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Yet Even More Tips!
FAQ's
These are the top ten questions I get asked over and over again, so I decided to be lazy by posting it here and telling people to come read it.
1. What should I eat?
2. How many calories a day should I eat?
3. How much should I exercise?
4. What kind of exercise should I do?
5. How can I keep person X from noticing?
6. How quickly do you think I can lose X pounds?
7. How do I figure out how many calories are in a certain food?
8. How can I keep from feeling hungry?
9. I have to eat at a restaurant, what should I do?
10. What kind of pills/ other forms of cheating will help me?
1. What should I eat?
The first thing you should know, is to eat more whole foods and fewer processed foods. Whole foods include fruits and veggies, which are very low calorie for their size, as well as meat and eggs, which are higher calorie, but they keep you feeling full for a long
time.
Processed food (ANYTHING that comes in a bag or box) have tons of calories and yet you still feel hungry later, so it's like they cause you to overeat.
To help yourself eat more whole foods, bring an apple or carrots (fruits are less obvious if you don't want people to know you're trying to lose) with you when you go somewhere.
2. How many calories a day should I eat?
That depends on what your goal weight is, how quickly you want to lose weight, and how much you exercise.
Basically, if you never exercise, you can eat 10 times your goal weight in calories (so if you want to be 99 pounds, you can eat 990 calories a day, believe it or not), and still lose enough to reach you goal.
If you want to lose weight more quickly, you will have to eat less than that number, and exercise more. I recommend starting at a higher calorie intake, then gradually decreasing it, so your body does not flip out with hunger.
You should know, however, that the more quickly you lose weight, the less likely you are to keep it off.
3. How much should I exercise?
You should get some exercise every day. Studies have shown that moderate exercise every 24 hours is much more effective than very heavy exercise every other day. Depending on what kind of shape you’re in now, you should be doing at least 30-60 minutes a day to take advantage of that 24 hour rule.
4. What kind of exercise should I do?
You should do some sort of cardio every day, and some sort of strength training a few times a week.
No, strength training will not make you look like those scary body building women on tv (they take tons of hormones, drugs, and eat like ten times what a normal person eats), so relax. Building a little muscle will make you look more toned, and help your metabolism.
Sites like self.com and glamour.com can create personalized for-women workouts for you.
5. How can I keep person X from noticing my weird eating habits?
Most people are not nutritionists, so if they see you eating, say, egg drop soup or air popped popcorn, they are probably not going to realize just how few calories you’re actually consuming.
However, you really should toss some food down the garbage disposal (better to waste than on your waist!) and dirty a few dishes when you’re home alone. I have this great habit of leaving tons of dirty dishes all over the apartment whenever I eat a small snack. My roommate thinks I’m a total pig.
6. How quickly do you think I can lose X pounds?
I don’t know. If you’re going for speed, I suggest cutting carbs, cutting your usual ana calorie intake in half, drinking green tea three times a day, and exercising like a mad woman. However, while this is fine for an extraordinary occasion (your wedding, prom, an ex is coming into town next week…) it is not acceptable to diet like this for an extended period of time. I repeat DO NOT do this for an extended period of time. You want to have an extreme back up plan in case you need it, right? Well, if you do this sort of this all the time, you won’t have anything to help accerlerate weight loss when you need it later!
7. How do I figure out how many calories are in a certain food?
Read the label. Also, get an account with fitday.com, so you can keep track of everything you eat. If a food isn’t in their database, you can create a custom food and punch it in yourself.
I also strongly advocate using fitday to plan out what you’re goin to eat in advance, so you don’t accidentally go over. You can even plan all but 100 of your calories, so you can spend the 100 cals on a craving.
8. How can I keep from feeling hungry?
Drink green tea
Eat more fiber. A lot more.
Do not have something really high carb and low fiber for breakfast (like a bagel) then try not to eat again until dinner. Carbs cause your blood sugar levels to change, so they’ll rise when you eat, then when they drop you’ll want to eat again. So, do not eat in the morning until you’re hungry, and when you do eat, try to make it something nutritious.
9. I have to eat at a restaurant, what should I do?
If you're going out to eat, get a salad with some turkey or chicken (never fried or "crispy") and ask for vinegar (not balsamic vinegar) instead of dressing. If that isn't available, get a low-fat (not creamy, no ranch, blue cheese, or caesar) dressing on the side. You can dip into it occasionally, but don't pour it all over your salad.
Can’t get a salad for some reason? You should drink plenty of water to make yourself feel full. Eat slowly, and eat your veggies first. Before you begin eating, "accidentally" put too much salt or pepper on the part of your food you don't want to eat. At some point during the meal, get up and use the restroom to assess how full you are, as well as give yourself less eating time than your companions.
Never eat the bread or appetizer before hand, unless it’s salad or a broth based soup (not cream based)
10. What kind of pills/ other forms of cheating will help me?
As I mentioned earlier, green tea is helpful. If you can’t stand the taste, you can get green tea pills.
Eating ice is known to help burn calories.
As far as diet pills, the ones that have been confirmed to be effective have all contained ephedra, which was banned in the US for a few years. This ban was repealed just a few weeks ago, so it will probably be awhile beofre you see any around.
My Personal Weight Loss Habits
Ever since I posted my weight ticker on my xanga blog, I’ve been getting comments and emails asking me what I've been doing to be able to lose so much weight so quickly. Obviously, it's a matter of what you eat vs what you burn, but everyone has little tricks that help them do this. These are mine. Beware, some of them break the conventional “rules” of dieting.
-I plan everything.
Every night I’m on fitday.com figuring out what I’m going to eat the next day. However, I always leave about 100 “free” calories for a treat or special craving. If I don’t use them, all the better.
-I reward myself with food.
This is pretty much the biggest diet “no-no” ever, but it works for me. I’m not a huge fan of hitting the gym, so if burning 300 or more calories means a 100 calorie special treat afterwards, I’m all for it.
-I eat fat. A lot of fat.
It tastes good, it keeps me full, and I blame the “low fat” conspiracy on contributing to rising obesity rates in America. It’s true that trans fats (a fake type of fat they add to foods that helps preserve it longer) are very bad for you, so people seem to be confused and think other fats are the enemy, too. I will choose some reduced fat foods if and only if there is a significant drop in calories, but not otherwise. All too often, low fat foods add sugar and other refined carbs to improve the taste of their product, so it turns out not to be much lower calorie at all. This is bad.
There’s a great article called “What if it’s all been a bit fat lie” from the 2002 NY times that really does sum everything about fat up in a nutshell. I’d post it here, but I doubt most of you want to read through 15 pages of reports on various studies and science-talk. However, if you email me asking for it, I’ll send it to you.
-I read a lot.
I read labels, diet studies, diet books, exercise information, dieters’ forums, everything. I know a lot about calorie content of certain foods, the importance of stuff like protein and fiber, and metabolism. So when I give a tip suggesting you eat a certain kind of food, do a certain kind of exercise, or eat a certain number of calories per day, it’s because I’ve read at least five or six legitimate studies, compared results in my own mind, tried it myself (or personally known someone first hand who was successful with it), and compared it with other relevant dieting information. Really.
-I don’t use always hunger to tell me when to eat.
For those of you who haven’t read the my story on the front page, I used to be COE. I was really out of control… the second I was alone I would dig through the fridge or pantry and binge like crazy. As a young child, there were always lots of empty food wrappers hidden in my room. Whether I was really hungry or sickly full, I would still binge.
I’m not 100% recovered. Though I’m significantly better than I used to be, I still get subconscious urges to go eat. Sometimes they hit when I’m hungry, sometimes they hit when I’m not. I lose total control of myself when this happens. Attempts to be normal failed because these urges to binge would always take over.
So now, I cater my eating to eat when these urges hit. It’s stupid to eat three meals a day on top of whatever my brain tries to force me to eat, so I often just wait until the emotional, mental, whatever you want to call it, urge forces me to eat. By doing this, I’ve actually managed to gain some control and significantly cut calories. If I’m having a good day (I’ve been having more and more of them lately) I will start eating on my own, though.
-I don’t believe in negative calories.
I’m sorry, but too many people have survived off of just fruits and veggies to make almost all of them neg cal. They are better than processed foods, though.
-I eat sugar-free jello when I’m liquid fasting.
Hey, it used to be liquid, right? Great stuff. So low cal, and so damn filling! I’d much rather eat a little yummy protein on purpose than end up binging that night.
-I don’t eat late. Ever.
I told everyone it gives me trouble sleeping. I used to eat before 7, now I’ve recently made it stricter and I don’t eat after 5. This is also great because it gives me more control over what I eat, since everyone knows I’m not going to be chowing with them at that late night get together and none of them really know/care why.
-I eat while distracted.
Sure, if I have a ribeye steak in front of me, I’ll savor it. But if I’m eating something low calorie that tastes like cardboard, I’m sorry, I’m not gonna prolong it. So, yes, I’m mindlessly chowing down while reading about your guys’ days.
-I eat alone as often as possible.
I don’t know why, I just like it more. Maybe it goes back to when I used to secretly binge as a kid whenever I was home alone. Anyways, I like it more.
-I let myself be bad.
Every few weeks, my low-carber boyfriend gets his heart set on going to my favorite steak place. So I eat almost nothing that day, then order the biggest ribeye, medium rare, that they have. I don’t eat anything else except the ribeye, not even salad. And I eat the whole steak. Yum. Everytime I do this, I make myself sickly full. But I enjoy every bite, and I know that it gives me a great metabolism boost for the next day. I would also probably do this with another favorite meal of mine, German food. However, I would never do it with, say, a banana split. Too much sugar causes the craving for more sugar, throws your blood sugar out of whack, and leaves you feeling hungry a short time later.
-I weigh myself a million times a day.
But I don’t flip out because it fluctuates. Sometimes I’m lowest in the morning, sometimes I’m really not. I feel like if I only weighed once a week, I’d never know which side of my fluctuating weight I was seeing, and it was cause me to panic unnecessarily, or get overexcited.
By the way, it takes like 3-4 days for what you eat or what you burn to actually show up on the scale (water weight excepted) so, please stop flipping out that yesterday’s jog didn’t do anything.
-I throw food away.
I know your mother told you not to waste food because of the little children in Africa. I’m sorry, but nothing in my fridge, at the local grocery store, or even on a farm in a neighboring state was going to make it there anyways. Keeping Hostess cupcakes in my kitchen when I know I’m about to give in isn’t doing anybody any good.
If you’re really worried about starving children, start giving money to one of those Christian funds that are always on tv, then feel free to toss your food in the trash without guilt. You could even do something like set aside some extra change every time you have a good day, then donate it all at the end of the month. Boy will guilt ever keep you from bingeing!
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