Resolving to do it yourself may give you a strong commitment, it builds self-confidence. It shows that you can do it. All it takes is sound planning, good sense and persistence. Here is how to look good this summer and turn a short-term prize into a lasting life-style:
Set realistic goals. Many people believe in fantasy weight they dream of paring off 20 pounds in a month, or slimming down to the weight of a fashion model. You can reasons ably and safely expect to lose an average of a pound a week.
Consider your family background too. If both parents were obese, chances are four out of five that you will be obese. Does that mean you can not lose weight? “No!” but it will be more difficult. Striving for a weight you can feel comfortable with, not the ideal found in weight charts.
Avoid promises like I’ll never eat cookies again, which set you up for failure and guilt when you give in. Concentrate on the positive ways you will change. “I liked the way I looked, of course,” but the biggest thing was the feeling of success.
Go for the long term
Yo-yo dieting, up and down and up again is not only discouraging, it is dangerous when you are reducing. You take off both fat and muscle. But when you regain weight, you regain mostly fat. Each time you lose and regain the percentage of body fat increases. People who repeatedly lose weight and then regain it may run a higher risk of heart disease than if they had never lost weight in the first place.
For simply and sensibly
Protuberant stomachs, fat thighs and rolls of fat around the waist are the result of eating too many calories. Each of the three food groups fat, carbohydrate and protein will turn into body fat eaten in excess, but fat is stored more readily. Only seven percent of each fat gram is used up by the body in placing fat into storage, whereas about 25 percent is necessary to convert and store protein and carbohydrate. And one gram of fat contains nine calories, just over twice the calories of a gram of protein or carbohydrate.
Staying below 30 percent of your calories from fat, combined with exercise, can gradually take off weight. To calculate your fat limit in grams, multiply the number of calories in your diet by .3 and divide by nine. For a woman on a weight reduction plan of 1200 calories a day, for example, this works out to 40 grams of fat per day.
Start by eliminating snack foods and fast foods cooked in fat. Eat fish or skinless chicken for most meals, avoiding too much red meat. Use skim or low fat instead of whole milk. Cut out rich desserts. Stoke up on noodles (without rich sauces). If you are not sure how much fat your foods contain, start reading labels. For unlabeled foods, buy a paperback nutrition guide or one of the new nutrition programs for your home computer. Count calories if you like; for every 3500 that you would ordinarily eat but don’t, you’ll lose about a pound.
One executive found an easy way to cut calories: he gave up wine. It was not the wine itself; it was the nuts, chips and dip that accompanied it, but when he gave up the wine, the snacks didn’t tempt him.
You need not surrender your favorite foods completely. But eat salads or fruit for lunch.
You don’t have to start running marathons.
Regular, routine exercise will do. A brisk walk will burn off about six calories a minute. If you walk for half an hour every day, at the end of a year you will have burned off calories equal to about 20 pounds of fat.
Walking trim off the pounds just as effectively as jogging, studies show that a person who walks, say, four miles a day will lose about the same amount of weight as one who runs four miles. The most important thing is to engage in the activity that suits you.
There’s a bonus to exercise that is afterburner effect following regular aerobic exercise, such as walking or running, the body’s resting metabolic rate remains elevated for 20 to 30 minutes, burning off more energy than usual. With strength-training exercises, the resting metabolic rate is gradually increased over time, because such exercise builds muscle and muscles are the energy-burning engine of the body. The more muscle you have, the more energy required to fuel it.
Use mental conditioning
Often we consume food almost unconsciously, mindlessly gobbling as we watch television or net. Start your weight-control effort by recording every bite you eat, including how the food was prepared, where you ate, with whom, and your mood at the time. The listing may open your eyes to trouble spots. You may discover that you head for the cookie jar when you’re depressed or that you consume bigger meals when your sister comes to visit.
Establish new patterns to overcome these habits. Eat at one place, the dinner table. Use small plates to make portions seem bigger. Chew slowly and deliberately, and put utensils down between bites. Keep tempting foods out of sight, or don’t buy them at all substitute a brisk walk for cocktail time.
Keep at it
Because you face the food dragon several times a day, you’ll be tempted to backslide. Prepare yourself for those moments. Detour around the bakery on your way home. Plan what you will eat or drink at the office party.
And if you do give in to the scoop of ice cream, all is not lost. Many think of a diet as all or nothing. If they eat one cookie, they say to themselves, I have ruined my diet. I might as well finish them. Instead, close the cookie jar and resume your diet the next day. A single setback doesn’t mean overall failure.
Remember, there will be another beach season next summer. Don’t let your body return to flab when the hottest weather. Establish a maintenance program and follow it through the year. That way, not only will you be slim this
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