Keeping your food fresh ‘n new and inspiring your taste buds to keep you dieting is hard. It’s hard to vary green vegetables to the point where they begin to look like hot fudge sundaes. That takes talent.

And who wants to troll around the produce section of a store, looking lost, while searching for new and exciting things like: vegetables? Umm…not I said the pig. Plus, what if it tastes bad or even worse, isn’t that good for me.

Alright, alright…pipe down, already. The following are some veggies that you may have forgotten all about or never really paid attention to that are not obscure or unheard of that will surely give your diet a kick in the arse:

Cabbage: Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Thanks Jo, I just emptied a small convenience store in one swoosh. Not only are you not helping my cause, but you are creating mass destruction in the mean time. Ok, sorry. But cabbage, specifically red cabbage, is yummy and is stuffed full of antioxidants for beautiful skin and shiny hair. There are a bunch of different varieties of cabbage to choose from so you don’t have to stick with the red version, but it is my fave.

Cooking it: Saute it. YUM!

1 small red cabbage
1/3 cup chicken broth
2 T Olive, flax or udo’s oil
2 T lemon juice, divided
Clove of garlic, chopped or pressed

Cut up cabbage and let it sit for a minute. Sprinkle with 1T of lemon juice to preserve color. Steam cabbage in a pan with the broth for about 5 min. and then transfer to a separate bowl. While it is still hot, toss with the rest of the ingredients and enjoy.

Shiitake Mushrooms: I know, your freebies are mushrooms of every kind alongside trough size amounts of onions and peppers. Bear with me, will ya? You most likely buy the button mushrooms which are great for you, but they’re not shiitake. These babies are high in nutrients (iron, cholesterol lowering compounds, immune building phytonutrients) and come in a few different varieties as well. Not sure which ones are good ones? Grab the ones that are firm, plump and dry.

Cooking it: Saute it! Another YUM!

Same as above minus the lemon. However, make it into a soup after and it’s to die for.

4 cups boiling water and a ¼ c of miso paste and some sautéed onions and you are good to go. Let that simmer for about ten minutes and enjoy.

Lastly,

Swiss Chard: If you’re anything like me you are thinking: What in heaven’s name is swiss chard. Well I’m glad you asked…it’s a leafy green. Mmm, Jo. Just what I need (rolling your eyes), another leafy green. Oh stop it. This one tastes different. Like earwax with a sweet flavor. But don’t take that from me, try it yourself. Good stuff!

Ok, all kidding aside. It is different in taste that it is a bit on the bitter side, but its texture is what gets you. It’s nice and crunchy and also juicy. Good stuff all around. Plus, it’s not spinach.

Cooking it: Saute it! How’d you guess?

Only this time, no chicken broth. Use olive oil only and sauté it up with everything else. THEN, add 1 diced tomato, 6 black olives, ½ c crumbled feta cheese and 1 tsp fresh or ½ tsp dried oregano. This is different b/c it is warm and cold mixed together and the tanginess of the recipe adds just enough kick. Have fun!

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…if so, you could be in trouble…

I am a true offensive driver (read that as off-fensive, not oh-fensive,lol). I know where I want to go, I take the shortest route to get there, I drive over anybody in my way I do not lally gag while driving, I know the rules of the road and I exercise common sense. Now it bears mentioning that this has been since I am older because when I was younger, the world was my NASCAR testing ground and it wasn’t pretty. But I can say that my dieting reflects my driving experience: I was a jackass dieter when I first started out and wisdom and total failure common sense have tempered my spirit. My question to you is, how closely does your driving reflect your dieting?

Turning left to go right. What is this? Unless you are driving a Duck Tour bus you need to get over yourself and stop thinking you have a 36” diameter steering wheel with passengers in the back. Take the turn for Heaven’s sake!

Dieting: Starting on Monday, Tuesday, next day…whatever. We have all done this one at least once in our lives. Some of us just did it this past weekend. “I’ll start again on Monday. In the mean time, I’ll behave like a Survivor at a buffet from Thursday to Sunday and hope no one notices the 5 pound gain.” Going up 5 to lose 7 is exhausting. Reign this one in.

Not knowing how to properly yield. I don’t understand this one. It’s a yield sign, not a stop sign. If there is no one there, you slow down and keep going–you do not stop. If there is someone there, you do not bomb through and drive over them and act like they were in the wrong by slamming on your brakes after you cut them off or tailing them for a half mile with your high beams on. It’s called YIELD.

Dieting: It’s a cheat meal not a cheat day, cheat week, birthday week, splurge, endless vacation or what have you. It should be a meal. Eating a full meal *while* making your plate is a sure fire sign that things are going downhill fast. With that being said, are you too conservative? Are your cheats things like smelling the food at the bakery across the street or licking the spoon after someone has ice cream in the house? Come on now, you have to have something that makes you feel good and you may have it more than once a week. Call it whatever you want, just use some common sense and YIELD to the desire but not overindulge or undercut your meal.

“Deer caught in a headlight” with cones/cops/cars on side of road: You get the point here. You’re driving down the highway at a good clip and the car in front of you slams on his brakes and drops 20 mph in less than 2 seconds. You’re thinking there must be a corpse in the road b/c why else would someone defy the laws of inertia in such a careless manner. Nope. Cop on the side of the road, has someone pulled over. Umm…ok. He’s busy. What do you think you’re a better ticket so he’s going to drop what he’s doing, hop in the car and go flying after you? Use some common sense folks. That’s actually a great time to practice slalom training or test out the acceleration in your 300 hp vehicle—not anger the 8 cars behind you that are now fishing their hearts out of their throats because they just saw their lives flash in front of them. If you see lights on the side of the road, exercise caution but no knee jerk reactions lest you kill someone behind you.

Dieting: You’re on fire and making progress. Your clothes fit better, people are complimenting you left and right, Maybelline just asked you to be their spokes person for their mascara, it’s on right now. Then you step on the scale and you have only lost 2 pounds in 4 weeks. Suddenly, everything stops. All your progress seems for naught. Now you feel fat, you remember you have been bloated, you may be in a plateau, oh the drama. No, you are letting a box dictate your life/results. There is more to dieting than the scale and you most likely lost bodyfat during that time and it does not show up on the scale the way you would like it to. Stop stressing everyone out, you are progressing, keep your eyes on the prize, get off the brakes.

Mismanaging four way stops and rotaries: Oh boy. This is a tough one and can be incredibly painful to watch. If you do not understand the basics of a four way stop (one direction goes, then the other) or the complexities of a rotary (the people inside have the right of way), stay home because there is always somebody out there like me who is ready to pounce on you. It’s an ugly scene all around and when you have folks coming at you from every direction, it’s really easy to become a piece of blubbering jello in the middle of the intersection.

Dieting: Leaving the house unprepared with food thinking that you can make it up as you go along. Oh boy. At the first sign of trouble you are going down fast. If you think you can survive a drive through making healthy choices or hold out until you find something healthy, think again. Once you’re in the middle of it, you are going to panic and make a wrong choice. Know where you are going and what you’ll need before you go and you will have a much better experience while dieting.

So here’s your homework. Do you do any of these things? Either dieting or driving for that matter, fix it now. These are setbacks on the road to your goals. And at the very least, they add at least 10 min. on average to your commute each day. Regardless, get it together and get more on the ball, will ya? We have some goals to meet this year.

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****Warning: Language may not be suitable for those in denial. No sugar coating in this article at ALL.****

If you have recently lost a large amount of weight and find yourself with your own built in hammock on your tummy (no, I’m not being funny, I’m being serious here) and are wondering (translate that as ‘panicking while searching for answers’) if there is anything you can do about it there is…wait a while. In time, it will resolve itself. Make sure you are eating right and exercising and it will begin to tighten. However, if you have not recently lost a large amount of weight and have gone through the waiting period and that kangaroo pouch (again, if you have never seen this you need a visual to understand how upsetting this can truly be) is still there and now you are no longer fervently searching the web but instead slowly searching for a real solution because you are tired of the gimmicks…read on.

Excess skin on the tummy is unsightly and frustrating. When you first started out on your journey to being hot you honestly thought the only obstacle you had was being fat (however you want to dress that up, go ahead, and trust me—I can relate). Suddenly, you find yourself at your goal weight but now instead of being hot, you now have your dream body with parts of a shar pei stuck to it. Not fun.

Loose skin is a combination of dieting, muscle loss, genetics and deficiencies. You can do something about 3 of those issues, I’m sorry but I have no cure for who you have as parents, but you also have to realize that you may not be able to achieve all of what you would like so be ready for that.

The most common place for loose skin to appear is on the tummy, in the gluteal fold or on the back of the arms. (For all intents and purposes in this post, we’re going to tackle the skin on the tummy.) Usually I see a woman frantically performing hundreds of crunches in the gym in an effort to change the appearance of loose skin and I am always amazed at where this myth came from. If you want to rid yourself of that skin, doing crunches isn’t going to do anything for you so please stop thickening your waist and wasting your time. Instead focus on your food choices, supplementation, water consumption and attention to detail. The girl who can dot her I’s and cross her T’s is going to cross the finish line faster than anyone else in this race. Let’s pick apart what you need to do and why:

1) Give it more time: What? Girl, if I am reading this then I have qualified myself as one who has “gone through a waiting period” so stop yanking my chain! Well I beg to differ. Have you really been patiently waiting? Have you been on point the entire time and have seen no change? Are you tracking your body fat percentage accurately? Did it take you 3 months to lose 70 pounds and now 2 months later you think you should look amazing? Has it been longer than 6 to 9 months at your current weight with steady changes in body fat levels? Are you dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s? Do you know what you are eating daily and do you track what you do in the gym? No? Ok, take a ticket and step aside. I’m serving #2 right now and your number is 1015. It’ll be a small wait.

Honestly, changing body composition on a level such as this can take upwards of a year of consistent dieting and exercise. Not weight loss dieting, just healthy maintenance eating.

2) Lose more body fat: Are you kidding me? I look like an accordion was fastened to my stomach and you want me to increase that more by losing more fat? Yes. And notice I said body fat and not weight. Big difference and also why I said above that you had to wait some time before you really had exhausted all of your avenues. Losing body fat takes time and the leaner you are, the more resistant your body is to giving up the last little bit. It can take months for your body to re-compose itself and during that time, you will see your skin slowly but surely tightening. You cannot control where your body loses fat so if you want a particular area to have less body fat, then you must lose it overall. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Your best defense: increase your lean body mass. Who wants me to go through this rant again? I didn’t think so. Get to liftin’, girl, and you will see your body comp change magically—but not overnight.;)

3) Something’s fishy about this article: Yeah, it’s printed on salmon colored paper with olive colored ink. You know where I am going here and if you are new to reading my blog (welcome, btw) you will soon find out that I am obsessed with good fats. Why? Because they are the fountain of youth! Our skin is composed of layers and as we age the fat cells in some of the layers begin to thin out causing wrinkles, drooping, loss of elasticity, etc. EFA’s fill in the gaps and help skin to have a smoother, tauter appearance. Want that dewy skin we had when we were kids (some of us had; some of y’alls just didn’t wash regularly therefore lacked a dewy look but we can bring that up another time), then start throwing back flax oil like it was Zarex in black plastic bottle and you’ll be on your way.

If you are severely lacking in EFA’s (and many of you are), you will notice a difference when you eat more than the normal 1 serving per day of omega 3. Some of you will see great results just going up to two servings in a day. Some of you may need to put a piece of salmon in a bong and smoke it like crack because you need so much. Make sure it’s Wild Alaskan when you stuff it in the jar…

4) Supplement for success: Again, you may not know how I feel about calcium (and if you go here and throw in your email addy, you can pick up my free report on it) because you are new, but if not you know in my past life I was married to it. Calcium, fish oil, magnesium, BCAA’s and multi vitamins are your best secret weapons in the fight against stubborn body fat. All of them in some way, shape or form increase your metabolism—some of them on the cellular level way down deep inside. That’s some good stuff right there and when you are talking about losing more body fat, needing your body operating at optimum levels or requiring top conditions for cell production/skin regeneration, you need all the help you can get.

Hold up, though! Do not go to the Vitamin Shoppe, pick up a ton of vitamins and start popping them like candy. No, find out from your doc what’s good for you and what’s not first. From there, do your homework and be responsible.

5) Exfoliate and massage the skin regularly: This is number 5 for a reason. Although worthwhile, it’s not a deal breaker. But exfoliating and massage cause your skin to have to regenerate at a faster rate. If you begin to be incredibly regimented about the amount of water you drink, the fat you consume and the overall healthy diet filled with endless variety while scrubbing and rubbing yourself silly, you will be on the right path to a smoother belly and should truly see some progress within 3 months or so.

The following steps are what you need to be doing for at least 3 to 6 months religiously before you can even say you have done all that you can and throw in the towel. What’s missing in this article? What NOT to eat when you are trying to tighten the tummy and/or any other kind of loose skin and we will get to that soon enough. Woop woop!!:o)

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Imagine if it were that simple. In fact, if it were that simple we would not be in the weight crisis that America seems to be in now. For starters, most women are “starvers” before they are ever “eaters” meaning they will forgo food all day long only to eat one meal, possibly two that day and not overeat in the two meals that they do have because they are truly used to operating on such low cals. Secondly, women tend to be more active than men in their day to day lives and if it was just about cals in vs. cals out, activity would have to count for something once dieting and they would begin to drop something.

But it’s not just about that. There is so much more to it and it seems that every time I turn around there is some new “guru” out there telling you how you should just ‘push away from the table’. If you have been trying to lose weight, or better yet, optimize your physique by losing the last 10 to 15 pounds for a while and you have some clown telling you to just “push away from the table” when your diet is cleaner than a dish straight out of the dishwasher, it could get ugly. I find the battle to look good naked is not represented well in the diet arena. There are no studies done on those who are lean (18% to 20% body fat for women) trying to get leaner (12 to 14%). There is nothing out there that tells you the leaner you get, the harder it is to get there again should you gain weight. There is nothing out there that acknowledges REPEAT dieting and the struggles that you incur.

Plateaus, stubborn weight loss, weight loss after a sudden, dramatic gain, weight loss on a seasoned athlete, etc. all pose very difficult situations in which a person can try to lose weight and most likely not succeed on just the simple “cals in vs. the cals out” method. Some situations truly require patience, creativity and intimate knowledge of the human body to be able to shed the weight. Others require you to know a bit of endocrinology or holistic medicine. Regardless, just trying to balance eating less with working out more is not going to get you to your goal, you’re going to have to experiment some.

There are many factors that affect a person trying to lose bodyfat in an effort to be lean. Let’s look at some of them:

Diet History

If you have never dieted before, you will most definitely fall under the CIVCO umbrella the first time you try. In fact, you could even do Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig and get fairly good results. Whatever you do it does not matter because the body has never gone through a diet before so it will respond to a new stimulus almost immediately. However, if you are a career dieter, you will notice right away that the more you diet, the harder it is to lose. When I say this, I do not mean the length of time you are on a diet, I mean the amount of times that you have gone up and down in weight.

Hormone Profile

Hormones are complicated. Do I need to say anymore? Add in an autoimmune to the picture and you have a recipe for frustration. Hypothyroidism, PCOS, Syndrome X, faulty menstrual cycles etc. can slow your progress down to a grinding halt where you never seem to get past the “same 5 pounds” you keep going up and down. You may starve yourself to death but if any of these issues remain unresolved, you are doing nothing but digging yourself further into a hole emotionally and possibly physically.

Muscle Mass

Depending on the amount of muscle mass you have, weight may fall off easier for you than others. The more muscle you have the easier it is for you to get lean. This is not the same as losing weight, this is about losing body fat. If you desire a very lean appearance and you lack a considerable amount of muscle, you will find that you are required to do a bit more than the average person to achieve it. Now I need to be more specific here: I do not mean you need to be muscular or have popping biceps, I want to make that clear. But you do need to have some muscle on your frame. Whenever I have a client who is doing “everything right” and yet cannot seem to get as lean as they want it is typically due to the fact that they lack significant muscle mass for their frame. Again, not the same as needing to look like a body builder of any kind, but you lack the amount of muscle necessary to provide an adequate base BMR to help you out with your dieting.

Supplement Abuse

If you previously abused fat burners, energy drinks or other stimulants, you are in for a battle. Again, you can argue CIVCO all day long but in the end, you are in a permanent plateau until you re-establish equilibrium to your system. I find that it can take as much as one year of “fixing” for every one year of fat burner abuse. This, of course, is purely anecdotal information as I have never seen a study that addressed this phenomenon but I have had plenty of experience working with clients who once abused fat burners.

Set Point Theory

Most of us have heard of this theory and if you have not I will sum it up for you in this way: your body has a certain weight that it wants to be or stay at and it will take an act of nature to successfully move past it or keep from moving to it. If you come to me wanting to lose a particular amount of body fat and want to be a certain weight and have either never been that low before in your life or have not been it in more than ten plus years, I am going to give you the hairy eyeball first and ask you how much it means to you. Am I being a Debbie Downer? No, I’m being realistic. Before you embark on a hard journey, I am giving you a chance to adequately pack for it. So you need to get a big enough bag that can hold your emotional fortitude, ambition, motivation and resolve or be open to the fact that it might not happen.

You may honestly be in a true plateau right now as you try to reach your ideal (not your body’s ideal) body weight. If that is the case, do not be discouraged by those that tout the CIVCO mantra. Their experiences are much different than yours in that their clientele just wants to lose weight. That is much different than what you desire. Because you strive to be leaner, you do not apply to their general public studies performed on general public people who have lots of weight to lose and many habits to change. There are very few studies, if any, on lean folks who eat clean who want to lose another “10 or so” pounds but now find it hard to so. Instead, keep searching for information that speaks to your exact situation and that will help you to stay focused.

Now you know I am eventually going to cover every scenario in this post so stay tuned as I focus on metabolism this week. So much to cover and so little time to get it out to you. *sigh*

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I grew up in a middle class neighborhood that was a true suburb in that it had less hustle and bustle than that of a big city but still had enough activity to label it more than a small town. But it also had this strange “country” feel to it that “city folk” would make fun of whenever they would venture into our little city. Now when I say country, I don’t mean Garth Brooks and the Grand Ole Opry, I mean I lived on a street that had a community center for teens on one end of the street and a horse stable on the other. Ummm, yeah. Talk about a dichotomy there.

Another thing that we had in my neighborhood was a “beach”.

Let me tell you right now, it is not a “beach”.

It is a river’s version of a “cul de sac” and it sits all the way down a very long, winding road (ironically, the same road as the horse stable) in the ‘city-country’. The river ends in a lake and the city has cordoned off parts of it for people to swim there. I think in my twenty-some-odd years of living on that road, I might have dipped my feet in the beach water maybe once. I wouldn’t swim in that water if you put a winning lottery ticket on a buoy halfway out and told me I could have all of the money when I got to it. Knowing that water, I would have to spend my entire lottery spoils on good healthcare after that.

Why? Because there is no tide; there’s just a river that drains into the lake (and if you knew where that water was coming from, you’d think keeping the beach open would be criminal). There are no filters, drains, purifying systems, nothing. And over the years, we humans have done a number on that water. From pets swimming in the water, to baby diapers left in the sand, people using it as a port-a-potty, to normal toxic waste coming in from the river, Mother Nature has not been given much time to regenerate and restore this body of water. So year after year, the damage has been done and now you are left with a very unsafe body of water fighting to keep some sort of balance with nature. And right about now you are asking yourself, “Where is she going with this?” Glad you asked.

Do you know what that lake represents? Your liver. Yes, your liver. That poor organ that takes up so much precious real estate on the right side of your body that you abuse more than your favorite pajamas is just crying for some love. I wouldn’t trade livers with some of you (I am making this sound like an actual option) if you paid me a million dollars. Right now, your liver is screaming:

“Dear God in Heaven, can you cut me some slack down here? What do you think this is? A waste paper basket? Enough already with the artificial sweeteners, fake food, smog, alcohol, tainted meat, stress and etc. Can you give an organ a break for crying out loud? All day long you have me shuttling junk out of here and then you think I’m going to help you lose weight, too? MAKE UP YOUR MIND! I’m taking this to the union! Convert energy, store energy, digest food, clean your blood. Enough! I need some relief down here and don’t think because you throw me a juice drink here or there that you are helping me out with cleaning up this dump. You’re not.”

Ok, once you get your liver to pipe down and get some sense, you need to pay attention to what he’s screaming about.

I have spoken about the role of your liver on numerous occasions but now it gets its own article. One of the things about ‘dieting with a specific look in mind at the end’ is everything needs to be on point for this to happen. We take dieting for granted and we shouldn’t. It is not easy nor is it guaranteed so we should be looking for ways to take advantage of every gift we are given in this area. Your liver just happens to be the best gift ever in the fight for a hot body but we do not appreciate it. Instead, we forsake it. Think about what we ingest on a daily basis and it is not too hard to see how much we seem not to care about this organ.

A primary function of your liver is to metabolize fat. If you keep it busy doing everything else (your laundry, your taxes, you know, all the stuff you don’t want to do), it cannot help you to lose body fat (Notice I didn’t say weight. If you want to lose weight just lob off a leg, we want to lose body fat here).

The best way to help your liver out is through detoxification. I bet you think that I am going to tell you to buy a detox of some kind to clean out your liver and then love all over it by avoiding the toxins above plus a few more. Wrong. I am going to tell you to avoid the toxins above (and a few more) but do not buy any pills or potions to “detox” your liver. While keeping it as clean as possible will allow you to lose more weight than you would have been able to if it was all clogged up, I am all about espousing nature and letting her take her course. Instead of focusing on trying to do some “weekend detox” or “instant flush”, just stay true to your clean diet, limit the toxins to as little as possible and drink plenty of water. Your liver will do fine all on its own.

Cleaning your colon does not clean your blood or your liver. Drinking a juice blend of 4 fruits and 3 veggies doesn’t do it either. No, your liver cleans your liver and does it quite nicely. It’s the only organ that can regenerate itself! How’s that for efficiency? Knowing that this organ can regenerate its own tissue and filter blood at a rate of 1.5 quarts/min., it almost seems silly to think that an herb can accomplish half as much as this powerhouse can on its own.

If you stop whatever weapon of choice you are consuming right now, you will allow your liver a chance to clean itself. It’s just like a cat, only it doesn’t demand things of you and then ignore you in your own home like an unwelcomed guest. When left to its own devices, it will clean and purify itself on its own and really does not need much outside help from you. Drink plenty of water (close to a gallon), eat lots of fruits and veggies (you should already be doing this) and limit the fake stuff in your diet (**transparency alert** I love diet coke. I’m working hard to wean this habit so I feel for you) and you are well on your way to maximizing the fat loss through your liver.

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I love alcohol.  Seriously. 

Nothing beats a great glass of wine with an even better steak dinner.  It can be relaxing, yummy and almost daring depending on how often you indulge.

But consuming it on a regular basis is not going to get you the body that you want.  It may get you some extra pounds—not because it makes you gain weight, but because it drops your guard and you make bad choices—or possibly some temporary relaxation, but drinking in and of itself makes for a crappy cheat meal.

Occasionally I will read of a trainer saying it is ok to have a drink with their meal as a treat and to count it as a cheat meal.  I hear you trying to keep the client focused and not putting them in a “box of denial” and normally I am the most easy going of folks when it comes to rules.  But alcohol is one that I have a no tolerance policy for when you have a goal that you are trying to reach. 

I get it, too, that it is easy for me to say that because I am no longer shooting for that “look” anymore.  But when I was going for it, I did not drink.  Ever.  Not at Christmas parties, birthday parties, never.  Just was off limits. 

Why?

Because it wastes so much precious time. 

It’s as simple as that. 

Alcohol does not cause you to gain weight.  It just keeps you from losing.  After you get over the dehydration caused by your drink or two, you then have to go about shuttling all the toxins through your liver.  That takes precious time away from your liver to do the thing it likes to do: breakdown fat.  So how do we make this work as a “cheat meal”? 

Once a month if you want to keep progressing—and it would be the only cheat that I would have that meal, that day, that week.

I am typically asked if it matters if it is “lite beer” or “gin vs. vodka” because of the calories.  This has nothing to do with calories.  This has everything to do with the fact that your body does not recognize alcohol as anything but a toxin.  It is not a carbohydrate.  It carries 7 cals per gram when carbs carry 4.  It takes about 24 hours to make it through your system and it is a stimulant typically causing you to have an increased appetite—i.e. munchies. 

Some of the biggest arguments I have had as a nutritionist have been about alcohol.  I get it, it helps you relax.  I know you want to have a glass every night but I am telling you, it will catch up to you more than anything else in your diet.  I can tell when I drink.  I don’t like it so I have since stopped (although I turn 40 this year and I can tell you it is going down!  Sorry…time to focus.)  being as casual about it as I have been the last year and a half so I am back to my original policy of general avoidance.  But for the brief time in my life that I let it back in to my food choices, I could tell the difference and it was not worth it.

Cheats are personal.  Some people can do the nibble thing.  Others need a meal and that’s it.  Some need to know that have the freedom to have something whenever.  Regardless, choose your weapon of choice sans alcohol when you are trying to lose weight or affect a change in your body.  Nothing is worse than wasting time and that’s exactly what alcohol does for you.  Wastes time.

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I know you have heard the saying:  80% of your results come from 20% of what you do.  Well I am going to redefine this for you today in terms of dieting so that you may look at a different way of enjoying the cheat meal. 

Last post I defined a cheat meal for 2 scenarios:  a brand new person to the world of clean eating and a not so new person to the world of clean eating.  Both situations involved “being good” all week long so that you may enjoy a meal or dessert once a week that is completely off plan.  I want to make sure that I point out that in all forms of dieting I always assume that your week is full of variety so that you never feel deprived and you are not limiting your nutrients.  It is imperative that I emphasize that because that can get lost in translation as I go through this series.  You will not survive the diet game if you deprive yourself endlessly with no variety in site.

As you mature in the way you view your food, yourself, your relationship with food, you will begin to loosen up on your “rules” you had set out for yourself in the beginning.  Almost all of us have gone through the same cycle some time in our lives:  deprivation àunhealthy relationship with food àgive up dieting à start again à ease up on self negative talk à learn how to be one with food àsuccess.  You may be in the beginning of this cycle, you could be at the end or you may have repeated this cycle more than one time.  No matter where you are, you are trying to achieve what is referred to as balance or moderation.  These are elusive terms that conjure up pictures of blissful days just co-existing with a chocolate cake on the kitchen table that we only had a small slice of…one time…and didn’t pick at it…at all…not even once–kinda.

Balance can truly be achieved.  It is not fake.  It does exist.  You achieve it through the 80/20 rule: the diet pros way of incorporating a cheat meal into their diet.

Let’s say for ease of understanding and math that you eat 5 meals per day, evenly divided, with 3 components in each meal.  The components could be protein, starch, fruit or veggie or protein, fat, fruit or veggie or you fill in the combination that suits you.  Using this meal set up, four meals per day would equal 80% of what you eat for the day.  If I apply the 80/20 rule to this picture, this would mean you fulfilled your good eating for the day by meal 4 and can technically eat something not-so-on-plan for the fifth meal.  This would also mean that you could do this every day and still reach your goal depending on what your goal is and how long you have been dieting. 

As you continue and feel comfortable with what you are doing, you can do one of two things: either tighten the rule to 85/15 or 90/10 or you can keep it 80/20 but tighten the food choices that you deem as cheats.  Either one will move you through any plateaus that you may encounter and still keep you feeling in control of your diet and your progress.  The idea here is that you have something when you want it and you avoid the never ending up down up down of dieting via deprivation.  The more you feel at peace with this idea, the easier it becomes for you to follow it and then to begin to change your overall choices so that there is very little difference between your not-so-on-plan meals and your on-plan meals.  This is balance.

In my years of dieting folks I have realized that, we as fitness professionals, can only sit back and watch this cycle play itself out.  It’s like watching your teenage daughter go through all the dating trials you did and there is not much you can do to stop it.  In fact, you don’t really want to stop it because the learning she will do because of it is precious you just want to minimize the damage.  This is the same here.  You must find your way through what works for you diet-wise, but in an effort to help you through the cycle as unscathed as possible, us fitness professionals pen these articles for you.  The learning is essential but the suffering is optional.  Glean as much as you can from those that have dieted before you—it really helps.

What does a day like this look like you say?  As always, it depends.  But how about a person who is pretty comfortable with where they are in their physique goals and their eating patterns and may travel for work?  Meal 1 eggwhites, oatmeal, fruit  Meal 2 cottage cheese, ¼ sc pp, 1T Pb  Meal 3 ground turkey, big salad w/ fixings, dressing  Meal 4  protein shake, veggies w/ hummus Meal 5 Has dinner out.  Does not attack waitress on how to make food, has a starch maybe but is not worried about it so much and just enjoys the meal.  No processed food but might have a light sauce on it or maybe it is not just grilled—the point is, there is enjoyment here.  Next day, no guilt or worries—starts all over again.  That is one way to do it.  There are so many more but you need to experiment to find what’s right for you.  The take home message here is that you need to begin to trust your instinct, allow yourself some slack and begin to look at this as a life long journey instead of a season of dieting.

Trust me, I know it is hard. 

But when you finally give yourself a break and try this, you will be so happy that you did. 

Next, alcohol.  We will wrap it up after that with how this all really looks when we put food to it.  Woop woop!:o)

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It’s winter time here in New England and we begin to look forward (it’s that the word?) to snowy days, warm living rooms, Snuggie’s on the couch (what? You don’t have one?) with a good Life Time movie starring Jaclyn Smith (yes, I’m dating myself again).  It’s a perfect time to begin trolling the cabinets for things you shouldn’t be eating.  Your mind is on fire racing through all possibilities:

That jar of peanut butter.

The bag of almonds.

The rice cakes—wait, they’re not open, yet. Whew.

I know what you are thinking.  Just a few nibbles.  No one will know and they won’t count because you promise not to chew.  What could be the harm?

You and I both know this could get ugly up in here but before I tell you how this drama concludes, let’s get into defining what really constitutes a cheat meal…

The “In the Beginning” Meal

I think all of us remember when we first started dieting.  It seemed so simple then.  You ate right—you lost weight.  Cool stuff.  But the average woman has been on at least 4 major diets (I say major because aren’t we all on a diet at some time during the day, every day?) by the time she hits 30.  That’s crazy and the body does not instantly respond like it did before.  But the beginning is the best time.  You’re a dieting virgin and you can get away with so much so why not take advantage?  If you love something, have it–please.  This also applies to the person who has a good amount of weight to lose (30 plus pounds).  Keeping your diet super clean is not prudent and it causes you to become a bit psycho—and I mean that literally.  It really is all about transition, moderation and being in it for the long haul.  

This means that extreme measures this far out will never work.  If you have been eating a slew of junk for years and then decide to clean it up (first, good for you! Yay!), don’t try to go cold turkey here.  Food is habitual and you will be good for about 2 to 3 weeks and then cave to the pressure, “cheat”, feel guilty and then throw it all out the window.  Let’s avoid all that.  What’s a good cheat for you?

The back room of a Wendy’s.

The first row of the ice cream display at Baskin and Robbins.

Any pizza—the whole pizza—at a Bertucci’s restaurant.

Everything in the cabinet at home.  You know, THAT cabinet.

Now am I serious?  No.  And I am sure you figured that out real quick but I am making my point here which is, have what you want.  Do not put any restrictions on what you eat but do restrict how you eat it.  Keep reading.

YOUR GUIDELINES

One meal.

One serving—no seconds.

It must fit on one plate.

If it’s a meal, no dessert.  If it’s a dessert, the meal must be clean.

You may NOT stuff yourself.  

Do not try to plan your day around it.  Just have it.

Don’t look back and don’t feel guilty.

Do describe it in detail and email me b/c I love to live vicariously through you.

The Blue Pill Vs. The Red Pill

Oh boy. 

You went for the red pill.  

Now you have the knowledge of good food vs. bad food.  You follow rules.  You pack your lunch.  You read labels.  You may do one of the following:  limit your fat intake, your carb intake, overall caloric intake, dessert intake and etc.  You have entered the Diet Matrix. 

There is no turning back.  You know too much now.  Your mind is forever tainted with too much information and you can no longer eat pancakes with bacon on a daily basis (which is a shame because bacon really does make everything better.)  You now know how far that rabbit hole goes.  But what does that mean really? 

It means you have been dieting long enough that you no longer have seismic weight drops when you begin a diet or you are within 15 to 20 pounds of your goal.  You have enough clean eating under your belt that your tastes should be changing and you no longer need to revisit the overly processed food gods to tame your palate.  Things like…

A good pasta dish at a restaurant.

Any meal that is not fried.

A yummy dessert but not the Jim Dandy size.

A healthy version of pizza.

A full sugar soda—16 oz or less.

You, my dear, have a different set of rules.

YOUR GUIDELINES

One meal, not overly processed.

One serving, no seconds

Should be same portion size as most of your meals. Same for desserts—no gorging.

Move away from fried food or overly cheesy meals.

Plan it into your day.

Keep in mind these are guidelines.  Everyone is different and you have to find what is right for you.  But you are no longer taking a stab in the dark, you have a starting place. This is just a tip of the iceberg for cheat meals.  I have not discussed the diet pro, yet, because they are getting their own post.  Way too much to cover there.  And I will qualify the statements above such as ‘plan it into your day’ and ‘not overly processed’ in another post. 

Much more to come like alcohol, functions, restaurant vs. eating at home and etc. so keep checking for more posts.

But what happened to the scenario above?  She realized the harm could be how she would feel the next day, so she opted for a cup of herbal tea and finished watching the movie.  What did you think she would do?:o)

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Cheat meals are both a blessing and a curse.  When we first begin dieting they tend to be the biggest worry for the newbie dieter:

Can I have a cheat meal?

What counts as a cheat meal?

What can I have as a cheat meal?

Just the thought of eating off plan the first two to three weeks for some folks is too much to handle because ‘they want to get everything right’ or they are trying to maximize the amount of weight they can lose in that time.  During this time you try to eat as clean as possible and deny yourself the right to even breathe by a bakery much less walk into one.  I am going to venture to say that you go over the top during this time by trying to over diet.  This eventually backfires when you just cannot take it anymore and do the backstroke through the buffet table at the Beansprout restaurant.  Not pretty.

The other end of the spectrum is counting down the minutes to your cheat meal to the point where you have a counter on your blog stating: 3 days 2 hours 25 min 32 sec til my cheat meal.  There’s cause for concern if this is you.  You’re going to wait until you have a cheat meal but you’re going to treat it like it’s the last meal in the year 2012.  Not only do you plan it down to the moment, but you have built it up to the point that unless this meal comes served with a 2 week vacation in Maui, you are not going to be happy.  So now you cannot stop with just the meal.  You’re actually let down so you start trolling through the cabinets for something to satisfy the fantasy you just basted all week long.

For the next couple of posts I am going to dissect the cheat meal for you.  I’ll talk about what you can get away with, pitfalls, fallacies and etc. with the hopes of getting you through this holiday season safely (I don’t want anyone throwing their back out hucking their scale out the window.lol).  There is an art to this and you can master it.  If you understand what makes you psycho, you can get in front of it and own it before it owns you.  Also, if you also understand how much damage this meal doesn’t do, you will handle the day after so much better. 

Get ready to venture into the land of cheat meals…WOOP WOOP!:o)

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During a typical work week I come across a myriad of people with all kinds of fitness questions. 

Can I eat this food?

I heard that this makes you gain weight.

Tell me honestly, do I really have to do that to be successful?

Those kinds of questions.  And normally the person asking me seems to be pretty balanced in their approach to me.  They are not too tense or too overly anxious; some of them are genuinely interested in all I have to say whereas others just want me to get to the punch line: so, what’s gonna make me hot?  All in all I am pretty used to a Q & A session when I either go to meet a client or speak somewhere and etc. Yesterday, however, I was reminded again of how important it is not to take life or dieting to seriously and to be aware of how your dieting may be affecting others. 

You always hear people say it’s the journey that counts—not the destination—and etc.  How they should take this one day at a time.  They cannot be perfect so don’t try to be.  Cut yourself some slack and be prepared for pitfalls.  This is all true and so imperative to hear and take in.  When I encounter a barrage of questions about dieting and they are all about the “rules”:

Don’t have fruit after….

Sugar is bad for you…

Fruit is bad for you…

Don’t eat late at night…

I tend to shy away and steer the person in a more productive direction than just following a bunch of rules because you honestly can start to become “wiggy” with it (downright obsessed; deer caught in a headlight; manic; very unhealthy).  Can you imagine how surprised I was when the person asking me all these questions was a male and he was quite young. 

I honestly do not know how young he was but he was young enough that it was alarming to me that he had all those rules in his head and was quite concerned about getting them right.  Honestly, it made me stop dead in my tracks (mind you I was presenting in front of a group) and think to myself, “Holy moly.  Someone is really feeding this person some information and boy is it affecting him.”  He is either around someone who is dieting or had someone close to him lose a bunch of weight (because he was perfect weight for his height and has always been) and he was truly affected by it.

I finished the presentation by really driving home the fact that these rules are not necessary to be successful in life and there are so many different ways to diet/life life/eat right/etc. that getting hung up on way is counterproductive.  I think I made some head way there but I am not sure.  In the mean time, I am deeply affected by that meeting.

Dieting is a personal decision and it should be your decision.  Bringing everyone else along in the family for the healthy ride is awesome and encouraged, but if you have a list of diet rules that you have made yourself a slave to, please rethink passing them along.  Not only is it unhealthy for you to be tied to an arbitrary set of rules in the long run, but you may be affecting someone else close to you without you even knowing it.  You can get the body that you want and the health that you desire without having to get all wiggy with it.

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