Enjoy Foods You Love -- Without Stopping your fat loss....

Today's Post:  Friday, 8-24-2012

A week ago Jillian Michaels sent an email titled:  “Enjoy Foods You Love Without Cheating”

Some foods & drinks you should hardly ever have and some never -- just for health reasons.  And one of the best ways to cut calories for fat loss is to stop buying and ingesting these foods and drinks.  

(Hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, foods made with refined grains, and soft drinks are prime examples in this category.)

Since many of these foods also make you MORE hungry even when your body doesn’t need the calories, doing this is a superb way to have easy fat loss!  That’s because NOT having them cuts calories and makes you LESS hungry!

However, the successful 3 part strategy for doable ways to lose fat you can keep doing so the fat you lose stays off for good is this:

1.  Eat in a way that supports your health and losing fat without hunger.  (That causes you to lose fat without hunger a BIG key to success and keeping it off.)

2.  The second key is eating foods you enjoy for enough of your foods that you enjoy life too.

(I like eating and I like eating some foods a great deal.  Most people do.  People who stop doing this for fat loss reasons often give up their fat loss.)

3. The key to fat loss and keeping the fat off is to do both things!  Enjoy eating AND lose fat you keep off.

The purpose of her email was to make this exact point and highlight ways she uses to do this.

Finding strategic ways to have treats you enjoy without losing ground as she describes IS sound.

It helps to have similar but much more OK treats and some of those can even be more often -- as she describes.

(I’ll include her strategies before I comment on them. 

This is for two reasons.  You may be more able to do both things by reading her words because you may think more like she does than like I do. 

And, if you do like her style, by all means subscribe to her email or try her support group.  The whole point is your success.  You may like her stuff!)

  She put it this way: 

“Here's a big mistake people make when they set out to lose weight: They say to themselves, "Okay, I'm on a diet, so I'm never eating [insert tempting high-calorie food here] again." And then, inevitably, they slip up and binge on that food. They beat themselves up about it, write off their entire healthy-living experiment as a failure, and give up.

Sound familiar?

Living a healthy life is all about balance. You have to learn how to walk a line between self-denial and self-indulgence. It's the middle ground between the two that offers the best foundation on which to build your new life.

Denying yourself little pleasures such as the occasional glass of wine or chocolate truffle will only make you feel deprived, frustrated, and ultimately hopeless about maintaining your discipline. A temptation is a lot less powerful if it isn't totally forbidden. This is where moderation comes in.

I will never be able to give up all the edible goodies life has to offer, but by practicing moderation I've found a solution to my weaknesses that I can live with every day. There's room for all foods, no matter how "bad" they are; it's just a matter of being conscious and careful of how often you eat them and how much. It's fine to have a piece of cake now and then — just not every day, and not the whole cake.

I can already hear what you're thinking: "If I eat a little bit, I'll want it all." We all have at least one food that we truly can't eat a little of without going overboard. Mine is ice cream. If you know that a particular food has that kind of trigger effect on you, try choosing an alternative.

I will often have a few bites of organic dark chocolate instead of ice cream so that my sweet tooth will be satisfied but I won't end up with an empty ice cream carton in my hands. If your weakness is potato chips, try having some air-popped popcorn as a snack instead.

Trust me — in time you can adapt so that small amounts of "cheat" foods will not set you off on a binge.”

Here are some of my ideas that also work.

1.  Try to make a very strong special effort to eat versions of foods that are trans fat and hydrogenated oil free every single time.  And, only eat foods where this stuff might be in the food something like three or four times a YEAR or less.  Besides being fattening and in fattening foods, it stays in your body for days after you eat it causing heart disease!  That’s because your body take days to just get rid of half of it!  So if you eat it more often than that, you’ll create heart and other diseases.

2.  The better news is that you can often eat versions of these same foods home made with more natural ingredients so you can have them a bit more often.  The other way to go is fat free or eat only the parts that have no added fat.

Jillian suggests having air-popped popcorn.  That works two ways!

It avoids microwave popcorn that has tons of fat calories—all trans fats by the way -- and another toxic ingredient too. 

And, since you have to work more to fix it, it becomes easier to have it a few times a month instead of a few times a week.

Unless I  know  a pie was home made with real butter in the crust, I know it has shortening and only eat the filling.  I prefer the pies with real butter since I like the crust.  But either way I wind up taking in fewer calories and still enjoy a pie treat occasionally AND I protect myself from the trans fats in the shortening.

You can also eat more healthful and just as enjoyable treats.

“I will often have a few bites of organic dark chocolate instead of ice cream so that my sweet tooth will be satisfied but I won't end up with an empty ice cream carton in my hands.” 

You do have to not do this too often because of the sugar or eat small amounts as she describes.  But dark chocolate is a feel good treat that has health benefits too!

The other strategy is to eat enjoyable foods that are shown to not fatten you and that are actually good for you.  Chilled washed and leaf trimmed fresh organic strawberries or slices of kiwi fruit and many kinds of raw or dry roasted nuts, if you aren’t allergic, are just some of the foods that taste great with no harmful ingredients and WITH health benefits.

Another is to brew cocoa that is totally unsweetened.  You can use enough for it to be quite chocolatey but it has no sugar.

Another strategy that helps avoid binging and helps you eat treat foods less often is to eat them in restaurants.

For example, instead of bringing home a big container of ice cream and eating it all during a week whether it takes you all week or one day, gives you that much sugar and extra calories that week.  But buying one scoop of that same ice cream as an after dinner treat when eating out, is only that one scoop!

And you may only do this a few times a year while buying a container of ice cream at the grocery store could happen once a week.

You get an ice cream treat both ways.  But your control on how much ice cream you eat in a year and whether or not it slows or partly reverses your fat loss depends on your strategy for having it.

Give yourself many completely health OK treats most weeks is another strategy that rewards you every week without slowing your fat loss or stopping it.

For example, every week I have wild, organic blueberries chilled three times.  I have a total of two dark chocolate bars eating only half a bar at a time.  I have both raw walnuts and raw pecans for lunch each week day.  I eat two ripe bananas and several no sugar applesauce servings each week.  And I have two triple strength unsweetened cups of hot cocoa each week.

I do eat chocolate cake and other treats.  But I only do this a few times a year.

Meanwhile I have treats I enjoy every single week.

By using the strategies I use and the strategies Jillian uses, you too can have treats in your life without stalling or giving up your fat loss.