Ready, Set, Go

This is not a race to the finish line where we meet our goal and it is done. We have all tried the newest, latest diet and failed. There is hope and slow and steady does win the race. So join us.

Before we start we need to work on a few things and make a plan to figure out where we failed in the past and we are all different so this can be a bit tricky. There are three areas that we will be addressing in detail in the next few months. The first is actual food and some tricks to help us. The second is our habits and patterns. The third is emotional eating. Diets rarely address our habits and emotional eating so we squelch them for the diet length and then they overwhelm us again and we gain back our weight. We will develop personal strategies to fix our habits and find alternatives to using food when we are emotional. This is not simple.

The first thing that we need to learn to develop in our lives is grace for ourselves. This involves all or nothing thinking which is at the core of why most of us fail. We expect perfection in our eating life and if we are not perfect we start the emotional eating cycle. Oh my gosh, I ate a piece of cheesecake that was 400 calories and it is the end of the world so I will now eat 20,000 calories on a binge because of my failure. That is all or nothing thinking. It is OK to eat a small amount of food from your forbidden food list. It is not the end of the world. Please practice giving yourselves the grace you give others.

The second thing you can do for yourselves is to find a way to become cognisant of the food that you put into your mouth each day. In a perfect world we would all journal about what, why, when and where we ate during the day. I can hear the groans as I write this so do whatever you have to do. A great idea is taking a photo of every piece of food that you put into your mouth for the next three days. You will have your food journal in photos at the end of each day. Remember six extra bites of food a day can add up to 15 pounds of weight gain a year. Add ten years and you are 150 pounds overweight. You do not have to overeat by much to become overweight.

Many of us will not have to make many changes. Our goal is to have you eat the same way you are used to and add a few things to your diet and make small corrections. This summer I was at my moms house and she asked me to watch how she ate and help her. She ate too much fruit, not enough veggies, and her portions were a bit too big. She ate a plate of fruit at night that she did not want but my dad fixed for her. This was a habit that my dad stopped and she saved 200 extra calories a day. I had her practice the half plate rule that says fill your plate half full of salad or veggies (and corn, peas and potatoes are carbs ladies), one quarter of the plate lean protein and one quarter a complex carb. (one half cup serving of a good carb). This was very easy for her to visualize. She has dropped 15 pounds in 4 months by eating more food than she used to eat. She is almost 80 and everywhere she goes people are asking "What diet are you on and you look great" She did not have to make major changes to her life to become a success story but she did need to know what she was doing wrong. Being that I do not live with you guys to see what you are doing wrong, you will need to find a way to do this yourselves. I can give you help along the way.

Grace to you all! Kerry