Week 3 of Simple Lifestyle Changes

This is the start of week 3 of making some simple lifestyle changes that can have a big payoff.

• Use the Food Pyramid or the Mediterranean Food Pyramid (my preference) to guide your food choices by eating from each food group.
• Choose a variety of whole grains per day to increase fiber which will fill you up. (Most people eat about 10 g fiber a day and you need around 35g.) Choices include 100% whole wheat, brown rice, oats, whole wheat couscous, and quinoa. Check out Trader Joe's Brown Rice Medley and Harvest Grains Blend both of which are great! Decrease white flour and white rice.
• Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables of different types and colors daily. Try and follow the half plate rule. It may take a few weeks before you can really follow the half plate rule.
• Use olive oil when possible and decrease eating fried foods.
• Do not drink calories when possible, especially sugar laden ones. Limit sugar and if you must have it, eat it with a meal so it will not spike your blood sugar as much.
• Cut down on all processed foods. This will decrease the salt in your diet. Add in new spices like curry, cumin, cilantro and basil. Use an entire bunch of chopped cilantro and 2 to 3 T of spices not the 1 t like most of us use. Food should be really tasty not bland.
• Drink alcohol in moderation as it provides calories but not much nutritional value. Wine is used on the Med. diet chart.
• Keep preplating all of your food at the beginning of the meal and also snacks so you can see the quantity you are eating. Remember your brain is visual. Do not eat from the bag!
• Keep reading labels until you have a good grasp of the calorie counts of most of the foods that you eat. The more you know, the more you can eat!
• No foods are forbidden but knowing your calorie counts allows you to recognize lower calorie options for the foods that you can't live without.

Keep track of what is going on in your life when you want to eat, and also look for things that seem to trigger your eating. Is it emotional eating? Did you smell food? Did a situation like a movie bring on the candy craving? Did the Jack in the Box Advertised special lure you in? Pay attention to these triggers because there are strategies you can use to overcome them. Remember that most of us gain weight at the same times, places, days of the week with the same foods over and over. Figure these out and make a plan!

Snacks

Most of these snacks are between 100 and 200 calories. A snack is a mini meal and not a time of grazing where you grab and snack on a bag of chips or cookies.

• Small handful baby carrots and 2 to 3 T low fat ranch dressing.
• Small apple with 1 T peanut butter or 1 string cheese
• Fat free or light Yogurt-The Greek ones are great and have more protein. Fred Meyer has a store brand that is good and Trader Joe's brand is great.
• Protein or Fiber Bar or the Natural ones. Watch the ingredients on the bars as many of them are loaded with sugar but they are great to leave in your car in a pinch.
• 1/2 cottage cheese and cut up strawberries or blueberries and a few slivered almonds on top (Trader Joe's has bags that are cheaper.)
• Bag of 100 calorie cookies and a piece of fruit and tea. (Only if the cookies are not a trigger food)
• Almonds, Walnuts or Pecans. (I count out 20 almonds and bag them in the small snack bags to have on hand for grab and go)
• Starbucks skinny latte or Americano with 10 almonds.
• String cheese or 2 laughing cow light cheese or the Baby Bel cheeses with 18 all bran crackers or other high fiber cracker (100 cal or so)
• Fruit smoothie using 1cup fruit, 100 cal yogurt and light almond breeze milk (Available fresh in milk section or in boxes you can store, great in place of milk items because I think it is only 40 calories per cup. It is great on cereal or coffee drinks. There is a vanilla flavor one too that is great)
• Celery and Pepper sticks with 1/3 cup hummus. (Costco carries hummus in snack packs)
• 18 Soy crisps and small apple or fruit (Soy crisps are great if you love chips or salty foods, just make sure you measure them out because it is easy to eat the entire bag)
• Whole grain pretzels (100 cal. worth) (Trader Joe's has some great Pumpernickel sticks and the serving size is 8 and they are big and great for dipping) and Tziki (cucumber/cream dip 100 calories worth)(TJ's or Costco)
• Small bran muffin (200 calories or less) 
• Nile Soups (you pour the water in them) or 2 cup Progresso light soups or best of all make soup at home and divide it into small tupperwares for the week.
• Chai tea latte made with 1/2 cup Oregon chai sugar free chai tea latte (Fred Meyer in the Organic section-can be hard to find) and 1/2 cup almond breeze and 100 calorie pack Lorne Doone cookies.
• Celery stuffed with Trader Joe's Light cream cheese (tub) 2-3 T with a few chopped walnuts mixed in or just on top and then sprinkle paprika on top. (I take these to any potluck and everyone loves them!)
• Small Trader Joe's Mini Wheat Pita pocket stuffed with tuna/celery or turkey.
• Pea Pods, cucumber and tomatoes with any dip 100 calories.
• McDonalds ice cream cone 150 calories, apple dippers with caramel (100 cal) or the parfait (130 cal) 
• Wendy's small chili (220 calories)

These are a few of my favorite snacks for the afternoon. Each person should make a list of the foods that they enjoy though. Take a tour of Trader Joe's and try to keep your snack between 100 and 200 calories for everything, including your drink. Drink calories do many people in because they do not count drink calories. For some of you if you did your meal planning sheet and alloted more calories for your snack just plan for a more. It is just helpful to know that there are many great snack choices that you enjoy because when a craving hits we tend to lose our minds!

Happy Snacking (Plate it and eat at the table)! Tomorrow, I will post on some simple tricks that you can do to save between 100 to 500 calories. I do believe that the more you know the more you can eat. Kerry

What to look for in your Personal Food Journal

Hi Everyone,

If you journaled last week or are journaling this week, you are awesome! These are some of the questions that you can begin to ask yourselves as you look over your journals and develop an awareness of what you are doing?

• Does anything stand out to you on your Journal?
• Are there any surprises to you on your Journal?
• How many portions of vegetables, fruits and grains did you eat per day?
• Did you eat protein at each meal? Was it lean protein? Was it fried?
• Were your milk products low fat ones?
• Did you skip breakfast daily?
• Did you skip any meals?
• Did you eat snacks between meals and were these planned plated snacks or grazing?
• Did you eat a lot of processed foods and sugar daily?
• Did you drink a lot of calories?
• How were your portions? Healthy or very distorted?
• How many times did you eat out during the week?
• Where did you eat most of your meals?
• Did you eat in your car?
• Did you eat after dinner and before bedtime? What was going on at that time? Is there a pattern going on?
• Did you eat because you were bored, lonely, sad, depressed, or mad? Was there a pattern going on?

Remember how I said that if you overeat by 100 calories per day, you would gain 10 pounds this year. Well, I like to see the positive side of things. As you look at your journal, you will be able to see tons of improvement areas where you can easily save 100 calories in many areas. These can add up to weight loss without a huge diet! Yeah!

Bare Bones Nutrition Week 2

Greetings! Last week your assignment was to journal for at least three days. People who journal have the greatest success in weight control because they can see their problem areas and change them. Hopefully you were able to review your journals and saw some habits. Maybe you found you snacked in between meals, ate many meals out, ate many calories after dinner, ate only 2 veggie servings this week.....There are way too many habits for me to list them all.  

These are a few very basic generic ideas that you can begin to add to your life. Small changes can make big differences. 

• Eat breakfast even if it is a late breakfast.  Breakfast eaters usually eat 300 calories less per day.
• Try to begin practicing the half plate rule for lunch and dinner. This rule says that half of your plate should be filled with vegetables. This will be hard at first. Try to include only one healthy high carbohydrate food (grains, rice, fruit, legumes, corn or potatoes) (1/2 cup to 1 cup) and your protein source on the other half of your plate.
• Decrease your portions sizes a little. Eat the foods that you love, just a little less of them. (This is the easiest way to lose weight)
• Increase your fruits and veggies and eat them first. Try snacking on fruit or include fruit with your cereal for breakfast. They are very filling.
• Try to eat slower and observe the 20 minute rule. (It takes your stomach 20 minutes to tell your brain it is full.) Slow it down and you will eat less.
• Clean out your cupboards of all booby traps and hidden stashes and leftover Christmas candy that you got for 1/2 off.
• Begin to be aware of the processed foods and foods containing sugar and decrease them.  
• Continue to journal at least a couple of days and continue to look for any patterns or triggers that cause you to eat. 
• Check out some of the new Diabetes cookbooks. The ones from Prevention and Better Homes and Gardens offer great recipes full of vegetables. The Diabetic diet is a very healthy way to eat!
• Try fixing a huge vegetable soup this week. Healthy and great for lunches. I am smelling a ham soup with green beans, mixed veggies, cabbage, potatoes, and garbanzo beans that I just made. (I do practice what I preach :) )
• Try and notice particular times and situations that you feel you emotionally eat.

If you saw any big habits and want to start working on them, please contact me and I will blog about that habit this week. Look for ways that you can make small changes. It takes a month to break a habit and if you can work on 3 habits a month you will be doing great. No one can change everything at once! 

"Why do we Eat" and "How did we Gain Weight"?

Next week we are teaching a class on Emotional Eating at our local hospital. To prepare, I have tried to think globally about why we have ended up being a nation where 2/3 of our people are either overweight or obese! I am going to attempt to explain to you why I believe this is so. You will also be able to see why dieting has a long term success rate of 2%.

First question: Why do we eat?

Easy Answer: We are Hungry, right? Sort of right! Most of us eat only 20% of the time because we are actually hungry. The other 80% of the time, we eat for other reasons!

Now you know why diets fail. A diet usually says it is all about food. Change everything you know and love about food and do it this way and you will lose. Well, you box up your "80% reasons" for a time and lose the weight and then when the diet is over, you breath a sigh of relief and go back to your old ways. Voila!
Weight gain again, sometimes to a greater amount than you started at. Diets look at the "What". What are you eating wrong? Count your calories better and you should be successful. Do this by getting rid of carbs, or going low fat or whatever the lastest, greatest diet figures out to redo the calories. Not going to probably work!

Now for the rest of the story! This is your "How" or your "Personal History with Food". Have you ever started a diet and been asked to fill our your food history? I would highly doubt that. It would be like going to the doctor and leaving out your history. You would not get very far. I believe that diets do not work but each person must look at their personal history to find their answers. Most of us gain back the same weight with the same foods on the same days of the week at the same times over and over again! Enough!

What are some of the other 80% reasons that we eat?

Thoughts

All of Nothing Thinking (Perfection or Forget it)

Sabotaging Thoughts (Negative thinking)

Triggers (anything that triggers you to eat)

Biological-hunger, thirst, hormonally influenced cravings

Environmental-seeing or smelling food, food shows or ads

Mental-thinking about food, imagining food and the good and bad memories

Emotional-tension, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, boredom, happiness, excitement,.........

Social-offered food or being around others who are eating

Food-a particular food or type of food is your downfall

Situation

Time

Behavioral pattern

Habits

Mindless Eating

No Planning

Poor Nutrition

Your personal habits add here

Are you overwhelmed yet? Please do not be!

It is all about developing a unique set of great strategies that look at your particular food history and implementing them. Most of us are not doing that many things wrong. Most of us have not woken up today overweight, but have gained it slowly. We are not doing that much wrong. If you overeat by 100 calories per day you will gain 10 pounds this year. Let that go for 10 years and you would be 100 pounds overweight. By identifying your problem areas and cleaning them up, most of us can lose weight and feel better!

Types of Mindless Eaters

I am reading a book called "Eat, Drink, and be Mindful" by Susan Albers. She has classified the many different types of Mindless Eaters into a great list. Check it out. Which eater are you! You can be more than one. Awareness is the first step to making changes!

Multitasking Mindless Eater: You do another activity while eating.

Zoned Out Mindless Eater: You munch on food while watching TV, not really tasting or enjoying the food.

Emotional Mindless Eater: You eat when you feel any emotion, positive or negative.

Restaurant Mindless Eater: You see eating out as a treat and tend to overdo.

Time-Clock Mindless Eater: You eat by the clock, hungry or not.

Clean Plate Mindless Eater: You must always clean your plate.

Good Job Mindless Eater: You use food as a reward or treat.

Free Food Mindless Eater: If it is free, you will eat it, hungry or not, even if you do not like it.

Social Eater: You overeat or mindlessly eat with other people who are mindless eaters or at a party.

Habitual Mindless Eater: You tend to have routines around Mindless Eating, like having a snack when you watch certain TV shows or when you pass certain fast food restaurants.

Snack Grazer: Your meals may be good; but you eat many snacks or bites between meals.

Portion Eater: You feel the urge to eat the entire serving, whether it be a bag, box or bowl. You have trouble stopping before the portion is done.

Desire to Feel Full Eater: You worry about not feeling full and sometimes overeat for fear of not being full.

Multiple Items Eater: You like complex tastes. You are not satisfied with one item.

Second Helping Eater: You tend to automatically go for another serving of whatever you are eating.

Drawn to Certain Foods Eater: You eat healthy but overeat a certain type of food like carbs or sugary foods.

Instant Gratification Eater: You see it and you want it.

The Oh Well Eater: You messed up today so you gave up for the rest of the day.

Secret Eater: You tend to eat in private or in secret. You may eat with others and then later eat again when no one is watching.

Convenience Eater: You grab what is handy or easy to eat rather than preparing healthier options. This often leads to fast food and snacks.

One for Me and One for You Eater: Mindlessly eating your kids leftovers or while feeding them or off your partners plate.

Tandem Eater: You eat the same amount at the same pace as your friends.

Love the Taste Eater: You enjoy the taste of food so much that you want more of it.

What are your Mindless Eating Types?

Mindless Eating vs Mindful Eating

Most of us are Mindless Eaters, that is we grab food without much thought and then we do not remember later that we ate it and wonder why we are gaining weight. Most of us eat whatever we want anyway without thought. So common sense would say that we need to become Mindful Eaters and there are starting to be new diet books written about being Mindful Eaters. At first I thought wow this is it! They get it! The more I think about Mindful Eating though, I just get tired. Is it really possible to plan every single thing that you eat and be so organized and on top of life like that? Can a person really plan their daily calories when being off by only 100 calories per day can add up to 10 pounds of weight gain a year. There is a lot of room for error. I am not sure that most of us can do that! Is there HOPE?

I believe there is great Hope! Mindless Eating seems random but if you are journaling (see Monday's blog) you will begin to see patterns of eating forming. Maybe you are skipping breakfast and hunger is extreme from lunch on. Maybe you hit the break room machines at 3pm every day. Maybe you eat 1000 calories while you fix dinner. There are 1000's of habits that we have that cause us to overeat and I believe many of us make it much more complicated than it is. Also, it is difficult to see these habits and not want to change all of them tomorrow. That is how we are; Perfection or Nothing! All or Nothing Thinking! STOP!

I would encourage everyone to pick three habits at a time only. Work on those habits and when you have mastered one, add a new one. There are a few habits that can make a huge difference though and I will list a few and maybe you can then lose weight without really trying!

1. Downsize your dinnerware. If you eat off of a 10" plate vs a 12" plate, you will eat less. Your brain needs to see a full plate and will be satisfied. The same amount that fills a 10" plate looks like an appetizer on a 12" plate and your brains says "I have been denied" and you fill your plate more. A great place to find 10" plates is at an antique store. Yes, plates used to be that size. Our ancestors actually ate less!
2. Clean up the junk food in your home. Throw it away and do not buy it again! Please stop setting yourself up for failure! If you are trying to eat healthy but you keep your favorite Costco size bag of tortilla chips in the cupboard, you might have a problem! It is a lot easier to pass the chips at the store than your cupboard at night when you had a hard day. Same goes for ice cream, hidden chocolate stashes, cookies......You get it!
3. Do not put your serving dishes on the table or I guarantee you you WILL eat more. This is such a simple thing to do. In our house, I serve everyone at the stove and then put the leftovers away in tupperware containers for lunches the next day. I always have extra salad though. When someone wants seconds I say, "Well, I put the extra in a tupperware for your lunch tomorrow and if you eat more now you are going to have a skimpy lunch" My husband loves leftover lunches and hates sandwiches so he has an extra serving of salad. This is a habit everyone should do. If you leave the food on the table you will all eat more!!!!!
4. Use the half plate rule. This is my favorite. Fill half of your lunch and dinner plate with veggies. Then add one serving of your protein and one serving of your healthy carbohydrate (1/2 a cup is a serving, no tears, you can have more tomorrow.) None of us eat the recommended amounts of fruits and veggies. You should really see this on your journaling. Get creative. Trader Joe's has many salad dressings that are good and not high calorie. Try their balsamic or rasberry vinaigrette and drizzle it on.

There are so many easy tricks to add to your repertoire and I believe as you become saavy you can make up what works for you. Tomorrow I will post a list of some types of mindless overeating habits and you can see the type of eater you are!

Bare Bones Nutrition Week 1

Happy Monday! Each day is a new day. Forget your weekend diet blunders and resolve to make some lifestyle changes in your life this year that could help you lose weight with little effort. I will post a six week guideline to follow for the next six weeks on Mondays. This is a simple guideline that we follow in our classes. It is mostly about being aware in your life and looking for ways to change your habits.

Week 1
Record what you eat in a food journal and make no changes this week. You will use your journal to see your food choices and patterns of eating!!! The more information you can include the better. I would suggest including  time, food eaten, amount, hunger level, calories, where were you, activity (what were you doing), how were you feeling. If you could even do this for three days, it would be helpful. Record every single item that you put into your mouth. A great idea is to take a photo of each food you eat with your cell phone and record it at your convenience. Make sure to note your feelings though! This journal will become your road map to the changes you will need to make in your behavior in the next 6 weeks.

Most of us have no idea how much we eat per day and journaling is the single best way to lose weight. There is no free food out there, like so many of us think. A Costco sample outing will likely cost you around 600 calories. Yes, I actually walked around Costco and tallied this one day! If you sneak in six extra bites, licks or tastes every day, it can add up to 15 extra pounds a year. Journaling also develops an awareness in us as we notice our daily habits, calories, what we really eat (wow no fruits and veggies), triggers, and portion sizes.

I will show how to look at your journal and make some simple changes and substitutions that can save you many calories. You will spot your problem areas, times and see if you are an overeater, snacker, grazer.......In our class we evaluate calories and look for simple ways to save. We can almost always cut calories in half with simple changes and some new strategies that are easy to incorporate.

Remember that it is not as hard as diets want us to think! Happy Monday and Journal away!

About Us

Greetings Everyone! Happy Sunday! I wanted to take a few minutes to let you know why Cindy and I do what we do and a little about us. Then off to watch the Seahawks game!

Cindy and I started our business, Lifestyle Solutions, 3 years ago. We have been friends for many years and have boys that were best friends growing up. I (Kerry) have a degree in Dietetics. My passion and interest is Obesity. I have never believed diets worked because I have never seen long term success in people I know.  In the past 20 years the obesity rates have skyrocketed, and this has saddened me because I believe that the more you know, the more you can eat! People are not really overeating, just eating that extra 100 calories a day that puts on an extra 10 pounds in a year and after 10 years, 100 pounds. Who knew that extra measly 100 calories per day could add up to so much in the long term? I believe with a little bit of education of some smart substitutions, and working on your triggers that most people can get their weight under control. I wanted to help people do this.

Cindy has a masters in counseling and spent many years working as a Social worker, some of which were spent counseling people with eating disorders. She also has a passion to help people struggling with their weight, but more from the emotional end of things. Lets face it, most of us eat for emotional reasons and it is her passion to help people work through these emotions, rather than eating which is only a very temporary fix, and ultimately makes you feel worse as you gain weight. We felt that we both fit together well so started our business.

What we offer is practical tips and common sense ideas to help you be healthy. We hope that you will join us this year as we offer advice and tips to keep your weight down, learn tricks that can help you do this, work on triggers and how to stop them, work on emotional eating, mindless eating and all of the other ways that we can think to eat. We try to be practical, but fun too.

I love to answer questions and I will write on any weight related topic that people are interested in. Send in your ideas!

Now off to watch the Seahawks hopefully defy the odds and win another game!!! Kerry

Review of "10 Habits that Mess Up a Woman's Diet" by Elizabeth Summer

Yesterday, I was reviewing my favorite books for our upcoming Emotional Eating class at Evergreen Hospital. I found some interesting facts in this book, and I will quote her.

• "If you're like most women, you probably rate your eating habits somewhere between "really good" and "pretty good". She then states that 90% of women polled think their diets are reasonably healthy and that almost all of them are delusional!
• 70% of Americans say they are eating "pretty much whatever they want," and the whatever is not the stuff of which healthy, trim bodies are made.
• We're eating more calories and moving less than we did 20 years ago.
• We are currently averaging 158 pounds of sugar eaten per year.
• Most of us eat 11 serving of grains per day, most of them highly refined and lacking nutrients.
• 40% of us are regularly eating fast food weekly.
• We are not eating enough healthy foods like fruits, veggies, and real foods.

Her book then has chapters on Mindless Eating, Your needs, Honesty, Healthy Eating, Planning, Excuses, Moods, Habits, Drinking, and All or Nothing Thinking. I would say that this book is the most practical one that I own for the person that does not want to diet, but wants to make healthy changes to their eating, work on mindless and emotional eating, and also change the way they look at the world. It is my favorite book and she makes it fun and easy to read!

This book is a must buy book for your library! Kerry

Class at Evergreen Hospital on Jan. 26

Greetings everyone. I wanted to let you know that Cindy and I are teaching a class this month at Evergreen Hospital on "Emotional Eating". We will provide some strategies to end emotional eating. For the majority of us emotional eating is an issue for our permanent weight control. Life gets crazy and we eat. We might eat when we are mad, sad, happy, stressed, lonely, anxious, worried..... You get the point. We eat when things are going well and also when life is tough. We try to make our classes fun and very interactive. We look forward to seeing you there!

Class Category is "Healthy Living"
Class Title is "Emotional Eating"
Jan. 26, 7-8:30 $10
https://weblink.healthlines.org/web3/clRs2.do
or www.evergreenhospital.org/classes
or call 425 899-3000 to register M-F 7am to 7pm

Another New Year

Wow Everyone,
It's another New Year and if you are like everyone else you are busy trying to live up to your New Year's resolutions! I saw a great comic where a guy goes into a gym and asks, "Do you have a membership deal that will last me just for the first couple weeks of the New Year, when I've fooled myself into believing that I can stick to my "Get in Shape" Resolution? Does that sound like most of us or what?

Let's make this year count and not be like the guy in the comic. Let's not diet, set unrealistic weight goals for ourselves or try to eat foods that we hate. Let's make some simple lifestyle habit changes that will help us become more healthy. I wanted to start the year going through some of my favorite ways to make some simple changes. I think that these changes basically fall into three categories. Our Habits, Emotional Eating and Food choices/Nutrition.

Our Habits are huge and it is in this area that most of us fail. You might need some changes with habits if you:

1. Eat and Watch television or multi-task
2. Skip breakfast
3. Eat straight from a container or bag
4. Eat at fast food often
5. Snack all day long
6. Eat in your car
7. Put your serving dishes on the table
8. Eat a lot of food that has a bar code on it.
9. Eat a lot of processed food
10. Buy a lot of processed food
11. Eat most of your calories after 6 PM
12. Have poor self talk and thoughts

Basically, you can see that I could keep writing indefinitely because there are so many areas in our lives that we have developed poor habits over time. Each of us is very different and has our own set of problem areas. There is no "one size fits all diet" or "diet advice" that works for everyone. I could make the same never ending list for healthy food choices or for Emotional Eating also, but you get the point. We all have different reasons for having weight problems. 

I want to take the blog and help you get started thinking about ways you can make some simple changes that will help you. Please make this year different by not dieting but by making lasting practical changes that will help you lose weight permanently. It is not rocket science like all of the diet books would like us to believe!

Don't be discouraged. There is much hope!

Kerry