It's that time of year when most of us say that we will lose weight and a few of us say that we will gain weight . . . next year. What suggestions do you have to enable one to keep to one's diet goal and achieve success?

I have several:

1. Don't keep snack food of any kind around the house.

2. Keep celery, carrots, nuts, or other healthful snacks around in case you need some kind of substitute. Did you know that celery is 4 calories, but it takes 6 calories to chew?

3. Set your mind on a goal and a timeframe. Make the goal reasonable and achieveable. Two pounds a week is the standard recommended weight loss goal.

4. Set a goal and timeline for working exercise into your life. Don't start out running a marathon, only to poop out in two days or even your first session. Walk a half-mile, then jog, then run, then a mile, then a mile and a half. Walk up and down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Try breathing exercises.

5. Picture the reward you will give yourself when you reach your goal.

6. Don't buy new clothes until you reach your goal.

7. Don't put anything in your mouth before you think about it. Pray over every morsel.

8. Drink loads of water to flush your system.

9. Drink a glass of milk every day. There is something in it that helps you lose weight. Not too much though, and drink the low-fat version.

10. Never eat anything after 7 PM.

One way I've had success is to write down everything I eat (dare I say "religiously"?). This is necessary when doing Weight Watchers to keep track of points, but it also helps you realize just how much you're really eating.
Get a partner or at least a supporter in your diet plan. Make your spouse or roommate or parent ask you "are you sure you want another cookie?" (but then you can't get mad at them for saying things like that).
Find a group of friends or co-workers to join you. Walk during your lunch break instead of sitting at your desk.
Don't eat after eight o'clock at night.
Drink lots and lots of water. It will flush your system and fill you up and is much better than empty calories like soda or chemicals like diet soda.
There are a lot of on-line support groups, too. One that looks particularly interesting this year is the National Body Challenge

"Did you know that celery is 4 calories, but it takes 6 calories to chew?"

I've heard this, or a variation of this, for years, but no one has ever been able to give a reference that most would accept as an authority on such a matter. (Most of the time, it is found with a group of "amazing facts", many of which are amazing only because they are not facts.*) Do you have a good source for this?



* Here is one such list on AnswerPool. About 40 of the 360 were found (with little effort) to be wrong, unprovable, or just plain ridiculous. TYhere may be others.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,

To be honest, I've only heard this also. But the vitamins you get from raw vegetables, plus the fiber, and, hopefully, lack of chemicals and preservatives, make up for the calories you consume. Almost any diet you can name lets you eat an unlimited amount of vegetables, the trick is not slathering them with extra fats in butter or dressing.

Also, the South Beach diet tells you not to eat fruits for the first two weeks, because there is natural sugar in them. I lost 9 pounds in two weeks on it, but I gained it right back at Christmas when I took a vacation from it. Whatever change you make must be reasonable and livable.

Show how easy it is to disprove the celery "fact", I Googled celery + chew + calories. he third result provided this:

Is it true that you lose more calories than you gain when you eat celery? - Mirna

Dear Mirna,

Yes, it is true. The logic in this thinking is that between the time of chewing and the time of elimination, it takes more energy to process celery than the amount of energy (calories) it contains. But the effect won't be real until about a day later, when the celery's nutrients and water have been absorbed, and its fiber eliminated from your body.

Let's consider what it takes to eat, digest, and eliminate a stalk of celery. A medium stalk of raw celery contains about 5 calories. If you chew that celery for a total of a minute (let's say, 6 bites, chewing 10 seconds for each bite), that burns about 1 calorie. Then, as the celery moves through the stomach, intestines, and bowel, the body uses energy to break down, absorb, and eliminate the celery. I'm not sure how many calories this takes, but given that about 8%, or about 160, of the calories burned per day by the average person is accomplished simply by digestion/absorption/elimination of food, it stands to reason that at least a small portion of this 160 calories is spent on that celery. If that celery stalk represents 5% of your total intake by volume, that's 8 calories used to digest and eliminate it (This is a conservative estimate, since high-fiber foods take more energy to process than low-fiber foods.) So we're up to 9 calories, or a deficit of 4 calories. Congratulations, you just burned 4 calories by eating a stalk of celery! - Vegan Nutrition with Dina Aronson, M.S. R.D.

Dina Aronson, MS, RD is a vegan dietitian whose specialties include chronic disease prevention, vegetarian/vegan nutrition, and lifestyle management. She is the founder and director of NutraWiz.com, a nutrition consulting company. Active in many vegetarian nutrition organizations, Dina is the nutrition consultant for the Boston Vegetarian Society and the state representative for the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group. She is also the recipient of the American Dietetic Association's Recognized Young Dietitian of the Year Award in 2002.
--------
Note that
a) the entire digestive process, not just chewing, is used to get a total calorie expenditure high enough to negate the calories in celery

and

b) an estimate is used to determine how many calories are actually used by digesting the celery.

In other words, she really doesn't know the correct answer but wants to indicate that eating celery is beneficial to those wanting to lose weight. (I really don't think that a medium stalk of celery is 1/20th the total volume of what a person eats a day, but I'm not going to try to disprove that part of her reasoning.)

Oh, well, there went that idea. So what's next, since I don't look fat: I only have large measurements on my tall body? What's really wrong with me: a need for toning perhaps? What can I do about middle age spread?

If you don't look fat but are unhappy with your shape, toning ought to do it. Crunches are always good for the middle, and swinging leg-lifts (a la Denise Austin) for the thighs and rear.

I'll tell you what, giving up fruit juice was the easiest thing I ever did in the weight-losing catagory. I did that and the pounds just melted off. Of course, now they're back and I haven't got the juice to give up. It couldn't be the cookies, could it?

First of all a diet sounds like a temporary lose weight fast sort of thing. Those usually work in the short term but become a disaster in the long term.

With that in mind let us instead focus on a lifestyle change:

1. Set realistic goals.
2. Make minor but important changes in your diet and exercise program:

__A. Reduce the amount of added sugar and added fat in your diet. So called "empty calories". Example, if you take sugar and cream in your coffee you can switch to sugar substitute and Low or non-fat non-dairy creamer. Read the labels to see how many calories are on such things.

__B. Increase your exercise. That does not mean join a gym and commit to an exercise program, instead add extra movement in you day to day life, such as using the stairs to go 4 floors instead of the elevator, parking further from office/store doors. Do more walking - set a "Mall Day" where all you do is go to the mall and walk through it "window shopping". Add an evening of a walk around the block. Minor changes an additions will have a huge impact on the long run.

3. Allow yourself time off for good behavior. Once a week, one day a week be off the diet/exercise program. Allow yourself Micky D's or a pizza and a day to sit on the couch vegging before the T.V. - one day a week will make it easier for you to spend the other 6 committed to your healthy life-style.

4. As with all things Moderation is Key to success. It is important to understand that you didn't get out of shape and fat over night, thus you will not get thin and in shape over night as well. Most folk fall off the wagon because they look at what they are doing (strict diet, killer exercise program) and know that they can not do that forever. IF their lifestyle plan is moderate set with very long term goals to lose weight and to get fit over months by slow, short steps they can (and do) manage to stick to the program.

5. Healthy eating starts with fruits and vegetables, with a bit of grain, meat and diary products topped off with just a dollop of fats and sugars. Aim to eat Six servings of fruit and vegetables a day (That isn't a lot and will actually allow you to eat more often to keep hunger at bay). Eat your Vegetables/Fruit first to fill up on that, then top off with meat, grain and dairy. You may be eating more by volume but you will ultimately be eating less calories.

6. Make it fun - we tend not to like to do a thing if it isn't rewarding or fun. Thus the walk in the Mall, or keeping the things we like but with sensible alternatives like Fat-Free-Non-Dairy Creamer and Sugar Substitute in our coffee, same great taste, less calories - or eating a pizza all by ourselves every Saturday as reward to sticking to our plan for the rest of the 6 days of the week. (One fatty, sugary, high calorie meal a week will not harm a sensible weight loss/fitness program).

Elexina: I could kiss you for allowing me to eat crunchies. Oh, wait a minute, now that I wiped away the tears of joy. You wrote "crunches."

I'm happy that I can do a lot of walking and lift up these long legs. Yet, crunches are a helluva lot better than trying to touch my toes with a pot in the way. I feel like a kangaroo.

David: You lost me at "1. Set realistic goals." Perhaps if I were not such a believer in doing the impossible. . . .

I am pretty good on the other things though. If only I didn't feel that my reward for patience regarding the unrealistic goals is tasty breads, cookies or cake, pretzels and/or cheese nips, candy, . . . My challenge is to not overreward myself with something from each of these categories on a daily basis!

I think that you may have hit upon the culprit. After waiting so long for the big one to go right for me, I am overindulging in numerous temporary but harmful rewards. Anyway, I set up a list of life goals with time limits. So I hope to be too busy and too successful to eat too much.

quote:

Originally posted by tsaeb:
David: You lost me at "1. Set realistic goals." Perhaps if I were not such a believer in doing the impossible. . . .

I am pretty good on the other things though. If only I didn't feel that my reward for patience regarding the unrealistic goals is tasty breads, cookies or cake, pretzels and/or cheese nips, candy, . . . My challenge is to not overreward myself with something from each of these categories on a daily basis!

I think that you may have hit upon the culprit. After waiting so long for the big one to go right for me, I am overindulging in numerous temporary but harmful rewards. Anyway, I set up a list of life goals with time limits. So I hope to be too busy and too successful to eat too much.

Well there is always Lipo-suction - of course usually folk are waiting to hit the jack-pot on the Lottery before investing in that program of rapid fat loss....

David: I have a better idea, now that it dawns on me. I will just organize a commission to investigate how to lose weight. Anyone participating in this thread is now officially on the said commission.

When I stopped using methamphetamines (speed) I "grew with program" (and inside joke for those in program). When I stopped using I weighed in at 129 pounds... decidedly under weight...

After almost nearly 2 years I weighed in a little pass 255 pounds. Frustrated I had two options, go back to the slimming effects of meth or diet.

My first attempts at dieting failed, I tried the slim fast diet, the starvation diet, the Grapefruit diet, the "You can eat everything that is orange diet" (Carrots, Oranges, carrots.....). All of this failed.

I went to Library and there I came face to face with shelf after shelf of weight-loss plans, there are hundreds of books on the subject - not including the hundreds more on exercise and the hundreds of others on real nutrition.

The only way that actually worked for me was a low-fat, low added sugar diet along with an exercise routine. 6 Months (yeah that long) after starting that program I was down to 185 pounds. Due to the fact that I decided to weight train I was converting mass from fat to muscle.

Low added sugar means I cook with little to no sugar,that means that instead of two teaspoons of sugar in my coffee (and real cream) I now use have a teaspoon of sugar and no cream. Further instead of adding sugar to the pot that I boil corn in, I don't add anything (sweet corn is sweet enough). It also means I refrain from eating a whole bag of kisses, settling for just 5 or 7 of them... When I bake I cut the sugar content in half for my baked goods. Like the Pumpkin muffins I baked for Christmas, half the sugar and instead of a 1/4 cup of oil I used 1/4 cup of apple sauce (Natural, unsweetened apple sauce, starting with raw apples...) Fructose (the natural sugar in apples) more than made up for the lack of processed sugar for the recipe. I drink Diet, caffeine-free Soda, etc.

Low fat means that I stopped using oils and butter and shortening to cook. We went from Cast Iron pans and fat based products to non-stick and little to no fat or oil to "fry food" I discovered that chicken and hamburger and vegetables can be fried without a drop of oil. Potatoes, I fear, still need some oil in order to get that crispy brown. Low added fat means I look at the label, I take total Calories and Calories from Fat. If total Calories are 100 and Calories from Fat are 10 you know that that food is 10% fat calories (simple really) I strive for 25% fat calories or less in processed foods (Packaged foods, meats and produce I do not worry about).

Consider that a tablespoon of fat (butter, shortening, oil) is around 120 to 150 calories (depending on the product) and a teaspoon of sugar between 16 and 20 calories (depending on how to measure it) There is a lot of caloric bang for the buck in those two items. A serving of corn (about a 1/2 cup) contains 60 calories that means about 3 teaspoons of sugar or a half table spoon of fat - which will fill you faster?

The average American consumes thirty to forty teaspoons of sugar a day. Hard to believe I know, but consider how we use a teaspoon in our coffee, another in our cereal, and there’s probably several in those cookies and sodas we like so much, and so on. http://www.diary.bm/sugar.htm That comes out to be 480 to 640 calories a day.

Fats are even higher: About 40% of our diet is made up in fats, nearly half of that is added fat (butter, margarine, cooking oil, shortening). The other comes to use through our "beefed" up beef which comes from fat lazy cows who are purposefully over fed, under exercised and killed and sliced up to provide us with "marbled" meat - that white stuff in the meat department is fat. Hamburger has a lot of added fat to make up the weight. The leaner you get (the more pricey) the less fat the more meat and less shrinkage on the BBQ with the burgers.

You can cut another 300 to 400 calories in your day to day diet if you do not use added fats, meaning refrain from buttering the bread with so much butter (a little dab will do ya), cooking without oil, even such things as using reduced fat milk, low fat mayo etc can have a huge impact on the amount of calories you are ingesting.

You can still eat a few pounds of food and eat less calories if you keep track of what is in that food.

EXAMPLE: A half cup of corn contains 60 calories same volume of food but less calories if you don't use a tablespoon of butter (making a grand total of 180 calories). Without the butter you could eat a cup and a half of corn and get the same amount of calories as a single serving dressed up with butter. Which would fill you faster? 1/2 cup of buttered corn or 1 and a half cups of unbuttered corn?

Fats and Sugars are needed in your diet - you just don't need as much of those as the average diet gives us.

Carbohydrates: Carbs are converted into sugars which drip into the blood stream and give us the energy we need to say walk, breath, live. In fact in the body building/weight lifting books you will find that they recommend eating carbs 20 to 30 minutes before a workout so you will have more energy to lift more, push out more reps and sets or run that extra mile on the tread-mill.

Fats do a lot of things, from maintaining skin youth (for us older folk we worry about those lines, fats will reduce the number of lines we get and keep our skin youthful longer) to oiling the workings of joints and organs. Like a car engine without oil no fat will lead to serious damage in the long run. Not only does your body need fat to function, it also requires a certain amount in order to absorb other nutrients, including vitamins A, D, E, and K and keeps your hair on your head too...

Later I discovered such interesting facts that "holiday weight gain" has little to do with holiday meals, but much more to do with the natural seasonal weight gain that our species evolved over millions of years in order to survive the lean times of winter. Weight gain in the winter has more to do with temperature and light than it does with what or how much we eat.

I also discovered that starvation diets (low calorie, low amounts of food) diets tend to lead to the body going into a state of self preservation where it reacts like you are experiencing a famine, part of that is to utilize and store more fuel to stave off death. Fuel is stored in the way of fat, if you are starving yourself your body will store more fat from what you do eat - and once you end the diet you will find that your body will absorb and store more fats to survive the next famine.

If you feed the body more often with good foods (fruits and vegetables six times a day) and eat less per meal yet eating more meals (6 of them) what happens is that the body does not go into hunger mode, instead it reacts positively to the "grazing" by not storing fat. Hunger is the first symptom of starvation, skipping a meal and getting hunger pains is the start of a series of events which causes the body to retain more fat.

As the body grows older it naturally gains weight. The "middle aged spread" is a natural process which is another survival tool we have evolved.

Then there is body type. There are those who are naturally skinny (can eat a ton of fattening foods and not gain an ounce) and those who can look at a doughnut and gain a pound. Those naturally skinny lean machines have a hard time at gaining muscle mass too, where as the naturally fat tend to have an easier time of gaining muscle mass, although they may have a dickens of a time at loosing enough fat under the skin to show off those muscles.

http://www.innerexplorations.com/psytext/waysto.htm for more on body types.

David: You have convinced me that I am in pretty good shape, because I do better than you: I lay off soda until I go near it, diluting it with water. However, I confess that my grazing goes as far as my pretzels, and since my nephew with the bucks sent me for Christmas a 2-pounder of See's chocolates, wild horses will not drag me away from the box, although I can control myself to eat only one serving out of it per day. I just have to eat less bread and fewer pretzels, but the thought of celery and carrots as replacements makes me nervous.

quote:

Originally posted by tsaeb:
David: You have convinced me that I am in pretty good shape, because I do better than you: I lay off soda until I go near it, diluting it with water. However, I confess that my grazing goes as far as my pretzels, and since my nephew with the bucks sent me for Christmas a 2-pounder of See's chocolates, wild horses will not drag me away from the box, although I can control myself to eat only one serving out of it per day. I just have to eat less bread and fewer pretzels, but the thought of celery and carrots as replacements makes me nervous.

2 pounds of chocolate! Got to love that nephew.

The reality is that there is more than just carrots and celery out there. There are all of those wonderful fruits too!

Around here I eat salad - no not one of those premixed bags of leaves - although I start off with that I also add baby tomatoes, baby carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, bell pepper, diced celery, a smidgen of diced onion, sometimes mushrooms, sometimes a bit of turnip (raw turnip diced up is not bad at all), avacodo, whatever is in season. I have added apple, orange slices, grapes to the vegi-mix too.

We always have the basics, banana, apple, orange, grapefruit, grapes, peaches (in season) plumps (in season), etc era. Not just eaten raw, but also cut up and thrown into salads, I also cook with a lot of fruits, try diced apples with roasted chicken sometime, Lay out chicken in a foil covered baking dish, sprinkle about one apple per two pieces of chicken over the chicken. Season with a touch of salt, pepper and sprinkle cinnamon over chicken and apple, cover with another piece of foil. Set in the oven at 300 for about two hours (trust me 2 hours the chicken falls off the bone). Pull off the foil the last 10 minutes (to crisp it up on the top) and serve.

Danny has taken that work and people just rave, never thinking to use apples and or cinnamon with chicken.

Of course you may have heard of lemon or orange chicken with the sugary sauce, try baking chicken with oranges in similar fashion (without cinnamon) and see what develops there.

Being inventive won't hurt, and there are plenty of ways to add fruits and vegies to the diet without having to just eat celery and carrots... Unless you want to eat just celery and carrots.

David: I eat plenty of vegetables and fruit and bread with some meat and fish and milk and cheese. However, I add pretzels, cheese nips, and candy. This is my idea of moderation in all things, you see.