What I eat for Lunch

I try to vary lunch but you can eat one thing that works for a while and vary it a little.

Salad (of course). I choose from a selection of what to put with it.

1. Ceasar salad with just a few croutons and a light Caesar dressing. I get the Dole kit and use half the dressing. Parmesan or Romano cheese sprinkled over is OK.

2. I like Dole's Asian salad. Half the dressing, half the noodles. I add 14 cup of slivered almonds.

3. a baby lettuce mix with 1/2 2% or 4% cottage cheese, a spritz type salad dressing and a slice of whole wheat bread.

4. tuna ON salad using a spritz of salad dressing (new low call spritzers are made by a couple companies now) - or the more typical tuna "salad" IF you make it with only a dab of light mayo, with lots of chopped onion and celery. Could be a half sandwich or as a salad without bread.

If not salad I eat:
1. A Lean cuisine - any less than 300 calories. I don't care for the ones with garlic in them (garlic gets a weird taste when frozen) and I avoid the high carb ones with lots of noodles. I would eat other brands but don't like them as much.

2. left over meat from the night before such as sliced chicken - either on a salad or in a half sandwich.

3. half a sandwich. No cheese or mayo. Meat low fat. I use spicy mustard and whole wheat bread. Lots of lettuce to make it moist. I am allergic to tomatoes but they would be fine.

4. a large bowl of soup as long as it is under 300 calories. I like the boxed Campbells such as portobello mushroom, corn chowder and my fav is summer squash. A piece of whole wheat bread. No crackers!

5. a tin of sardines packed in olive oil - drained. A piece of whole wheat bread. Small salad on the side.

More with special recipes later.

New England Journal of Medicine article

1. Why exercise alone does not help most lose weight. Yes, you should exercise but because it increases your appetite you tend to eat more.

From what my experience tells me - you eat more because your blood sugar is lowered by exercise. My solution is to exercise (a brisk 40 minute walk) late in the afternoon - just before dinner. I have a half an apple or pear before I leave. That keeps my blood sugar fairly level. I prepare dinner before going out to walk and just have to heat it up on my return.

2. You tend to put on weight if your friends are fat. That makes sense if you eat together. But I think it has more to do with eating too much in the company of others who eat more than you do - for whatever reason. If the person you eat with has a much larger body size then your own, you tend to eat bigger portions which may be normal for that person. If they have dessert, you will too. If they offer you snacks you will eat with them. That goes for munchers at work too.

If these people are really your friends you can ask them to cooperate with you. They can either serve something you can eat or avoid situations when they eat. Keep their company while doing something such as taking a walk. Go shopping. Stop for coffee, not a snack.

Avoid enticing smells. Nothing worse than the smell of hot buttered popcorn in a theater. If you can't get past the concession stand, rent a movie. If you go for fast food, don't go inside and smell the French fries - go through the drive through and get a salad with grilled chicken (dressing on the side and just stick the tines of your fork in it - don't pour it on), or a taco salad (Wendy's offers a small pack of corn chips - not a taco bowl) with chili, no cheese.

Breakfast

I posted a web site in an earlier thread on this blog to calculate how many calories you need to maintain your weight based upon height, age and exercise. I did not do this before I went on my diet and lost the weight but it may give you a rough estimate where to start.

If I use moderate as my exercise entry, it comes out to 2000 cals per day. I would consider walking 40 minutes at a very brisk pace moderate exercise (at least for a senior) but maybe not. But I know if I ate 2000 calories I would actually gain weight. But it is a good starting point if you are counting calories. I have a good idea of what the calories are in the ordinary foods I eat and make rought estimates - actually I round the calories off to the next 50 or 100 in my head. Say a banana is about 80 cals and I round it off to 100 - over estimate a bit but then maybe not count the bit of milk I put in my coffee.

If I am going to LOSE weight I know that I have to keep the calories down to 1000-1200 a day. Listen, I know, that is eating "like a bird"! But someone wrote that for every decade of life you have to reduce your intake by 100 calories a day JUST TO MAINTAIN your weight. Phew!

So now you see why it is SO important to get the appetite under control before beginning. I can live with this low intake pretty comfortably believe it or not. I do that by just keeping my blood sugar steady and avoiding anything that would make it spike and valley. I am pretty ridgid about that. It is like a life line that you don't dare let go of. So those people who say it is OK to treat yourself once in a while - well, not for now. Will rant on that at another time.

I also know that I can't eat much more than 1200 cals on a daily basis or I will lose ground and go back to gaining. I think of that as taking money out of the bank account. Actually a negative account when it comes to weight. That is where you have to have the mental attitude necessary to eat the right things. I wrote a little about that in another thread.

Now it's time to get down to the nitty gritty of what to eat if you are on a diet. If you have been reducing your sugar intake as low as possible for a week this is going to be easy.

You know you have to cut back so you just start cutting back at each meal. If you don't lose a pound or 2 in a week then you know you have to cut back more. You keep track of what you have been eating and see what you can cut back on - low quality foods or quantity - your choice.

Well, you can eat anything you want as long as it comes out to 1/4 of your daily calories. You can have another 1/4 for lunch and dinner. The other 1/4 you can divvy up between snacks and a little more for one meal. (e.g. 400 cals for dinner and 2, 100 cal snacks).

Now choose the foods YOU like that add up to 300 cals for breakfast. It can be breakfast food or lunch food or dinner food. Just you should not skip breakfast. That's because after a night's sleep your blood sugar is at its all time daily low. As soon as you begin moving around it is going to drop more. If you don't eat something to gradually bring the level up you are going to get really hungry in mid morning. It is OK if you divide your breakfast in half if you absolutely "can't eat breakfast" but if you are really dieting, you can adjust yourself to eating a light breakfast. Remember light is where it's at when it comes to diets anyway.

I advise against eating many so-called "diet" foods unless you actually like them. I like my coffee and cereal sweet so I use Splenda (the others have a bad after taste to me). The other is 0 fat and 0 cal liquid margerine spray (like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray). I don't mind them at all now. In fact Splenda tastes sweeter than sugar now and the spray margerine is like a nice sauce on veggies (that's what my husband said when he tried mine and he actually likes it and he's not on a diet!).

These are examples of what I have for breakfast. Note - that's what I eat. You choose your own according to you taste but obviously you hve to forget the white starchy things like doughnuts or regualr pancakes. Syrup? You gotta be kidding! You can write them off for a good long time.

I always have a cup of coffee with 1% milk.
1/2 a banana and/or 1/2 a pear (there is some sugar here and that is all you need). Any half fruit is OK but I avoid the sugary ones except the banana because it has so many good nutrients. You can have a small glass of tomato or V8 juice instead. I never drink orange juice or citrus because they are mostly sugar. When you are on a diet you have to weight the number of grams of sugar against the nutrients.

The combination of the above comes to about 100 calories or less.

Then for the rest of my breakfast I choose among:

1)
2 any kind of eggs (a large egg is about 70 cals). If I scramble I add a little 1% milk; fried in a non stick pan with olive oil Pam or store brand spray; fried poached or boiled.
+ a piece of 100% whole wheat toast or bread.

(that comes to about 200 cals more).

If I am really cutting back, I have only have 1 egg and save the calories (or the other hard boiled egg) for a late morning snack.

OR

2) a half sandwich or low carb wrap with some low fat sandwich meats - any kind as long as it adds up to no more than 200 cals. I warm it up slightly but do not add any sauces. A spoonful of salsa might be good or a few slices of tomato could be your fruit selection.

OR

3) a large bowl of whole grain cereal - any kind as long as the sugar is 3 g or less per serving. Those are mostly the old fashioned cereals like Cheerios or unfrosted Mini-Wheats. Fill the bowl to approximate 200 cals including the milk. Sweeten with Splenda. Don't let the designer cereals fool you - check the sugar grams and you will often find they are at least 6 grams of sugar per serving.

OR

4) hot oatmeal. I use Quick Oats which I keep with the fixings in the breakfast nook. You can fix it just as fast as the instant. I add a dash of salt, several big dashes of cinnamon and 10 raisins/serving (mostly for flavor). [Many prepared cereals add a lot of sugar with excess raisins so avoid them.] I bring it to a boil on the stove or in the micro and let it sit a half minute. Stir and add some milk and a dash of spray margarine which makes it creamy. (My sister like real Scottish oats that take a half hour to cook but it doesn't matter to me and I prefer saving the time) you can always make oatmeal the night before and warm it up in the morning if you want to save a few seconds more.

Mind over Munchies

The basic concept of this blog is that the mind has the biggest role in weight loss. This is not advanced psychology! Listen to the reasons you hear from people who are having problems. They diet and can't stick with it. List your own reasons. They are probably because of issues that have something to do with appeasing your appetite but most of them aren't. Some are personality issues and some are social issues, some may be very personal. You may not want to deal with some of them (but you can figure out what they are) and others are relatively easy to handle. Problem being they have probably become habits and habits are hard to break. Well, habits CAN BE hard to break if you make it hard. Substitute new habits, new ways of thinking. It's your personal mind control program. Don't make it a chore. Have fun. Be creative. Is the diet plate half full or half empty.

My first objective was to get my biggest "reason" (excuse!) down to a manageable size - appetite. So that is what I have been focusing on here up until now. That's because you can climb little hills a whole lot easier than mountains. And it is easier to keep from falling off little hills than mountains too. If dealing with your appetite seems insurmountable then you are likely to think you need ropes and crampons to get it under control. Actually real appetite may be easier to get under control than PERCEIVED desire to eat something.

You know, you have eaten dinner and you have collapsed on the couch in your best potato pose. You are not hungry but you keep picturing the bag of pretzels or potato chips in the cabinet. Your start getting little video clips that keep looping in your head about getting up and getting a handful, maybe one, maybe the whole bag. Can you relate this to an addiction?

Well, what about an addiction that you can't keep out of the house. You can't pour it down the drain. You have to go to the store and sort out the good stuff from the bad stuff. Or worse, you don't have much control over what gets into the house unless you are the one who stocks the pantry.

If you are an adult who controls what is in the house, you still have to deal with what other adults in the family want - not necessarily what you should be eating. It would be a whole lot easier if everyone were on the same diet - but that may not be realistic.

A young person with a weight problem must first enlist a parent to help. That can be a big hurdle unless you have very good relationship with your parents or caregivers.

In most cases people have to diet in spite of everyone around them. Most of us have to diet in spite of others around us. We cannot expect or force them into being supportive. That was certainly something I faced. I had adult children living with me who helped with the marketing as well as the cooking. They were not seriously into managing their weight. My husband never has had a weight problem.

In addition I was dealing with my own health problems as well as that of a a member of the family. Not going to discuss person issues on line but, trust me, there are big issues that I have to deal with. I don't have a lot of control over my life.

But what I DO HAVE control over is myself and my body. That turns out to be the best reason of all for losing weight and getting my health back. No one is getting any younger and you do NOT want to look back at the last decade and say to yourself - "what the hell, I COULD have spent it feeling and looking a hell of a lot better". What a waste of a part of your life! Are you going to regret the next decade later too? You can't go back and get those years back.

Step#1. I proposed taking an hour or so having a talk with yourself and setting your priorities. If you decide you want to lose weight and you are going to, you can start immediately. If you don't - don't bother. Maybe some day. It's your choice. But I am writing this on the assumption that anyone who reads it is at least half way convinced that they must diet.

Step #2 Seriously restricting your sugar intake and manage unreasonable pangs of hunger.

Step #3. That is what this post is about. Become conscious of your mind playing tricks. Bring them into the front of you mind. Don't let them fester in your subconscious. You can't deal with nagging temptation by just trying to suppress it. Get it out there where you can deal with it.

Make yourself a mental picture album. Deliberately and purposefully substitute visions. Make your own. I push away the thoughts of a snack with a vision of being thinner or wearing a smaller size pair of jeans. I think of my double chin in a terrible photo or the belly. You can picture anything other than food. Somewhere you would like to go. Pick up a magazine - even if you are watching TV - and distract yourself. Or if not completely thrilled with the program, get up and do something else.

Then there are motivational thoughts: "do I really want to see the scale ease down a notch tomorrow?" or "do I want to spoil all the hours of careful eating I have done all day with a quickie snack?". Can I make it to bed knowing that this has been a losing day?

If you ARE truly hungry and it has been at least 2 1/2 to 3 hours since your last meal - get a low sugar/low salt snack. Something not too tantalizing. A small bowl of cereal works for me (Chinese rice bowls are just under a cup - a good snack size). A salad as long as there is no more than 1 tablespoon of dressing or some cottage cheese with string beans or celery; some lightly cooked veggies (could be prepared ahead for the next meal). It should be somewhat filling but not heavy. You ARE eating so the munchies urge can be satisfied without indulging in foods that will increase your need to eat. If you are counting calories, 100 is a good round number to aim for with a snack. Portions can be controlled with a measuring cup or a premeasured dish.

When you fill that bowl with whatever, think about exactly how much is enough and how much you would prefer not to add to the days calorie count. Weigh weight loss and eating deliberately. Don't eat casually. Think about it. Eat slowly and deliberately thinking about it. Then stop when you feel the urge to munch stop - immediately.

Become very conscious about what you tell yourself when you don't succeed. Don't let yourself push g00d thoughts about dieting to the back of your mind at the critical moment.


I am certain that there are people out there who need professional help with the problems that lead to obesity. But most of us can figure ourselves out - IF we try. Just as you can figure out why a neighbor or friend has some issue or dysfunction does not take a shrink. We practice psychology every day. You don't really need Ann Landers to figure problems out. It's mostly common sense. There is usually more than one solution. But it is always harder to be objective with ourselves.

Different personalities call for different solutions. If you are a Marine or a shrinking violet you may have the same issues of overweight but different ways to deal with it.

The Marine may think he can just tackle it by brute force. It may work - and it may not. The marine may avoid the little talk with himself or herself. Too tough for that "stuff". Pretend you are reading the Marine manual then. But do it!

The shrinking violet may keep saying "this is too hard, I can't do it". But you can take charge in your own quiet way. Just become a passive-aggressive when it comes to eating. You can stay out of stressful situations by just quietly doing it without a lot of fanfare.

Me, I'm a would-be control freak. As I said, I have very little control over my life but I do have control over my diet. I do have control over my appetite. I do have control over my health. I do have control over my mouth. I do have control over what is available for me to eat. I can control the amount of what I eat. I don't have to eat like anyone else. A mouthful of something tastes no better than a large plate of it. I can stop eating when I have had enough even if I am not "full". I am me. I like being skinny. I will not be fat. Munching at this moment is less important than looking hot tomorrow and the next day.

See How They Try to Fool You!

The people who create ads and food packaging are in business to sell a product. The actually COUNT on you to be gullible. They HOPE you are too busy to read labels. They appeal to you thinking that certain words appeal to you or are hip at the moment. They USE you to make you choose their product and they are very very calculated about it. Marketing is a science. Your fat hips is money in their pockets. How do you fight back? Buy products that help you - not ones that defeat you. They go where the market is. They follow the money. It's a complicated world out there. There IS lots of good stuff out there but you can't believe what it says in big letters. Just because something uses pitch words and diet guru names, the products are still out there marketing to your weak side.

If its not in the fresh food department without packaging - READ the label! Remember the principle ingredient is always first. If something is down the list it may only be a small percentage of the total ingredients - and they don't have to tell you how much.

Here is a good example: You are looking for whole grain bread. Is it:

Oatmeal bread?
Nutty Oat bread?
Whole Grain bread?
Enriched flour?
Unbleached flour?
Rye bread?
Pumpernickle Bread?
100% whole wheat flour?

All these breads except the last one may have very little oat or whole wheat flour. They are made with at least half or more plain white flour. White flour is used to make the bread softer and bake up smoothly.

Even 100% whole wheat flour contains other ingredients like water, milk, eggs and oil. The important thing is that it is mostly whole wheat flour.

Check how much meat is actually in a frozen meal and how much is starchy carbs. Trust me it is cheaper to put noodles in a can of soup than chicken.

The Sugar Challenge

If you have read my experiences up to here about things that affect your appetite you can actually test it on yourself!

If you are especially carb sensitive you will have a positive response. Look for a drop in episodes of severe hunger in a couple days. For some folks it may take a little longer as your body will respond more gradually.

You can eat as much as you feel like AT MEALS as long as you strictly reduce carbs. I don't mean stuff yourself. Just enjoy your meal and stop when you are reasonably satisfied. The idea is to begin to see if you can adjust your appetite response which will make weight loss easier. Excess appetite defeats the best of weight loss intentions so you have to get in charge of it.

Look for foods where high amounts of sugar slip into your diet - Boston baked beans, fruits, BBQ and other sauces, sweet potatoes, sweetened cereals etc. Avoid them strictly.

Whatever you eat the idea is to remove as much sugar from your diet as possible for a minimum of 3 days. You defeat the purpose of the test unless you seriously reduce the sugar you eat and things that convert quickly to sugar like highly refined carbs.

Restrict white carbs and things made with white carbs (rice, flour, corn starch) to very limited amounts - no more than half a cup a serving (half a baked potato, half a cup of pasta or rice, grits, corn meal) . White carbs are only slightly modified sugars that plants use for storage. They are insoluble but designed to convert to soluble sugar quickly so they can move around the plant for energy. Our bodies do the same thing - change white carbs directly into sugar for energy. They will convert into sugar within minutes, be absorbed quickly and will make your insulin levels spike and plummet back down to earth within hours.

It is impossible to avoid sugar in fruits and veggies but you can restrict yourself to the less sweet ones. Also the timing is critical. Since sugar levels tend to come down within 2 hours, eat veggies like carrots or a half a pear or apple within an hour of the next meal. Your blood sugar will not go up and down so much because it is not very sweet and because you are going to eat.

Highly refined whole grains may or may not be absorbed less slowly - the Jury is out on that - but they do contain some insoluble fiber that "may" stick around a little longer in your stomach and is good for your gut at least. They are OK if you limit yourself to 1 slice of whole grain bread in a half sandwich (100% whole wheat). I eat Pepperidge Farm because it is soft but there are other choices. You can have a big salad with salad dressing and a sprinkling of nuts. I eat a big Dole Asian salad from a kit (because I like the dressing!) using half the dressing and rice noodles and adding sliced almonds. You can have Cheerios or unfrosted Mini Wheats for cereal or hot oatmeal for breakfast or a snack. Use sweeteners if you like it sweet. You can drink all the unsugared drinks you like. If you get hungry before meals snack on unsalted nuts. Unlimited veggies - raw and cooked. There is some sugar in veggies but at least it comes with lots of goodies. I have found that winter squashes are particularly filling. My favorites are butternut and the Caribbean squash, calabaza, which can cooked in about 20 minutes in boiling water or baked for longer. Cook, peel and seed. You can combine them in different dishes or eat mashed with a little butter (I use 0 fat butter spray), salt and pepper - instead of mashed potatoes.

If you get hungry before the next meal have some cereal. Stay away from salty snacks because they are usually combined with carbs. Some snacks have a bit of natural sugar but that is OK if you are going to eat within an hour anyway. Carrots, half an apple or pear.

Avoid yogurt. . Ever wonder why it does not satisfy your hunger? Check out the sugar content. It is full of milk sugar (lactose) and often has sweet fruit added. Cottage cheese is a little better but eat it as a snack only within an hour of the next meal.

You can eat eggs for breakfast. Canadian bacon - try to avoid the greasy strips. Omelettes with salsa. Rancheros with goodies. No hash browns.

If you are busy at lunch or dinner you can choose frozen low carb meals like low carb Lean Cuisine. No, my dear, forget the Pizza for now. A low carb tortilla with chicken and salsa are fine. Guacamole is great.

Desserts can be tough if you eat them regularly because they usually contain a lot of sugar and fat. But you can come up with a substitute like a half cup of cottage cheese with a half a pear. Maybe save it for an hour after dinner or before bed if you get the mid night munchies.

This is not so hard and good training for the real thing. The idea is to start to feel like you have conquered the hunger monkey on your back that is caused by spikes and valleys in blood sugar. The idea is to keep it steady, level and low.

Not eating salty snacks will remove temptation because they often come with low quality carbs like corn, rice and wheat starch. You can eat pop corn if it has NO salt. Reducing bad fats is optimal in any diet but small amounts of the right kinds may actually help control your appetite. More on that in another post.

The idea is to start making an effort to become very alert to everything you put in your mouth. Start reading labels. Check a book or on line for sugar content. I found this site helpful (or use any one you like) and you don't have to sign in to use the calorie and nutrition finder at the very top of the page: http://www.nutritiondata.com/

You may feel immediate benefits of less hunger even before the very next meal or at bedtime. Or it may take you a few days. You may still have a habit to overeat so try to be conscious of your actual appetite. You are not trying to lose weight yet. Just remember - you can get something to eat if you make the right choice.

Don't forget the old saw is that if you cheat you are cheating yourself. You have to give you body and mind the chance to adjust. If you eat something you shouldn't, then restart the 3 day timer with the next meal. But if you are not ready to begin, don't play games. You can do the diet/cheat/diet/cheat thing forever and never get your appetite under control. Don't blame the test. A fair try is at least 3 days.
Make it a 3 day weekend affair if you want. Stay away from people and places that tempt you. Get out somewhere on your own for a while. Go to the movies or for a walk in the park. Take the dog for a couple walks a day.

Get your mind off eating when you are away from the table and concentrate on WHAT you are eating when you are AT the table.

If you take it seriously, you should start to feel more control within days. As you feel something happening, you can keep it going a full week to convince yourself you are onto something.

Don't skip meals and try to keep to a regular mealtime! Your sugar will drop if you postpone a meal more than 3-4 hours. You could eat 5 small meals a day if that works.

Don't skip breakfast even if it is just a half a whole wheat sandwich. or 2 soft corn tortillas with a slice of lunch meat, an egg of any kind, a small bowl of low sugar cereal. You can postpone it an hour after you get up but don't skip it and plan on lunch at a normal time. Set your meal times at even intervals. This is important to even out fluctuations in your blood sugar levels. That is why diabetics are very precise about eating on time.

If you are really getting the sugar in your diet down, you may start feeling a little high mentally. You should not feel those sugar lows when you feel wiped out in the late afternoon. You have just discovered that sugar swings affect your mood negatively and that keeping it steady makes you feel more positive. You don't need me to tell you that gaining control of your appetite and a terrific mood will help make weight loss a lot easier.

Is this hard work? Not really. It may seem different from your normal diet/guilt routine but you are not starving. Does it take self-control? A little but it's mental, not physical. It's about changing your priorities. Look at it as a challenge or a hobby.

Try it and see what happens for you! Whatever the details, I believe that you will be pleasantly surprised.

Salt, the sneaky diet buster

Well, most people know that salt should be limited in our diets. Even if we have normal blood pressure, it tends to increase our BP with time. Some people may be more salt sensitive than others. Whatever, it is recommended that we reduce our intake.

Only real problem with that is that we develop a certain tolerance for salt in our food. Everyone has a different notion of what is "too salty". If you are not Hungarian, you might be shocked at how salty some of their dishes can be. I had a Hungariam roommate - I could not eat some of what she prepared any more than I can eat salt out of the box! It did not bother her. But many of us also have developed a taste for high levels of salt and sprinkle it on at the table even though the food has been adequately salted in the kitchen. We can turn down our taste for salt. At first food may seem undersalted and tasteless but you do adapt. Conversely after you develop a taste for lower salt, food tastes fine. It is easy to get hooked again though. Those pretzels can be a diet killer even if they are non-fat. .

As far as for BP. You can adjust your taste for salt - to some degree at least. You don't have to go entirely salt free but try cooking with half the salt you are used to and don't use the shaker at the table. If this freakes other members of the family - tell them the doctor said to lower your salt intake (no lie, any doctor will back you) and hand them the shaker.

Salt is normally listed as sodium and includes other sources of sodium/soda besides sodium chloride, like bicarbonate of soda and baking powder in bakery goods. Salt holds water in the tissues of our bodies so it also increases how much we apparently weight. Reducing salt intake may help us eliminate excess water and the scales may drop a pound or so. That is good for the heart. But that is not fat weight and it will come and go depending on salt and water intake. We only need a very small amount of sodium. Most of us consume enough salt in our food even if we sweat very heavily. We need other electrolites if we sweat very heavily.

BUT, what applies directly to dieting is that salt increases our desire to eat too much. It is not as much about appetite but saltiness affects our inability to STOP eating. It is the "bet you can't eat just one" syndrome. It is very very hard to stop eating salty things - maybe even more difficult than sweet things which tend to satisfy us. Salt does not satisfy hunger. It triggers some inate desire to eat whatever comes with salt - even when we don't need any more salt. Don't think that marketers of snacks aren't pulling your salt chain!!

The really sneaky thing about salt is that one food may taste saltier than another and not actually BE saltier than another. The taste buds for salt are located on the tips of our tongues so we taste the salt that is on the outside of food in a concentrated form. Food that has plenty of salt in it but must be chewed to release the salt dilutes the salty effect in our mouth.

One example I found is that Triscuits (serving size 6 crackers) has 140mg of salt/sodium. Club crackers (serving size 4 crackers) has 150 mg of salt! But the Triscuits seem much saltier to me. But I have a difficult time stopping at one serving of either one. I could munch a pack if I left it to the salt fairy.

My choice? Eat unsalted nuts for a snack if I am hungry. It's a lot easier to stop. Absolutely forget croutons and crackers in the soup. A slice of bread is a better choice.

Salt inside the foods enhance flavor but it has a more subtle way of making you eat more. We like the food more. It is a lot easier to over-eat salted food than unsalted food. Imagine unsalted mashed potatoes! So there is an additional incentive to undersalt your food. Or, if you are the cook, leave it out of the foods you want to limit and let others salt their own.

We use various sauces to enhance flavors and here is just a sample from my shelf of different sodium content in the sauces I found there. Note that the serving size differs. Most of us use more or less these so be honest with yourself how much you actually use (measure one time to see). There are 3 teaspoons (tsp) in a standard tablespoon (TBSP).

Catsup (1TBSP) = 190 mg sodium
Spicy mustard (1 tsp) = 50 (that's 150/TBSP)
Seasoned rice vinegar ((1 TBSP) = 240 (vinegar!!)
Plain balsamic vinegar = 0
A1 sauce (1TBSP) = 320
Worcestersauce ((1 tsp) = 165 (that's 495/TBSP!)
Tabasco Green sauce (1 tsp) = 140
Lower salt soysauce = 575 (obviously lower does not mean low!)

Check your favs in the cabinet - maybe add them in a comment here.

When you cook consider lowering the amount of salt in the dish while it is cooking if you are going to add salted ingredients or condiments later.

Bottom line, don't start eating what you can't stop. Get yourself a supply of low salt snacks that you can fall back on if you positively must have something before dinner. Put it in a little bowl. Don't eat out of the bag or box.

Dreaded Exercise

One thing that I think may put people off is that everything you read suggests that weight loss is impossible if you don't jog or go to a gym and it is going to be either time consuming or costly or both. It's a self defeating assumption that you can't lose weight without a gym, a bike or exercise machine. Suppose it rains and thunders every afternoon for a week like it does here in South Florida. Or there is snow up to your fenders. It is too hot or too cold. What about people who sit in wheelchairs all day? Almost everyone slows down with age and infirmity. Dragging around extra weight as we get older will only make any physical disability worse. Ah my aching back! my sore feet! my hips, my knees! my indigestion! I'm out of breath!!


Actually, when I started to lose weight my lower legs and feet would swell and cramp up from the excess baggage I was dragging around - though I thought it was something wrong with my blood vessels. Someone even commented that my legs look sun burned when they weren't. One day my legs cramped up so much I could barely finish my walk to get home. In those last couple years I could no longer take my daily walks that I had been doing since 1984. Fatties (in retrospect I can make fun of myself!) must powder their inner thighs to keep them from chaffing and their shorts from riding up. They waddle. You look like the wrath of god in jogging shorts. You suffer twice as much from the heat and sweat miserably. It's embarrassing to jiggle everywhere. ( Just so you know I understand what goes on mentally so you know I've been there! Does anybody out there just not care if it all hangs out?)

The feeling of being too fat to get out and walk was one of the "light bulb" moments where I realized that I HAD to start losing weight. My body was screaming at me that I was tired and miserable. Even if my appearance was not incentive enough to muster my will power, I knew I had to be doing damage to my body too. There were other people who were counting on me and I was having enough problems taking care of myself. But how adept we are mentally at pushing realism to the back of our minds when faced with hunger or a table full of food - or just a bag of chips.


For the first 20-25 pounds I could not and DID NOT do any appreciable exercise. As the weight went down, my legs felt a lot better, my swollen calves lost several inches, and I was able to get back to my walks. And it felt so good!

The point is that you CAN start with the diet alone. The more you move the more you can eat. And conversely you have to eat less if you exercise less. Not rocket science as they say.

Our bodies NEED exercise or the muscles atrophy. You know how fast it can happen if you just are laid up for a few days. Fell on a knee once and the doc had me exercising in bed or in a chair.

Any activity, of course, is better than none. You know - taking a flight of stairs instead of the elevator, parking the car on the far side of the parking lot. Get out of the chair at every ad. I am just trying to emphasize that you can lose weight in spite of a lack of an exercise program.


At the other extreme there are people who exercise TOO much. Check out the physical therapy department at the local hospital. You will see so many sports injuries. There are injuries that happen suddenly and ones that come from years of wear and tear. Unfortunately we glorify excess exercise as "extreme sport". Athletes often suffer early and long for the damage they did when they were younger. Perhaps their hearts are healthy and they may live longer but one does not have to go to such extremes for those benefits. Add self- inflicted injury to years of repetitive work is what makes our backs and knees give out years later.


No doubt we should get as much exercise as we can safely, but in forms that do not cause wear and tear on the joints. It pays to take care of our bodies. Lugging around excess pounds adds to any force to the feet, hips and knees. So let's not add excessive and the wrong type of exercise to already stressed joints.


Swimming is the ideal and least stressful exercise for fat people because it takes the weight off our joints. Unfortunately it is not readily available to many if not most people.


Walking is far easier on the joints than running. I walk about 40 minutes at a good clip Most days and am not averse to stopping along the way for a quick chat (having some fun is good for you too!) or walk along with someone walking their dog. I do it late in the day or early to avoid overexposure to the sun and heat since I live in south Florida. We have a nice bike path on the main streets but I prefer to get off onto the side streets away from the noise and fumes of traffic. Sometimes I take a little music along which helps pass the time and puts a little boogie in my step. I use open earphones so I can hear the cars coming up behind me. I try to do it every day except when it is raining. For me a treadmill is BORING. I hate counting time or steps, looking at a wall or the TV.

If you do not like it you won't DO it so you must find something that appeals to you. It does NOT matter what you do as long as you move. You do not have to work up a big sweat. You should feel good when you finish, not exhausted or sore. HAVE FUN!

What to do when you can't go outside? Well, depends on you. I am all for something that does not cost a red cent. You can shut yourself in your room and put on the headphones and dance with your eyes closed. If you have a willing partner, dance together (fast or slow) You can stick an exercise disk in the player. You can jump rope - real or imagined - in the basement. You can climb up and down a flight of stairs 10 times (work up to it). Do jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups.

Whatever. Don't overdo. Time is more important than effort here.

At work do the stairs, walk the halls, stand instead of sitting when you can. Use your lunch break to do some exercise. Take advantage of anything you job offers in the way of fitness.

Please add your own suggestions.

I also have to add that exercise alone did not keep me from gaining weight though it may have helped keep from gaining at least part of the time.

The impetus for my starting to walk regularly came after a family trip to Tetons National Park., Yellowstone and Glacier Park in Montana. It was a glorious trip with snow in June and the geisers steaming. The Tetons were glorious but the altitude even at the Teton lodge where we stayed left me breathless after even a short hike.

I decided I would try to increase my tolerance of altitude by walking the next year before our second trip to the Rockies. I must admit that I had to push myself for the first few weeks. I had some shin splints that did not help but these went away - especially with the help of good running shoes. After that I hated to miss walking. There was some sort of lift mentally after the walks and I began to look forward to the walks. It was fun getting to know the neighbors, watching the progress of construction. Made some new and fast friends - we began to dog sit for each other. As the year went by it was fun to see what was happening, who was having a BD party, the arrival of winter birds and everyone outside watching the flight of the swallow tailed kite - perhaps the most magnificent fliers aloft.

I found some side streets that made a loop (so as not to breathe fumes of traffic on the main streets) and began by walking it once. Gradually I worked in a few extra loops and walking with long strides and head up, I increased my speed gradually. Improvement came naturally, nothing extraordinary.

The next year's trip to the Rockies proved a resounding success for improving my high altitude capacity and we also enjoyed hiking in the mountains during the next years. I was by no means lean and mean but my weight was reasonably under control and I had lots of energy and could enjoy the West and the mountain air..

It was not until an encounter with a dog scared me that I stopped walking regularly. That coincides with the next stage of gradual weight gain. [Note: it is important to have a safe neighborhood to walk and for the kids. Take a cell phone with you and report dogs running loose if it is a problem. Or else go home and file a report with the cops before something happens. Should be done immediately.].

Now I have returned to walking about 5 days a week. It helps to maintain my weight and energy.

Over the years I had foot pain and evening numbness that interfered with my walking. I saw a podiatrist and a neurologist over the years. Finally a change to Dr. Scholl's drugstore silicon insoles and thin, non-binding socks (be sure they don't shrink up in the drier!), the foot problems disappeared! I have a high instep, so it is very important to have well-fitted and well padded shoes and not to lace them up too tight.

Drinks and sugar content

I do NOT drink fruit drinks. Sorry Florida, NO OJ. Read the label folks. It is sugar and water with only vitamin C to recommend it. Do you think the pulpy varieties have extra fiber? Not a bit. Check the label!

I am not convinced you need to drink extra "anti-oxidants". Antioxidants are a glorified name for combinations of vitamins of unknown value. They are hip now, supposed to be the cure-all for cancer and many other afflictions. Too general and an unproven theory. But even when legit, scientific studies are commonly used to mislead you in the marketing hype. Where does it say HOW much you need anyway? How much is enough? Can you get too much? (kidney stones? too much acid in the stomach?). Is this science? Get real. Anti-oxidants may be good for us, but humans have been getting enough from seasonal fruits and vegetables for eons. Maybe the atypical person who hates to eat all fruits and vegetables could stand to eat more. But it is certainly NOT necessary to take in lots of sugar to get the vitamins you need.

[Side note: I adore tangelos and temple oranges (grow my own) - but eliminating fruits from my diet coincedentally cured a long standing problem with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Turns out I am allergic to raw acid fruits such as tomatoes, citrus, mangos, peaches! (I can eat them cooked which indicates it is enzymes that are at fault because enzymes are neutralized by cooking) Can't even squeeze lemon juice on fish or in tea! I have to pull tomatoes out of prepared sandwiches and salads or ask to have them omitted. IBS comes in various forms (doubless indicating there are various causes) and is a very common condition - especially among women and increases as we get older. I would strongly recommend anyone suffering regular bouts of unexplained diarrhea alone or combined with constipation consider food allergies - especially if you normally eat a "healthy" diet. Of course, you may have different food allergies from mine. ]

I have a friend who suffers from non-tropical sprue - an allergy to glutin in the diet. Actually she benefits from any low carb diet because glutin is a protein found in grains.


Don't forget, brightly colored vegetables and juices are rich in anti-oxidants but lower in sugar. I recommend adding plenty of cooked and raw vegetables and veggie juice to your diet. But more on whole fruits and veggies latter.

By turning fruit into juices we take in much higher quantities of vitamins than your body can use and add unnecessary sugar too! Remember our bodies excrete vitamins that it can't use. We cannot store anti-oxidants. If you must, remember, drinking small sips of a drink throughout the day is preferable to drinking it by the glass. [It seems dubious that we can utilize 100% of the vitamins in a pill at once too].

Check out the sugar in the new pomegranate drinks! Depending on what it's mixed with - 28-34g !! Drinks don't help fill you up either. It takes 3 oranges to make a small glass of juice. At best eat one orange if you must but, remember if you are having problems controlling your appetite, it still has an unnecessarily high amount of sugar and is not the best choice IMO. Grapefruit juice is a little lower - but not significantly.

Note: Grapefruit juice reacts with certain drugs producing toxic side effects, especially cholesterol lowering drugs called statins (i.e. Lipitor) and should be avoided by anyone taking medications including OTC and various natural and/or organic supplements.

Really, which do you think is better for your immediate health, huge quantities of anti-oxidants or getting your appetite under control and losing excess weight?

There are choices. What about drinking tomato juice instead? Plenty of the good stuff and half the calories. And who says that it has to be an 8 oz glass? If you buy it in a big can, are you going to drink the whole thing just because it's there? Buy a bottle and space it out. Instead of 8 oz at a crack with a meal, what about a 4 oz glass twice a day as a snack and not with the meal? That's 2 servings of veggies - if you are counting. But the down side is the quantity of salt.

Yeah, and what about a V8? Compare the labels - not quite as good as tomato juice but not bad either. Even more salt.

If you have high BP, consider the low salt variety. Still has some salt. Maybe a little hot sauce helps if you like - but check the salt content there too. It may excite your taste buds as much as salt and is good for you.

I don't know what happened, but when I lowered my sugar intake I also lost interest in sodas (aka pop in the Midwest). I no longer want carbonated drinks at all. But if you like them, make them sugar free. If you don't like sweeteners, you can buy or make your own no cal flavored waters. Lots of choices.

I drink 1% milk with my coffee and cereals and use it in cooking. I don't mind skim but compromised with my family at 1%. They bitched and moaned for a while but they got used to it. Your taste buds DO adjust. Then when you only have higher percent fat available (such as on an airline) or even cream, you may find that it tastes greasy. If you don't drink milk in large quantities, 2% or even whole milk are OK, just reduce the quantity in proportion. Seems like one of the newest health ideas is that a little milk fat may be beneficial or good for dieting. Hummmmmmmmm I smell marketing has something to do with that one - who knows. But I'll bet you already get enough if you are into pizza or feta cheese in your salad. It's another of these theories that come and go. Everything in moderation is old-fashioned common sense it seems to me. It's just that we have forgotten what moderation means! ;-) .

I also drink hot tea with milk. Definitely low fat is better there! Veddy Brit you know to have milk in your tea, LOL! But my mother studied a while in England so she introduced it to me as a kid.

Coffee creamers are a mixed bag of ingredients. The non-dairy creamers MAY be OK if you are allergic to milk products - but watch out for the fats. Some brands were full of trans-fats and saturated fats like palm oils - the worst saturated type. Most are not great calorie wise. Mostly there is nothing healthy to warrant their use if you can find a substitute you like. Not so long ago people used evaporated (condensed is sweetened) canned or dried low fat milk. They are OK.

For chocolate lovers - there are choices as long as they aren't sweetened with sugar. You can buy a good grade unsweetened cocoa and make your own hot chocolate with low fat milk and sweeteners for a cold afternoon or even dessert. Cocoa is being ballyhooed for it's anti-oxidants these days. But if you want anti-oxidants what makes chocolate better than any other? Probably marketing to our weaknesses. [I know, I know, I'm a skeptic!] Maybe it's really the sweet that we crave in that nice greasy coco-butter base. So you can have your chocolate fix if you just delete the sugar content.

If you are not too picky, there is Swiss Miss Unsweetened Cocoa at 60 calories a packet. It has powdered milk in it so you just add hot water. Or if you make it with all or part milk, add in the extra calories. You should be able to keep it below 100 cals which is my top of the line limit for a snack or "dessert".

Also Splenda makes chocolate and other flavored sweeteners in little tube packets to add to coffee. It's just lightly flavored.

Sugar and Appetite

Various diets treat sugar as if it were a villain. Sure you can get fat if you eat too much sugar. Diet guru's like Atkins attributed weight gain to sugar alone and his diet was built around the theory that you would lose weight if you did not eat carbs/sugars. The low carb fad followed. There was merit attributed to the diet because people lost weight. There was a whole lot more about the diet that was harmful - like coronary disease. But there was a point almost overlooked by the diet that did not get the attention it should have. That carbs make us excessively hungry.

We all remember from basic biology that sugar is the body's fuel. It is absorbed from foods we eat and goes into our blood stream where it circulates in the form known as glucose (anything with -ose at the end is a sugar). The blood circulates it and any cell in every part of the body takes it up to do their particular job as needed whether brain, heart muscle or organ. Our cells are little combustion engines that burn sugar with oxygen also delivered by the blood. They secrete carbon dioxide as a waste product back into the blood and it is delivered to the lungs where we exhale it.

You probably know that "surplus" sugar in the blood, that the cells cannot use immediately, is converted in our liver into fat for storage. Conversely, when the body needs more fuel than we ingest, it converts stored fat back into energy. Reducing the fat in storage is what dieting is all about. Seems pretty simple doesn't it?

[In case you were getting worried, I am not about to get deep into biochemistry or I will embarrass myself! ;-) Just the basics needed to frame the picture for a successful diet and appetite control. If you are interested in details, I again recommend the book, "You on a Diet" by Roizen and Oz, MDs.]

The problem is that there are a series of chemical middle men at work in our bodies that assist our metabolism. I'll just focus on the most important one to fatties - the hormone known as insulin.

Insulin is a catalyst. Catalysts are chemical assistants needed for specific chemical reactions. Insulin helps in sugar metabolism. OK, you know that diabetics take insulin. That's because their pancreas has either stopped producing it (type 1), OR, in type 2 diabetes, the cells become resistant to insulin and that keeps sugar from crossing the cell membrane into the cell. Either way sugar builds up in the blood and the kidneys begin to excrete it. That is why diabetics test their urine. It is not normal to have sugar in the urine. They can also test their blood for sugar - hence the little devices you hear about to test the amount of sugar in a drop of blood. We all have glucose circulating in our blood but if it gets too high a diabetic needs to take insulin to bring it down. Conversely, if it gets too low they need to eat something with sugar to bring it back to normal or they may pass out.

So sugar metabolism is, at least in part, regulated by insulin. People with normal pancreases secrete insulin in response to the increased levels of sugar in the blood. The more sugar, the more insulin. If we sugar in a doughnut, a piece of fruit or candy, the sugar is in a pure form which is easily dissolved and it enters our blood stream within minutes. The insulin level rises rapidly, sugar is quickly metabolized and the sugar level drops just as quickly. In people who are particularly carb sensitive, eating large amounts of sugar at a time triggers a sudden burst of insulin. This can result in rapid swings between hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia (high and low blood sugar), often with concurrent bursts of energy and lethargy.

Our bodies have a signal that tells us when we are low on fuel (hypoglycemic) and we need more sugar to run our cells. We are all too familiar with the message - it is called hunger. Hunger is normal. It is a warning signal that we have to fill up. Biologically we are programmed to react to hunger by seeking food. That is why it is almost impossible to deny the urge to eat for long.

When our blood sugar drops too quickly we can be hungry again within an hour or two. You know, eat a doughnut and juice for breakfast, a cup of coffee and you are ready to eat again long before lunch.

[Now if someone happens to be one of those people who eats sweets and doesn't react with excess appetite in a short time - then they are not as carb sensitive and may produce insulin more gradually in response to sugar level increases in their blood. These people (like my husband, drat it!) may never suffer more than small weight gain from over-indulgence or lack of exercise and lose it again when they return to their normal diet. For lack of similar experience, they may find it difficult to commiserate with others whose bodies overreacts to sugar. But hopefully they will learn to appreciate that something different is happening with someone else. It is important to grasp there are difference in order for family members to help others with weight problems. One needs to understand that there are different metabolic factors that keep some people from gaining excess amount of weight and not others. Skinny people can be very self-righteous about people who get fat and make remarks like - they just ought to eat less! Well they may be right in a way but there is a lot more too it than that. It is not an excuse. We are programmed to eat when we get hungry and fat people may be prone to excess feelings of hunger.

There may be different factors at work. Just being fat has it's own psychological fall out as well. People who are unsympathetic may lack compassion but, granted, there are some fatties who are just looking for sympathy too and need some outside help that family members may not be psychologically able to provide. No question that overeating is an addiction but these addicts cannot just toss their drug down the drain. The food addict has to eat and deal with their drug sitting right in front of them - every day. And family members may be intentional or unintentional saboteurs. More on social and psychological factors in another post!]

So what we are looking is some way to turn off - or at least down - the cravings for excess amounts of food. We have to manage our appetites so we CAN lose weight.

If you understand the basics of metabolism outlined, it should not be so hard to understand that the very simple answer lies in managing the insulin level in our blood. If our bodies do not do it naturally for us, then we have to manage our sugar intake just like a diabetic. The diabetic knows that they are causing severe and certain harm to themselves and it will kill them if they don't make the adjustment so they have a very strong incentive. Fat people are also killing themselves - but we just don't see the effects as quickly.

The folks at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are fond of saying that overweight is the most preventable health problem in this country. But dang it, you can yell that in people's ear all day and it does not make a bit of difference if we don't know how to control the beast inside.

For me the secret has been getting sugar in my diet under control. I found that if I eat in a way that does not produce that strong insulin reaction I also avoid extreme hunger that will cause me to eat too much. I regulate the carbs carefully in my diet - just like a diabetic. I aim to keep my blood sugar level reasonably low and as steady as possible so as not to trigger a surge of insulin that will cause me to lose control. Portion control became a lot easier once I got hold of my unreasonable appetite.

You know you should avoid cake and ice cream but there is sugar hidden in much of the other foods we eat. And it may surprise you where it is hidden if you don't start looking at those nutrition labels on the sides of packages. Those designer foods for dieters are famously misleading. Very few have anything good to offer except to the manufacturers. But you can find some help among the hype.

More on specific foods and drinks in different posts. I am trying to keep posts focused and not blather too long. So much to say and so little time. LOL!

South Beach Diet Critique

This was my comment to an article about South Beach Diet published in the newspaper:


Any diet book has no more than 1 or 2 new suggestions. The rest is window dressing because the publisher needs filler to make a book. Seriously! What do you think all those recipes are about?
When a cardiologist like Dr. Agaston writes a book people want to believe and it became a fad. But when someone with his credentials sells out to Kraft or some other company any good he has done will be diluted.
Check out those SB cereal bars. They are 100 cal cookies by another name! 6g or more of sugar! Need fiber? You can do a lot better eating some veggies.

Dr. A, you probably have samples of those foods at home - no wonder you are having problems with weight gain yourself! Take my advice - toss 'em! LOL!

SB diet cereals have 6g or more of sugar too. You can find 0-3g sugar in old fashioned, untrendy cereals like Cheerios or corn flakes or oatmeal. (Fatties really need to compare labels!) So if you want fruit and nuts - add natural, unprocessed ones separately. Why pay for added vitamins! Take a multivitamin if you think you must.

This is my Any-Idiot-Can-Do-It Diet! If I did it - and have kept it off, any one else can. It is so damn simple I can't fill a book (no matter how much I would like to get the royalties!).

I found out what works and what doesn't after years of trying (well at least I can expand the details in this blog ;-) and keep encouraging people who need help )

But this is the unvarnished bottom line :

#1 Cut down on SUGAR as much as you can. It is in most processed foods and even some natural ones. I figured out it was the culprit that made me ravenous before the next meal. You can't succeed if you always feel hungry.
#2 Cut your portions in half from what you are used to eating. Become aware of feeling satisfied without feeling stuffed. Stop eating the moment it happens!
#3 Have am UNPROCESSED 100 cal snack to eat if you get ravenous before meals. (just 1!)
#4 I disagree completely with the folks who say you can cheat on sweets once in a while. If you are carb sensitive like I am, you will go on a binge after one bite. Better NONE than ONE. Until you get your appetite under control stay away. That means no sweet desserts! Any special occasions have to be really REALLY rare or you WILL relapse. I remember the day vividly when I passed up the pastry counter in the hospital cafeteria (don't laugh! Look at the crap hospitals are pushing!) one day when I was really depressed over a family member's illness. Looked at those enticing yummies long and hard ("I deserve to console myself!") but got a cup o Joe with a couple splenda instead and walked away. That day I knew I had mind over matter.
#5 Move. Anything. Don't feel you have to make a huge effort - just make a little MORE effort. As you get older or have excess weight or illness exercise may be difficult. Work up to a half hour walk if you can. If you can't walk then you have to cut back more food.

Stop Gaining Weight First

You need a reasonable period of time to allow your body to adjust from a weight gaining diet to a weight loss diet. Before you lose how do you put the brakes on gaining? Just to stop gaining is the first and a very BIG step. Starting is probably one of the most difficult parts so let's take it easy and see how we can start. You don't have to wait until the "right" time. This stage can begin immediately without any big effort of self control.

During this period, other than watchng you weight continue to climb, you begin by making the small but important changes in what you eat and your eating habits and life style. This is not a weight loss diet, but it could be if done right. Primarily is is about choices that lead to eating healthier. There is NEVER a good time to get drastically hungry or you will defeat even the best of intentions. But you DO need to teach yourself to become accustomed to the sensation of not feeling stuffed to the gills to be satisfied. Try to think of feeling "stuffed" as looking stuffed like a pillow.

It is self defeating to try to overcome pangs of hunger. They are the penalty of going from weight-gaining to a weight-losing diet in one step. Once people make up their minds to lose weight, they may suddenly feel like they are in a big rush to get started. Most often impatience turns around to bite you on a bigger butt with a rebound in weight and a feeling of defeat. You must allow your body to adjust to eating less of what makes you gain weight, eating the right stuff and it is also a time you need to adjust psychologically. It is very hard to stop doing what you have been doing for a long time and almost impossible to do it in one big step. Well, maybe after you have had a severe trauma such as a heart attach that gets your attention you will click over to a diet. Hell, even that doesn't stop most people. Maybe it is better to skip the heart attack and see the light in the mirror instead.

So why not get started gradually on your own terms and in your own way? You know your personality better than anyone. If you have tried and failed you know what I mean. You have been trying to follow someone ELSE's diet. That is why I emphasize that you have to follow YOUR diet devised by YOU for YOU. So all you need is to think carefully about what you eat and how much. And it is very important to take you time as you make the adjustment and see what works for you.

I can't emphasize enouhg making a conscious effort to think things over. Weight loss is like getting married, it is forever. It is NOT like getting it on. It may take you a week or a month. You will know when weight control starts to be more than an infatuation. You need to be committed for life. Or you can think of it as a hobby. It is imperitive that your diet be something very personal that is pleasant in your mind: Gee, I can do this! It's not as hard as I thought! The results are so great! What is everybody going to say! I can be looking much better soon. Collect recipes and ideas and put them in a scrapbook or notebook if you like. Maybe start a photo collection starting on day 1. Start a facebook profile. Put a buck or two in a jar for buying a smaller size pair of pants that do not pinch in the middle. Whatever!

Practice allowing yourself to be a little hungry for a short time but never allow yourself to feel famished before deciding to have a snack. Try to eat more slowly and LISTEN to your stomach consciously. Don't rely on what you see left on your plate. Enjoy eating! BUT recognize when you are SATISFIED (not full) and have had enough....... and put the fork (and the spoon!) down. Excuse yourself. Get up from the table. Then do something! Clear the table. Scrape any left-overs into the garbage. Wash the dishes. Brush your teeth to get the taste of food out of you mouth. Take a walk. Put on some earphones and listen to music. Send some email. Pay some bills. Bathe the baby. Do some homework. Whatever you do get away from food and distract yourself from that second helping. Let other people finish what they are eating without you watching them. Say something nice as you get up and they won't be as inclined to be crabby. "Why don't you finish? Don't you want some more?" NO thanks. I've had enough. That was great. Is there somethng I can do? Take the garbage out? Feed the dog? Anything to get outta there. Better not say you are on a diet at this instant! You will have to sit down and explain.

If you must talk over your plans to diet, choose the right time and talk to the person most likely to support you. It can be helpful to have a supporter but you may find that some people talk out of 2 sides of their faces.

Sometimes your efforts to diet are best kept to yourself. If you seem picky they may think you don't like what they serve. If you lose weight they may be jealous. If asked say "I am full" or " just cutting down on sweets" and quickly change the subject. If you need to throw in some back up - "the doctor says I should cut back or I will become diabetic". That makes it hard for people to argue. [If you don't want to make it up, you can ask the Doc about diabetes and overweight and that you would like to lose weight and it won't be a lie!] Look up diabetes on the web and print out a copy of the risk factors and foods to avoid. Maybe that will help prove to your Mom or significant other that you are serious without too much explanation. YOU might also learn a thing or two about the risks of being overweight as well as the risks of diabetes - like blindness, amputations, impotence, etc! While you are at it check out high blood pressure risks! Maybe print them out.

Reduce the time you watch TV. It is not just because it's sedentary but TV is also filled with cues to eat, eat, eat. More harmful than being a couch potato is being a couch potato and eating and/or drinking empty calories at the same time.. Try on some light activity. A short walk with the dog even if he could go in the back yard. Climb a flight of stairs 5 times. Put on the phones and boggie a little or, if you are sensitive, close the bedroom door. Walk around while you talk on your cell phone - don't sit or flop. Go to a local ball game with a friend instead of watching on TV. Do ANYTHING that involves some activity. Mostly we just watch TV to watch TV. Be selective about what you really like and just watch that. When the show is over, don't start flipping - turn it off or go away.

Start eating ONLY real food. Cut down on unhealthy foods. You know what they are. They are over-processed food and a warning sign is that they come in a box or bag. You should always check the label of anything you buy in a box or bag to be sure it is not full of salt, fat and/or sugar. No, pop-corn is NOT a health food - even without butter. It has no socially redeeming value in your diet - just kernels between your teeth and a desire to eat it in huge buckets. OK, plain is better than chips but will you eat it without butter and salt? Get real. How many calories are you talking per cup? Check the box label. Can you really keep it below 100 calories and no more? Start making choices. Make a mental picture of popcorn as Styrofoam with butter and salt.

Eat what you want from the produce and meat sections of the supermarket. Paste, rice and potatoes are OK but start to eat them in small proportion but watch the mayo or those creamy concoctions which are just mayo with tomato, horseradish or mustard added. Plain mustard is fine, pickles, catsup in small quantities are OK.

Eat a big salad, raw and cooked veggies. Dilute creamy salad dressings with a little milk so they mix better with the greens. Use just a tablespoon or 2. MEASURE IT!

Meat and poultry are OK if the portion is about the size of the palm of your hand (a chicken breast for instance, not fried). Tuna and egg salad are great. Just make it with minimal mayo - a tablespoon is enough for a small can of tuna or 2 eggs. That is more than enough for 2 sandwiches. If you like fat free mayo - go for it. I prefer "a little" oil and vinegar to mayo. Actually real mayo is nothing but oil and lemon juice held together with an egg white. The real stuff is not poison. Just eat it sparingly. Maybe dilute it with lemon juice or a little water.

Don't think in terms of a LOW carb diet but a lowER white carbs diet. If you have a low opinion of food made from whole grains you have not checked out or experimented with the newer stuff on the shelf. Granted some older whole wheat products are downright chewy and weird! I like oats, barley and rye but, frankly, they may give you hellacious gas if you are unaccustomed to them! :-( ! If you eat them better take with a Gas-X/generic chaser (works better if you take simethicone products with a food you know gives you gas and not wait until it hits you 2 hours later!)

So what is so wild and magical about whole grains? Because they contain lots of indigestible plant fibers. (so do most vegetables) nutritionists think we need them in our diets to promote intestinal health. Fiber helps keep things moving. If food sits in our bowel for a long time it rots there and may be a cause of cancer of the bowel. You can certainly tell if your bowels are not working right. But they also cause gas for some people.

The second reason is that whole grains are said to be digested more slowly and that may help make you feel filled up. Does that make sense? Takes more time to digest but makes your bowels work faster? Well, it depends on what part of the digestive tract you are talking about.

But really, it is not like we are eating whole grains in the whole condition most of the time. Processed flour - corn, wheat, removes the fibrous, indigestible covering of the grain. Whole grains are milled into flour too. The indigestible outside of the grains is broken down but it still runs through our guts undigested but the digestible starchy part of the seeds/grains are turned into sugars and absorbed into the blood just like any other carb once they are dissolved.

But for someone on a diet there is something more important. Ever notice as you chew a cracker slowly and let it "melt" in your mouth it actually begins to taste a little sweet? That is because white flours begin to turn to sugar right in your mouth! That is a job for saliva besides help washing it all down.

Once it is sugar it is digested just as quickly and you get rebound hunger pangs because you body starts screaming for more. It releases hormones that are supposed to make us hungry. So you shouldn't be cajoled into eating lots of whole grains. Yeah, they are health alternatives but not unlimited quantities of them. A half cup to a cup is plenty at a meal depending on your body size. If you need more fiber - eat veggies - cooked and raw. Cooking does not destroy either sugars or fiber.

Bottom line, carbs in excess will result in excess hunger in a couple hours. You can easily prove this to yourself by eating NO carb meals for a couple days. Atkins made a fortune on this simple truth. But they ARE and SHOULD be a healthy part of your diet. You just need to limit their intake. One slice of whole wheat or oatmeal bread to a sandwich. A small bowl of oatmeal or other whole grain cereal. Up the proportion of the other things in your sandwich like the lettuce and tomato - eat a half sandwich or use a knife and fork.

What I like (not a promotion): IMO Pepperidge Farm makes a whole wheat bread, 17-grain bread and oatmeal breads that are soft and very tasty. Beware of PF selections right beside them that have lots of grains on the outside but are really just glorified white flour inside. Muellers makes a whole grain pasta (macaroni and spaghetti) that cooks up more tender than their whole wheat variety. It actually has some chick pea/garbanzo flour in it which is high in protein. It turns almost white when you cook it. Put a sauce on it and you can't see any difference and it tastes normal.

Be wise! Look for the proportion of white or processed flour on the label. If it does not say wholewheat or whole grain FIRST on the label it is NOT whole wheat. Any adjectives before the word flour means it is not whole grain. Fortified does not mean it is better, just vitamins added. If it doesn't come first on the list of ingredients it is not the main ingredient and if there are only a few ingredients it may rank very low. If you want added vitamins and minerals - take a multi-vitamin pill (only a couple additives are required by law like folic acid in breads to lower the incidence of a neural birth defects).

When you ARE hungry and feel like you can't wait for the next meal - maybe the meal is only an hour away - have a bowl of low sugar cereal (3 grams or less!).

What you are doing is cutting down your chances of over-eating as well as substituting a healthy snack for an unhealthy one. You kill the pangs but you do not stuff your face with greasy, starchy or sweet junk. Those sorts of foods will add pounds and increase your hungry later in the day. You will go to bed hungry or feeling like you have cheated on yourself. Maybe a little depressed that today you did not succeed.

Choose your bowl. You decide how much cereal is enough. Actively think about how much is what you need right now - just to get you to the next meal without nibbling. Pick the "right" size bowl for the job but choose careful and don't fill the bowl twice before the next meal. Add low fat milk and sweetener if you want or maybe you get more satisfaction by munching it plain like chips. Eat slowly. Remember, you can always eat some of it and THEN decide that you have had enough! Throw the rest away! If you can do that you are learning!

Yeah, I know, Mama always said don't waste food. Guilt, guilt guilt! But you are NOT a garbage pail and it's YOUR life. TOSS any food in the real garbage the second you have had enough. Do not leave it for later either. OK, you have learned something about YOUR correct portion size and maybe the next time you will be less wasteful. When you get to the weight losing phase, the size will gradually get smaller.

The cereals that you should choose from have 3 grams or less sugar on the box label. They are usually the old fashioned originals: Cheerios, the new unfrosted Mini-Wheats, Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies, plain oatmeal. Check the labels on the "designer" cereals and you will find they are almost invariably higher in sugar. WATCH OUT for the boxes that tout they are "healthy" and "heart wise". They may be stuffed with nuts and dry fruits but that makes the sugar go up significantly. Dang! it is incredible some of the things that get the heart healty sign. If they are low fat (and most cereals are) and whole grain, they are loaded with excess sugar which the body can make into cholesterol! If you want to eat nuts and fruits - eat them separately so you can see how much you are eating!

Now a thing to remember. IF you don't particularly LIKE cereal! Holy cow! It's no secret, you have refined your taste to fattening foods. The smell of French fries turns you on. You have to start making the mental adjustment. You LEARN to prefer certain foods. Think of how those fries as if they are a day old (maybe not if you are so far gone you would eat them! then better just avoid the temptation.). You CAN learn to change your preferences too.

Guess what!, if you don't absolutely "ADORE" some particular food maybe you will not be as tempted to over eat it! It will be easier to stop. So maybe that is a good reason to make a choice for something other than cake. [think: Let THEM eat cake, I'll eat some cereal and I have a secret - I am getting thinner]. If you are one who hates this food, can't eat ___, never eat, or detests that food that is "good for you" you will have a great big problem losing weight unless you make some changes in your attitude.

A picky attitude is a barrier to weight loss that some dieters have to fight besides all their other problems. If you never tried a lot of things when you were a kid it was probably because your parents did not stray far from comfort foods or you ate all your food in fast food joints. You have a major problem concerning taste to overcome. On the positive side - if you are hungry enough you may be more inclined try a little of certain things and you may just wind up liking them - eventually. But make a list, probably there are at least a few good foods in your diet that you could eat more of and less of others. You have to decide if you have any notion of succeeding. Eat more good foods and eat a lot less of the bad foods.

The fewer choices you give yourself the more monotonous a diet will be and maybe harder to stick to. Unless you are like the guy who ate the same Subway sandwich every day for a year (I believe he also ate other food at some meals so there is more to his success than Subway would want to stress!). Would you be able to maintain a monotonous diet for a week, month, forever after you lose the weight?. It is an adjustment only you can make. What works for you?. But don't forget to give yourself a chance to change your mind after a while! It is not like you have to jump head first into adoring spinach or broccoli overnight! You can do it by little bites on the sly when no one is looking ;-)

If you want a sweet fix - you can put non-caloric sweeteners on your cereal. I use only a few "diet foods" as a crutch. But I have a sweet food which for me is 2 packets of Splenda in cereal or coffee. It satisfies my need. I sense a bitter after-taste from some others sweeteners but if you are not one of them choose the one you prefer. If you don't like it sweet - forget the sweeteners. If you must have a little real sugar in your coffee how about switching to half sugar and half sweetener? You gotta start somewhere. You can even switch to using natural sugar (demerara or turbinado -light tan crystals). It's not because they have less sugar or are healthier. Calorie for calorie they are still sugar, but the added flavor may add a perk and help you take less. Make you feel like you are treating yourself.

If you like, you can add a couple dashes of cinnamon to cereal.

Sometimes for breakfast I eat a small bowl of oatmeal (1/3 cup quick oats -not instant- oatmeal in 1/2 cup water) I add a dash of cinnamon, a few raisins (for flavor) a dash of salt. Bring to boil on a burner or in a micro, turn off and wait a minute to thicken. (cheaper, tastier and about as fast as instant). I add a couple spritzes of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray marg (zero fat or calories) and a dash of 1% milk. The marg makes it taste like cream. Or I skip the milk.

Adding "a few" raisins is not going to raise the amount of sugar free oatmeal above 3 g. If I add them myself I can control the amount unlike cereals with "raisins added". By contrast, a bowl of oatmeal with sugar would leave me hungry by lunch. At least raisins are not totally empty calories. I also eat a half a banana pear or apple for breakfast. Maybe a cube of Queso Blanco (a whole milk cheese like Feta without the smell).

Drinks. Don't consume calories in drinks. They do not satisfy your hunger and may add significant calories. Please have a look at the label on orange juice. Though the OJ producers you would have you think it were a health food it is mostly sugar water with vitamin C and no significant fiber (even pulpy types)! So they have to add other ingredients like calcium. Tomato juice, by contrast, has less than half the calories, 100% of the recommended vitamin C as well as vitamin A and other nutrients as well as fiber - naturally. But choose lower salt if your family is prone to high blood pressure. Check all fruit juices and punches. V8 is not as good as plain tomato juice. Add hot sauce if you like! You could have 2 small glasses a day for 2 of recommended "servings". Diet drinks with 0 sugar are OK but tap water is best. No cans, no plastics.

A half an apple or a pear are good snacks to eat an hour before lunch or dinner to ward off the pangs. So is a half cup of cottage cheese.

We are NOT talking cereal bars for a snack! They are nothing but glorified cookies disguised as health food. And they are 100 calorie or more cookies at that! South Beach Diet bars have 6 grams of sugar! Even the big gurus sell out their names for profit. Thank God for labels! And think about it....who will profit even more if you DON"T lose weight? It's a rip off, honey! You can do better.

If cereal is not your bag, try a handful of nuts. Not the salted or sweetened nuts in cans or dry roasted in jars but the ones that come shelled in bags without any additions. Usually in the produce department for good reason, not with the snacks.. Walnuts are best because they contain those lovely omega3 oils for your heart but almonds, pistachios or other nuts are almost as good. You can eat unsalted roasted peanuts without oil too - but they may only be available in the shell. That's OK, shelling slows you down. I don't recommend peanuts if you can't stop though.

What's a handful? Well it's not the same for a small gal as it is for a big guy. A handful is what you can close your fingers over in your palm without anything peaking out. For my size hand that is about 8-10 walnut halves. That is a "portion size" and it relates nicely to every one's body size. That's OK because bigger people burn more calories in proportion.

Remember it is the SALT that makes that - "you can't eat just one" - rule work. The taste buds for salt are on the tips of our tongues. So even though there may be more salt in the food, it's the salt sprinkled on the outside that makes us crave more salty foods. The potato chip and doodle makers know where your weakness is and exploit you mercilessly! Your buds are being USED by manufacturers to sell foods. Notice how they even add salt to sweet foods and sweet to salty foods. Are you going to let them get you by the you know what??????????????????? Take control by telling those dope pushers to buzz off in no uncertain terms.

Sugar sugar sugar is a diet buster. Cut down wherever you see it. Read labels. Make choices between foods with sugar added. You know how fast a teaspoon dissolves in a glass of tea or lemonade. It dissolves quickly in your stomach too and gets into your blood stream in a matter of minutes. The cells of your body need sugar for their metabolism but they only can use so much. What they can't use is converted in your liver to fat and put into storage. aka FAT.

So what happens after the sugar has cleared from your system? In simplest terms, your body cells run out of fuel and signal the hunger pangs to start to tell you to "fill 'er up" again. It is done with a variety hormones different cells secrete. Hormones are not just about sex, there are different ones that act as the messengers for all functions in your body. Some turn on and shut off hunger. Turn on those hormones in large doses and you feel starved. You have heard of the glucose index some diets taut and there is truth to them. But it is all bundled in lists of what you can eat and not eat. Just know it is sugars in their simplest forms. Words with -ose on the end, like glucose, fructose, sucrose, are sugars.

If you eat too much sugar at one meal, you are going to be more (abnormally) hungry before the next meal time. It is a vicious cycle you need to stop to get control over your appetite.

You know how it goes, a couple doughnuts, coffee and/or OJ for breakfast and you are "starved" in an hour or two. You are tempted to eat brunch before lunch. Your stomach growls. Same after a starchy or sweets at lunch. You are likely to eat more sweets in the afternoon too. You will be ravenous before dinner. Sweet=EAT = Sweet = eat!

Last but not least. Alcohol. Alcohol is the only thing that gets into your blood faster than sugar - and it has the same effect as simple sugar. If you drink more than an ounce of hard alcohol a day, you should think about cutting down to 1. If you have to choose, a glass of wine is best. Beer? Think about the gut. Beer is liquid carb. A glass once in a while is OK. But beer often goes with greasy food and salty chips. Time to make some choices. I am not going to tell anyone to stop drinking. But if you are seriously trying to change your lifestyle because your weight is too high. This is area numero uno to make a start.

Remember I did not say to not eat when you are hungry during this stage but decide WHAT you are going to eat that will stop the upward spiral.

Give it a try.

Cook Books

What you eat is highly personal. Some of us are not cooks. Many who wish to diet are not in control of what the family serves at meals. You are going to need to make adjustments according to different circumstances.

So this is just for cooks and assistant cooks out there.

One of the most basic books would be something like the Betty Crocker "Light and Easy Cookbook". It's for average home cooking style. If you prefer something different or ethnic, they are not hard to find at any book store - often on the sale table. There are hundreds of new cookbooks every month. There are glossy magazines full of recipes. There are thousands of recipes readily available in low calorie versions on line for free. If you are into cooking you will have no problem finding a variety of choices.

Since I aim for 1200 calories a day, I look for recipes with 300 or less calories per breakfast or lunch. Look for 100 calorie or less snacks (2 a day) and 400 calories including sides a meal. Remember, there are side dishes. With that few calories every single one has to count as good nutrition. At my age and height it is necessary to stick to this amount to lose 2 pounds a week and I still aim for that amount most days just to maintain my weight.

Don't be fooled though. If the portion is small enough anything will have a low enough calorie count. If you don't believe me take a look at those 100 calorie packs of cookies and snacks on the shelf. They make the cookies and crackers really small to fool you. Great if you can eat just 1 a day and don't fill up on something else! But will you? Give me a break! Those starchy and sugary snacks just make me crave more. It does not matter how much they tout the amount of "fiber", they are like a drink to an alcoholic. While it is a temptation to just eat one, I know that I will crave the second one more than I craved the first. So I know I would do better not even eating one. So I don't eat the snack food and eat a bowl of cereal, a few nuts, a half cup of cottage cheese, a half an apple. Without the sugar and salt I do not crave more as much.

Since changing your eating habits can seem difficult, you should know that it is not hard to adapt many of the menus you normally enjoy by simply tweaking the ingredient proportions. Don't add more oil to a sauteed dish. A tablespoon of olive oil in a non-stick pan has all the flavor of 4 tablespoons of oil. Instead of a couple tablespoons of butter use a butter flavored spray and a half tablespoon of real butter (if you must).

Greatly reduce the proportion of starchy food - like rice in proportion to the amount of chicken and vegetables in a stir-fry or pasta in a pasta dish. You can make a ragu spaghetti sauce with a quarter pound of lean ground meat instead of a pound and increase the amount of tomato sauce. Add more chopped veggie ingredients. No one will be the wiser. Maybe they will even like it better because there is more taste in the veggies. I recommend adding a chopped zucchini to spaghetti sauce and more onion. Zucchini??????? Yeah, zucch IS Italian and 1 piece will not change the flavor other than to make it seem richer. OK so add some more red wine too! ;-) The alcohol will cook out you know - leaving just good flavor.

It is also possible to adapt the calories of any meal by your choice of things being served and how much of each you put on your plate. Just remember, the richer the food calorie wise, the less of it you put on your plate. If you have no idea about calorie content you can often find the information on serving size and calories on prepared foods. Don't even try to remember the calorie count - just mentally file food types under low calorie, medium or high. I have learned to make a rough guess now about a serving size that is about 100 calories. By halving that it is easy to guestimate 50 or 200, etc. If you want, find one of those little calorie counter booklets that you can stick in your pocket. After using it for a while you will get the basic idea and can put it away. You need to know to make better judgements about foods if you have been "cheating" for years.

Just remember that to actually lose weight you only have to reduce certain elements in your diet - sugar, over-processed starches, fats and oils - and raise the good ingredients.

Most diet books you may already have on your shelf have menus and recipes. If you will never try them - save your money. The best planned menu dies when you are in a rush to cook. But for special occasions, I recommend cutting out the ones you like and putting them in plastic pages in a looseleaf notebook. Or cut and paste on line recipes into a folder.

Ideal Weight and Waist Measurement

This is the simple way to determine if you are too heavy. It won't tell you if you are too thin. All you need is a tape measure which can be found wherever sewing supplies are sold. You need both your waist measurement as well as to calculate your BMI (simple calculator is listed in previous post) to determine the normal weight range for your particular body type.

More information from the National Institutes of Health:
http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/tools.htm#circumf

In essence it has been determined that:

women should have a waist no larger than 35 (89 cm) inches

men no more than 40 inches (101 cm).

Measuring the waist determines how much internal fat you have stored in an internal organ called the omentum. It feeds stores and sends fat to the liver. When it is enlarged by excess fat the internal organs are squeezed and they suffer. Your get indigestion (medically referred to as GIRD or Gastro-intestinal Reflux Disorder) because the stomach contents are pushed up and overflow back into your esophogas especially when you lie down or eat a big meal. You get sleep problems including apnea because your belly is pushing your diaphram up against your lungs and heart. You get out of breath. You get gas pains because your gut is pinched. Fat in the omentum is much more dangerous to your health than fat under the skin.

If you want to understand how your body organs work together storing and burning fat you may be interested in the book "You on a Diet" by doctors Roizen and Oz. The book is written for readers with little knowledge or understanding of how the body works. It may seem a little too cutsy to some but it is very informative IMO.

Calculate Calories, BMI

There are many sites that will calculate the number of calories you need to maintain your present weight. Eat more/gain weight. Eat less/lose weight. You know the drill. Simple math.

All that is required is being totally honest with yourself when you fill in the form. If you have changed anything lately, calculate twice - before the change and after the change. That will tell you if the changes are an improvement or not.

Calculate you Body Mass Index (BMI) to learn what is a normal weight range for your body. This is the one from the National Health Institute:
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

Here's one from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). It is about the same.
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/

This is a site where you can calculate calories as well as your BMI in a little more detail. Probably more here then you will ever need:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/tools/calories-burned

You can Google the web for Nutrition and find thousands of sites packed with more information than you will ever need IF you are interested. I encourage a little exploration. If you have an orderly personality that likes to calculate every bite you eat or create a personalized diet it may work for you. If you are not one of them or lack the time, don't be discouraged. Portion control is far easier to calculate and quickly becomes intuitive. Know yourself.

Caveat: On commercial site you will encounter ads of dubious varacity and help. I saw one touting losing 9 lbs in 11 days. Get real! All that tells us is someone is taking advantage of how gullible food addicts are. By now we should know by experience they don't work. But there is appeal and temptation in the quick fix.

Trendy diets

A poster complained on a forum that nothing works for her. My answer is a little harsh but many people do not lose weight because they want sympathy instead of results. But I am sympathetic but you deserve sympathy while you are trying - not when you say you have tried and failed.

My reply was, been there, done that! Poor me. A victim of my own appetite. I really can feel for ya because I have been there, but believe me you have to dig inside yourself. You can't believe that all that diet literature out there is somehow going to "work" for you. Seek out the tidbits that will make a diet work but you have to integrate it into YOUR life!

Dieting has become too complicated and trendy. The real answers are plain and simple but most of us can't face reality. We succumb because we can't deal with a change in our lifestyle - and we think it is all or nothing. You must recognize that you are a food addict but you can't starve for the rest of you life either.

First you have to slow down the weight gain and begin to turn things around before you can take it off. Eat a bowl of low sugar cereal (Cheerios or oatmeal with Splenda and cinnamon, Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies, no sugar Mini Wheats (new!) ) when you are hungry - before you guzzle those potato chips.

You don't GO on a diet. First you have to stop eating crap but you CAN eat real normal food that will help you lower and maintain your weight loss gradually. Don't even think of trying to do it fast. You may go 2 weeks without losing a pound and then drop 3. If you lose 4 in a week I can guarantee you that you will gain it back - sooner rather than later 0 or quit.

Not many people are going to stick to a tasteless diet that leaves your stomach growling. Look for good things that you will enjoy eating. IF you are really hungry you should not be as picky either. Those veggies begin to look better and better. Make a huge bowl of salad and put on 1 Table spoon of any dressing you like. If it is too thick to spread, add a few drops of water, vinegar or milk. 3 tablespoons doesn't taste any better than 1 but there are about 100 calories in each tablespoon. YOU choose between more taste or less weight.

It takes some will power but you DO have to change you mindset from "I can't" to "I am in control of myself". This is NOT from some guru on a pedistal who has never had a serious weight problem, 3 children, depression and and a litany of unfortunate life issues. No I am just an average person with normal problems. But I did manage to lose 75 lbs when things were otherwise lousy and have kept it off. Actually my life and health were the only things in my life I could improve.

They say it gets harder as you get older. Well, I did it at 67 years and I love how I look and feel. One day it was so bad I had to sit myself down and decide how I was going to live the rest of my life. I seem pretty tough some days but I told myself so I can do this. Get out of the cocoon I have been hiding in. Start to love life and feel really sexy again. I am responsible for my health, for myself and for others who need me. This is about setting you priorities in order to change your body.

I follow a diet not unlike a diabetic except I don't have to take insulin. I realized I am carb sensitive and cannot control my appetite if I eat too much sugar. I stopped swigging OJ (sorry Florida) because it is pure sugar with vitamin C and 0 fiber (even the pulpy variety!). You can get more nutrients from Tomato juice. (read the labels!) Read the ingredients and sugar in cereal boxes. The trendy, so-called healthy cereals have more than 3 g of sugar per serving. Ditch 'em. Look for old fashioned cereals. Cut way back on the white carbs (which turn to sugar in a few minutes). Do I eat all I want to eat (as the diet programs promise)? No sir! I love French bread and butter but I rarely touch it. I eat only half a banana for breakfast. (I eat them because bananas contain potassium which help control your heart rate). Another half a pear or apple (which are not as sweet as most fruits) an hour before dinner to dull my appetite. You can share them with somebody else.

Check out portion size. If you think a Lean Cuisine is too small then you have NO idea what portion control is. Your eyes ARE bigger than your stomach as the old saying goes. We have become so accustomed to looking at big plates loaded with food we have NO idea any more what a portion is. You have to decide for yourself - if you rather get your jollies from eating than feeling and looking good, then forget dieting. It won't work until you change your priorities and treat a diet like a new hobby.