Category: Weight Loss

Recently my friend told me about how she’s frustrated that half the clothes in her closet don’t fit. She has two wardrobes: one for her skinnier self and one for her heavier self. Losing weight is on her to do list, she tries to eat healthy, and she works out, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening. What’s she doing wrong?

Sugar Is Your #1 Frenemy

If you’re like most women, sugar is keeping you from getting the body you want. You know that sugar makes you fat, it makes you tired, and it makes you hangry all day. So why aren’t you doing anything about it? No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to cut back on sugar.

I understand, I’ve struggled with it myself. And with all the sugary treats at the office and the “I’ll just have one bite of dessert, ok maybe I’ll just have the whole thing” splurges on the weekend, it can seem impossible.

How Can You Detox From Sugar?

So what can you do about it? You basically have 2 options. You could try quitting sugar cold turkey. I’ve actually tried this and felt like I was going through sugar withdrawal – hot flashes, mood swings, trouble sleeping, and more. I don’t recommend this if you have a job or friends or a life. You may not have any left by the time you’re done and also no ice cream sandwiches.

I recommend the 2nd option. Start by decreasing your sugar intake by roughly 10%, that’s what worked for me. Then reevaluate and see how you feel. If you feel awful, back up and just cut your sugar intake by 5%.

Do You Have to Use A Calorie Counter?

I know you hate calorie counters, I don’t know why. I love calorie counters and anything that involves numbers. But, if you hate calorie counters I’ll tell you what worked for me, so you don’t have to use one.

The easiest way to cut down on how much sugar you’re eating and not miss it is to start with making one small change to what you eat for breakfast Monday to Friday. If that’s too hard just start with one day, probably Friday, since you’ll have after work drinks with your coworkers and Sunday brunch with your friends to look forward to.

Change What You Eat for Breakfast

Breakfast during the week is usually the easiest meal to change because normally you’re in a hurry, so you’re less likely to miss what you don’t eat. Maybe right now you’re eating a banana because it’s easy to grab when you’re running late. Or maybe you’re eating oatmeal with a fruit topping because that seems healthy, right? But if you want to lose weight you’re going to have to push a little harder.

It’ll be worth it in the end because you’ll feel great and you’ll look Insta-worthy in every single picture! Ok, I can’t promise the last part, but you’ll definitely feel great and lose weight.

The Sugar Hiding in Plain Sight

The reason these aren’t the best options is because of the sugar. Fruit is healthy, but first thing in the morning it’s a lot of sugar too. Once you get your body used to the idea that it needs this much sugar, it’s going to crave sugar all day. You can try snacking on other things like a handful of almonds, but you can’t trick your body. It wants sugar.

So what should you do? Try my new Funfetti Cupcake Diet! Just kidding, there’s no Funfetti Cupcake Diet. I mean there is, but if it actually worked, you wouldn’t be reading this.

What Should You Eat For Breakfast?

So what should you really do? Well, you could eat oatmeal without any toppings on it, but why would you want to? I tried it, it tasted awful. Instead of making drastic changes that are going to be hard to maintain long term, start with small changes that you can realistically maintain.

For example, if you normally eat oatmeal with a banana and brown sugar on top, try putting in ½ the banana. See how it goes, see how you feel, and then go from there. Eventually, try to switch to a less sweet topping like walnuts or almonds.

Where’s the Fruit?

What about fruit? Aren’t you supposed to be eating fruit for [insert your favorite health and wellness words here]. Try moving fruit to later in the day, like for your afternoon snack or even better for your after dinner dessert instead of ice cream sandwiches.

What if you can’t miss your daily ice cream sandwich? Well then cut back on fruit short-term while you’re trying to lose weight. Eventually when you’re making continued progress towards your weight loss goals, then add fruit back in. The goal for adding fruit back in shouldn’t be 5 years from now. Set a short deadline, like 3 months, and then stick to it by telling someone you can count on to be your accountability partner about it.

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I Used To Eat Oreos For Breakfast

I love sugar. Eight years ago I used to eat 100 Calories Oreos packs for breakfast. I thought this was relatively healthy after all only 100 calories sounds healthy, doesn’t it? Plus they’re prepackaged; I used to be always running late in the morning and also I had to stop at Starbucks for a mocha before I went to the hospital, so a fast breakfast was essential. Now I eat eggs in the morning, and the transition to breakfast with less sugar has changed my whole life in how much easier it has been for me to cut sugar during the rest of the day.

Why is that?

If you pay attention to it, you will probably notice that if you eat a lot of sugar early in the day, you will crave a lot of sugar all day. This has to do with the way your body regulates sugar. Once you establish a high steady state of glucose in your body, your body will want to maintain that. This is true for most people who have a sweet tooth. If you’re more of a savory or salty person, then this likely doesn’t apply to you.

What should you do?

When I first started cutting sugar in the morning, I felt awful. I’m pretty sure I feel more energetic after I have sugar, even more than if I have caffeine. If this is you too, it can be hard to cut sugar in the morning and still feel awake enough to go to work.

Feel better in the morning

One option I found that worked for me was to move my workout to the morning. Exercise can give you a similar kind of rush as sugar. This is because exercise increases endorphins and enkephalins which are both endogenous opioid peptides. This means they both work with the part of the brain associated with pleasure and pain. Although there’s not a lot of medical data to support this, anecdotally this why you hear people talking about having a runner’s high or being addicted to exercise.

What if you don’t have time to go to the gym in the morning?

Try doing a mini workout like jumping jacks at home and see if this is a good stand in. Alternatively, if you don’t like working out in the morning, you could try meditation as well. In studies, it has been shown to help with depression and anxiety. So if you feel depressed or anxious from not having sugar in the morning, it could help you too.

Or you could try caffeine

Adding some extra caffeine to your morning could work too. Caffeine is a stimulant for your central nervous system, so it will help you feel more alert. You can try adding an extra shot of espresso to your iced latte if you’re a coffee person.  

If you’re a chocolate person like me and are switching from having chocolate related sugar in the morning, you can try switching to dark chocolate which has substantially less sugar than anything with milk chocolate. Usually the higher the percentage of dark chocolate the less sugar and more caffeine is in it. Personally, I find anything over 70% cocoa to be too bitter to enjoy. I initially switched from 100 calorie Oreo packs to a nut mix with dark chocolate covered soy nuts.  Your longer term plan should be to stop all chocolate in the morning eventually as it still has some sugar in it.

Change your habits

I recommend you cut back on sugar gradually, so you don’t feel like you’re depriving yourself and you’re more like to keep the changes long term. For most people doing something more extreme like a one month sugar detox will work for something short term like getting fit before a wedding or similar event. But then after the wedding, you’ll go back to all the same bad eating habits, and you’ll balloon back up to your previous weight. And the next time you have to go to a wedding you’ll be in the same place all over again. If you learn how to change your habits or even just one habit, what you eat for breakfast, it will make keeping off the weight much easier.

Originally published on Northington Fitness & Nutrition July 17, 2017.

 

 

It’s Friday night, and you’re supposed to be grabbing dinner with your friends at that new pizza place. You know the one that’s supposed to be so cool you’d think you were in Brooklyn but the pizza is so authentic you’d think you were in Italy. Which makes you wonder – is there New York style pizza in Italy? Probably not, Italians are pizza snobs.

And then you remember – aren’t you supposed to be trying to lose weight? You already have three weddings and a long weekend at the beach on the schedule. Should you really be going out for another carb heavy dinner? You’re just going to spend half the night thinking “How many hours will I have to go to the gym to work off all these calories?” or “How little will I have to eat for the rest of the week to make up for all the damage I’m doing tonight?” But what else can you do? Skip out on dinner with your friends? It’s like no matter what you do you can’t win.

Whenever you go out to eat there’s always some cool new dish to try, like three layer pizza cake. Ok maybe not that, but other cool things. Or your friend just got a new job and orders a round of shots to celebrate; you can’t say no to that, can you? Pizza, ramen, dumplings and who wants to skip out on doughnuts? Not me, not you.

So how do you enjoy going out to eat with your friends and still lose weight when your friends want to try every cool new Korean BBQ place that opens up. The requirement to be a cool new place seems to be to have two options on the menu – dishes that will make you fat and dishes that will make you really fat. Is the restaurant industry plotting against you? Probably. Does it seem like they don’t want you to lose weight? They don’t; it’s not good for business.

You’re not going to stop hanging out with your friends. Your friends like going out to eat. You like going out to eat. And you’re definitely not skipping out on boozy brunch. You don’t have to. This is what you’re going to do instead – pick the right foods at the right time.

Let’s say you’re going out for pizza. This is what you order:

Alcohol

• Start the night with the least sweet options.
• Bone Dry wines are your best option because they have less sugar.
• Red Wine – cabernet, pinot noir, syrah.
• White Wine – sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, chardonnay.

Appetizers

• Order one appetizer per person. Most people order fewer appetizers because they think they won’t have room to eat the main but that’s actually good at a pizza place because the main is higher in carbs than the appetizers you’re going to pick.
• Cold – olives, salumi, and cheeses.
• Salads – salads with vegetables over fruit as fruits as a group have more sugar than vegetables.
• Hot – brussel sprouts, meatballs, and artichokes.

Pizza

Pick a pizza with at least 3 toppings – 1 cheese, 1 vegetable and 1 meat. The more toppings you put on your pizza, the more full you will be from each slice of pizza. The goal is to end up eating fewer pizza slices total so fewer carbs total.

Dessert

Any and all – the goal is to be so full from Appetizers and Pizza that you only have room for a few bites.

 

I know what you’re thinking, who wants to be that really lame friend that says no to ordering garlic knots? I don’t want you to be that really lame friend. This is what you do instead:

Use The Judge Judy Script:

To be used to stop your friends from judging you for trying to get hotter.

Friend (the one that seems to eat half their weight in food every time you go out but still has a better body than you do): “Let’s order the garlic knots, the Yelp reviews say they’re supposed to be really good here.”

You: “Work was really busy, I just ate lunch an hour ago. Let’s order the [insert complicated name of artisanal salad of your choice] instead.”

Try this out the next time you’re out with friends and let me know what works and what doesn’t in the comments below.

Bagels, breweries, burgers – your friends are making you fat.

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Ok maybe not everything, but I’ll get you one step closer.