part better – but which is simple and straight-forward to do, THAT will work.

But at each stage, each part should be simple and doable.

Here are the basics of fat loss. They are NOT that complicated. And, once you get used to doing them, they can be just as automatic and simple to do as what you may be doing now instead.

1. For example, there are foods and drinks that not only make the uninformed people who consume them fat and sick; there are those that are somewhat fattening but either are not that bad for you otherwise or even have some health supporting or nutritional value. And, there are foods and drinks that help you stay trim or don’t slow you down that also actually are good for you and your health.

I agree with fat loss expert, Jillian Michaels, simply throw out the foods and drinks you now have that make you fat and sick. As she points out, they aren’t any better for the people you might otherwise have passed them on to. Then don’t buy them again or keep them if people give them to you. If they aren’t in your home, it’s not complicated to avoid them!

This includes all regular and diet soft drinks; any food or drink with high fructose corn syrup or trans fats or the hydrogenated vegetable oils they are made from; & all packaged snacks and desserts that contain those things &/or are mostly made from refined grain and salt or sugar otherwise.

2. Then do buy and eat the things that actually support your health or help you lose fat from beef fed only grass to wild caught salmon to beans and lentils and any and all nonstarchy vegetables you’ve learned you can eat. The more foods in this category you buy, learn to fix, and either find a way to enjoy or at least be OK with eating regularly, if not super often, the better your plan to lose fat will work. And, as you do that, doing it everyday is NOT rocket science, you simply get used to doing it and it becomes almost automatic after awhile.

3. Then gradually cut back to a low moderate or low or occasional level on the foods that are only moderately fattening if eaten sometimes but not every day.

For example, real 100 % grape juice and oatmeal have some legitimate value for your health. But they are higher in sugars and calories in the case of grape juice and carbohydrate grams and calories in the case of oatmeal than other foods you should eat more of.

For example, a boiled egg and a serving of lentils has many of the B vitamins, and much of the protein, and soluble fiber that oatmeal has; but fewer carbs and calories. In addition, if you add brown sugar to your oatmeal when you eat it, substituting the boiled egg and a serving of lentils also cuts back on your sugar intake. But by eating the oatmeal sometimes and the boiled egg and a serving of lentils sometimes, you can have the oatmeal and brown sugar you like but take in fewer carbs and calories overall. I’ve tried this successfully. And to make it doable during the week when I’m pressed for time, I boil and peel the eggs for that week on week-ends & also prepare the lentils for that week. Neither of those foods are hard to get into my breakfast or slow to put in a bowl during the week. I just stuff them in, eat them, & go.

Similarly, if you have grape juice sometimes and 100 % real cranberry juice sometimes, the cranberry juice has less than a sixth as many grams of sugar and less than half of the calories and also has other health benefits. You can still drink the grape juice and enjoy it; but by drinking cranberry juice half the time, your over-all intake of sugars and calories goes down.
Again, it’s not complicated. Simply add the cranberry juice to your grocery list and pour that instead of grape juice every other time.

4. Do some kind of strength training or interval cardio at home during your morning if only for 15 minutes.

(I’ve found if I always do the same set of exercises each weekday at the same time in the morning, I simply plan my morning around that time.)

5. If you can, find a way to do a bit more exercise each week.

(Similarly, I’ve now added a few minutes of interval cardio three evenings when I just get home from work on the 3 days each week when there’s a place for them and once on Sunday afternoon. Again, this is not rocket science.

Today is Tuesday, which is one of those 3 days for me, so when I get home from work unless it’s 2 hours late or something like that that rarely happens, when I get home, I’ll do those few minutes. I get home; change into my at home comfortable clothes; do my few minutes; spend about 15 seconds writing down how many reps and sets I did that day; & then have dinner.)

6. Find a way to watch less than 10 hours a week of TV.

I’ve already posted that you burn less calories watching TV than you do sleeping. I’ve posted that something like 90% of the people who have lost over 30 pounds they’ve kept off for 5 years or more watch less than 10 hours a week of TV. And, I’ve posted that if you watch even 5 hours a week less TV than you do now, you just found five hours you can use to exercise without taking other time from your life and the things you like to do.

And, it also is important to notice that 90% of the foods and drinks advertised on TV are in the throw out and never ingest category. It can really help a lot to watch less of those ads.

But, it seems that watching less than 10 hours a week of TV may be even more important than that. Sitting that still for the additional 20 hours of TV the average person now watches has been found to be as harmful to your health as NOT doing any exercise. In addition, it harms your body’s normal food intake regulatory system so you feel hungry when you don’t need more food or fail to notice when you’ve eaten too much. Your body becomes more leptin resistant; your insulin levels go up; your chances of getting type 2 diabetes and heart disease go up; & you tend to deposit more of the calories you take in as fat.

This story was online yesterday.:

“Is too much sitting as bad as too little exercise? Mon Jan 18, 7:32 pm ET PARIS (AFP)

Sitting all day may significantly boost the risk of lifestyle-related disease even if one adds a regular dose of moderate or vigorous exercise, scientists said Tuesday.”

So, it’s not rocket science. Watch less than 10 hours a week of TV & you can avoid most of that.