Helpful Ideas

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to give you a few ideas today as I know everyone wants to jump in rather than working on habits and emotional eating.
1. FEAST ON FIBER-The more fiber you add to your diet the less hungry you will be. Fiber helps slow down digestion and makes you feel fuller longer. I would suggest that everyone has a small bowl of a high fiber cereal daily. It's a great way to start your day. It is good to shoot for 35 grams of fiber a day but start slowly and work your way up. Try to get a cereal that has at least 10 grams of fiber or so. Trader Joe's High Fiber cereal is great and has 9 gm of fiber and is crunchy not mushy like some. It is great with yogurt. Try to add beans to your diet a few times a week. Keep a wide variety in your home and add them to salads and soups and casseroles or just as a side. A serving is 1/2 a cup. I think the average american only eats 1/2 cup of beans a year. Veggies also contain alot of fiber. It is not that hard to meet the level you need but it will take planning and the average person only gets around 10 gm a day.
2. EAT BREAKFAST. For some reason this point always provokes many comments in our classes. Everyone says they are not hungry in the morning. This is the one time that you need to eat as breakfast speeds up your metabolism and also people who eat breakfast eat between 300 to 400 calories less per day. And that my friends adds up to 30 to 40 pounds of weight per year. Breakfast is huge.
3. DOWNSIZE YOUR DINNER PLATES. If you can start using a smaller dinner plate you will feel better. I use a cute pink plate for myself that is a couple of inches smaller than I use for my boys. If your brain sees your plate as full it will feel satisfied. If you serve a normal size meal on the massive plates of today it looks like an appetizer and you will eat alot more.
4. ONLY EAT FOOD ON A PLATE. Quit picking and eating out of the bag. Plate all of the food that you eat and sit at the table. This really will help you to become aware of how often you are snacking and mindlessly eating. These are the calories that cause most of us to gain weight.
5. PRACTICE THE HALF PLATE RULE. Fill your plate half full of veggies and salad and just a bit of fruit. Concentrate on the veggies and learn to cook fresh ones. They taste great stir fried in just a bit of olive oil and garlic. Do not boil them. No wonder we hate veggies. Look for amazing new salad recipes with grains and just chopped veggies. Simple is great. It does not have to be complicated. Fill your plate 1/4 full of a lean protein and 1/4 full of a complex carb. If you are going to have a piece of bread skip the potato etc. Choose one healthy carb only that is starchy. Veggies are carbs but you can have as many of them as you like.
6. EAT PLANNED SNACKS. You will feel better if you eat smaller meals with a snack in between. A snack is not mindless eating from a bag of chips but a planned mini meal like an apple and cheese, veggies and hummus etc. Try to pair a fruit or veggie with a type of protein. Celery or red peppers with low fat cream cheese and walnuts. Just eat food that tastes great that is not sugar.
7. Start to decrease processed foods from your diet. The more sugar you eat the more you will crave it and feel lethargic. If you can fill up on healthy foods the cravings will decrease over time.

These are just a few ideas you can start with. I know you all know them but amazingly they do work. Try to make these changes with no diet mentality that you will do this till you lose weight and then be done. These are permanent changes that you will add to your life forever and you will become healthier which is awesome.