Making dietary changes....

[PrincessFiona]

OK..another health and fitness question today...sorry!

I'm debating the idea of trying to diet again....with my track record though, it seems like a bad idea. I know that my eating habits could be tweaked (well, more like overhauled) and that this would help me with weight loss tremendously. My problem with dieting though is that if I end up 'blowing it' (my perception) it can turn into an all-out week long blowitfest.

I'm satisfied with the progress that I'm making with the walking, and I really do want to lose some weight...I just don't know how to change my diet without it becoming a "diet". If I exclude certain foods, I usually end up feeling deprived of that and then if I eat it I tend to get off track.

So...I don't think that I should diet...I think that I should make some small changes in what I eat...

Do I ..... add a salad to my meal before lunch and dinner? Try and snack on more fruits? Try and eliminate certain things from my diet?

What is a good place to start?

Kris

[alison]

Re: Making dietary changes....

Just curious.
What was your weight like when you were living in Germany?
Were you more active? What did you eat?

[poky]

Re: Making dietary changes....

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse but WW is seriously a great way to get the small changes aligned. And if you blow it one day, you start the next with a new day of points. Journal it and move on.

Right. That mentality is key. Tomorrow's a new day, and blowing it yesterday isn't an excuse to keep blowing it today. If you can't do that, though...

...the only time I've consciously tried to change my diet, what I did was:

1) take smaller portions than I was used to
2) replace juice/pop with water most of the time.

Those two things weren't drastic, but made a huge difference. Instead of 3-4 slices of pizza, I'd have 2. Instead of half of the risotto package, I ate 1/3, and ate the rest as leftovers. Simple things that *also* saved money, and didn't deprive me of anything (and it helps to get good at picking out food that's good as leftovers). It's still a mindset that you have to get yourself into, though, and it helps to be able to give yourself a mental pat on the back when you do good.

Oh, another thing we did that helped, if you're not already: we eliminated hydrogenated oils completely (check the ingredients, not just the 0g transfats per serving), and reduced HFCS as much as possible (we're getting close to complete elimination here, but it's harder). This tends to cut out a lot of crap food, and it's a really simple guideline with a good reason behind it, which makes it easier to follow than things like "no candy bars". The alternatives that don't have transfats and HFCS tend to be better for you *and* more expensive and sometimes harder to find (so I'm less likely to buy as much as I used to). I do miss some of the food these rules eliminate, but not so much that I crave them, because there are alternatives.

[PrincessFiona]

Re: Making dietary changes....

These are all great suggestions. Thanks so much! I think I'm going to sit down with these ideas and see what would just be like a natural thing for me to do....without making it a part of a "diet".

Alison, I'll dig up an old pic of myself from Germany and post it in my blog. I was teeny. I biked everywhere that I went and could eat like a horse!

Kris

[Michele]

Re: Making dietary changes....

My suggestion is basically like WW. Count calories. It's annoyingly time consuming...I'm sure points are much easier to count....but if I really wanted cake I just figured it into my calorie count...

A salad for me is rarely lo-cal so that wouldn't help me.

I like the soup suggestion....its kinda like my mom's "drink a big glass of water before you eat" suggestion.

[DCJenn]

Re: Making dietary changes....

Some of the things we do are: buy only skim milk, eat 5/7 meals as week without meat, I never buy soda of any kind.

I don't have cookies or cake in the house- the desserts that are available are sugar free popsicles or fudgsicles.

I don't buy sweetened cereals EVER. Nikolai can have cocoa puffs at his grandmother's house. I make waffles or pancakes on Sundays and freeze all of the left overs for school days.

I keep easy to prepare stuff ready for meal prep (boil in the bag or frozen premade rice) and on veggie delivery day (new service for local produce- delivers in San Antonio in Thursdays) I do my research for what has come and if something can be prepped, I do it. I cut up onions, green peppers, etc. and pack them (pre-measured) in baggies. I write the measurement on the bag- i.e. a big number 1 on the onions means it's one cup.

I'm also a huge fan of frozen pastas. I buy a variety of the fresh pastas and freeze them.

A lot of my prep also involves things like taking a package of chicken and splitting it up but I'm guessing with a family of seven, you probably don't run into that very often. It's ahuge problem with the three of us (one of whom won't eat meat products unless they're reconstituted- hamburger, sausage, nuggets...)

Jenn

Re: Making dietary changes....

Alison, I'll dig up an old pic of myself from Germany and post it in my blog. I was teeny. I biked everywhere that I went and could eat like a horse!

Kris

and hadn't had 5 children, were in your twenties, etc.

I've done WW in the past, and sometimes it feels surprisingly un-diet. IF you were to choose to go that way, it might feel less restricting.