DIETS DON’T WORK.

First there’s the most crucial fact of diets: they’re no fun. They rely too much on willpower and there’s only so long most people can sustain that much frustration.

Second, even those people who have lost weight through dieting tend to gain it back, often topping out even higher than when they started. A diet does very little to help you change your habitual behavior patterns.

Third, “dieting” implies a temporary regimen, as if once you “finish” the diet you can relax and once again eat the things you love in the quantities you feel like. Reality check. You need to eat every day for the rest of your life. There is no “finishing” a diet.

So, what does work?

Gradual changes and vigilant awareness of what you’re putting into your body is your best bet to controlling the size and wellness of your “vehicle.” Changing your eating habits and attitudes toward food may take longer, in fact, will take longer, but it’s the only sure way of getting to the size you need to be. Fortunately, it is also a much more pleasant route than dieting.

If you study people who maintain an appropriate weight and who are physically well you’ll generally find that they follow a lot of simple, doable habits. They probably eat a light breakfast, have tiny snacks during the day, drink plenty of water, take the stairs instead of the elevator, dish out small portions for themselves, weigh themselves weekly or monthly, and rarely complain that they’re hungry. They occasionally indulge in larger portions or heftier fare without guilt because they know they will compensate for it over the next several days with portions that are slighter more modest than usual.

This should be our overall goal for our eating habits.  To eat things that make us happy while making us well. To find the balance between indulgence and denial – namely, satisfaction. To steadily supply our bodies and our brains with enough energy to function well.

There is no clear consensus on how often you should eat. Most sources I have consulted advocate 3 similarly-sized small meals with 2 to 3 light snacks per day.

If you utterly avoid snacks, you are more likely to feel ravenous at meal times and then overeat or make bad food choices to compensate. Light snacks help you maintain a more or less steady blood sugar level, which in turn, means your energy level will stay close to constant all day long.

Here's a nice guideline I found for snack choices and snack sizes. If you choose a fruit or vegetable then a single official "serving" of a is a good snack size. Any other food should probably be restricted to one-half a standard serving.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CALORIES DON’T EXIST.

To hear people talk, you would think that calories actually exist AND THEY’RE EVIL! Let’s remind ourselves what a calorie is, and what it isn’t.

A calorie is a measurement of food’s potential energy. It has no physical existence. Just as a “degree Fahrenheit” or a “degree Celsius” tells us how warm or cold something is, calories tell us how much energy a food can give us.

A calorie isn’t an actual substance or a nutrient. Foods don’t have calories of anything, they give calories of energy.

Have you ever wondered how we find out the caloric value of a particular food? 

First, the food being measured is completely burned in a machine called a calorimeter.  The heat released is then accurately measured. This gives the Gross Energy Value of the particular food. That number is then manipulated to take into account how the human body actually digests the food. The final result is the number that we use as calories per serving.

This is important information for us to know, particularly if we weigh more than we want to and want to make a change.

Here’s some useful math. An adult who sleeps for 24 hours straight uses about 1200 calories of energy just to stay alive and warm.  That’s 50 calories every hour in a resting state. (That’s where they get that gold-standard diet figure of 1200 calories per day.)

And a pound of fat is worth 3500 calories. So if, say, you burned 2000 calories in one day, but only ate 1200, you should have pulled the extra 800 calories you needed from your body’s fat stores. At that rate you should burn a stored pound of fat in just over 4 days.

However, remember, these are just averages and estimates: “Your mileage may vary.”  For instance, not all potatoes are created equal.  I have seen a range of caloric values from a low of 144 to a high of 175 for a medium potato. There are differences between baked, boiled, raw, skin-on, and peeled. There are also differences between varieties. And there are certainly differences in metabolism from person to person and, indeed, from day to day.

Use the humble calorie as a guideline, just don’t obsess over it.

Just as checking the temperature outside tells us how to dress for the day, calories tell us how much our food is going to dress us! Here’s a little scenario you might use.

Clothing is not just decorative. It’s vital to helping us adjust our body temperature. We spend a lot of time putting clothes on and off to get ourselves to the right comfort level. What happens if you put on too many pieces of clothing on a warm day?  You become a little uncomfortable. Put on enough of them and you’ll look bulky, feel hot, and move awkwardly.

Is there anything intrinsically wrong with the clothes?  No, not at all. They perform a valuable service.  It’s the misuse of them in this scenario that causes the problem. (And if you skip breakfast, you're going to work or school in a caloric bikini. Shocking!)

So, the next time you’re tempted to overindulge and offer your body too many calories, think of that second chicken leg as an extra pair of corduroy pants.  That oversized portion of mashed potatoes is two thick sweaters. That cola is a wool jacket with a hood. And, good golly, that giant piece of chocolate cheesecake is three mink coats with a side of army boots!

HALTT

This is an acronym to remind you to ask yourself why you want to eat right now.  Are you:

Hungry

Angry

Lonely

Tired

Thirsty

If you're hungry, then eat!

How do you tell if you're truly hungry? Well, your stomach will actually send you a signal. It might not be as obvious as a growl, but you should be feeling something. If you are prone to swings in your blood sugar levels, then you might also get an emotional or physical response, such as irritability or fatigue.

If you determine, though, that you're actually experiencing one of the other states, then postpone your snack attack and try to address the real issue first.