Confidently Single

After the holidays, stepping onto the scale may be a treacherous thought. If your overindulgence packed on a few pounds, you are probably thinking of ways to shed them. This is the peak season for gym memberships to sky rocket. Heading to the gym is a great way to start any health program but from my own observations, the gym looks pretty quiet by February. Fad diets and quick solutions are also highly sought after and their results may be quick but they too do not bring long term results. What’s worse, they may put even more weight back on. What are you to do?

Losing weight is not just adjusting your diet and level of activity. Losing weight and keeping it off successfully, requires adjusting your lifestyle and kicking bad habits. The environment you are exposed to is your greatest obstacle. For most of us a typical day goes as follows: wake up, rush out the door to work, grab a coffee with cream and sugar, and pair it with a muffin or donut. Then you get to the office, sit at your desk, and after awhile, notice that your stomach starts to grumble and you should have had lunch hours ago. You are so famished that you overeat at lunch. Then you find your energy levels start dip again and you will reach for another coffee or visit your vending machine for a sugar fix.  Once five o’clock arrives, you head to your car and spend more time sitting in traffic. By the time you get home, you are too tired to cook dinner and you just want to enjoy watching your favorite TV show, so you order in or heat up a microwave dinner. Dinner wasn’t satisfying enough so you go back to the kitchen and grab a tub of ice cream. Your show comes to an end and you realize the ice cream is all gone. You drag yourself into bed and have a hard time falling asleep. Once morning hits, you realize how groggy you feel, so you have a coffee and rush out the door to work and do it all over again….

Sound familiar? Let’s examine this typical day.

1.       Mistake number one is skipping out on having a proper breakfast. When you wake up after sleeping, your body is in fasting mode and needs food to regulate the sugars in your bloodstream to get your body to function at its optimal level. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. It should also be the largest meal because this energy can be burned off during the waking hours. A coffee may perk you up temporarily but be careful with the cream and sugar. They can add hundreds of calories to a single cup. A muffin or donut has the same effect. You may feel more alert at first but that is because the high sugar content spikes up your insulin. Unfortunately, these simple sugars cause your blood sugar level to drop just as fast and you only feel more hungry

2.       As humans, we were made to move. Sitting at a desk all day does not do us any good. If you do have a desk job, try to get up at least once an hour. Take a walk to the water cooler or stretch. Instead of e-mailing a co-worker a few cubicles down, walk over and tell them your response. This is also a great way of getting to know your fellow co-workers.

3.       Waiting too long to eat lunch is also a big no-no. Workdays can be very busy and it’s easy to lose track of time but if you do not put any food into your system since that coffee and muffin hours ago, you will feel fatigued. A good rule of thumb is to eat every 3-4 hours. This can be different for everyone but waiting until your stomach starts growling is not the indicator you should follow. Eat foods that take a while to digest. These are known as complex carbohydrates. They have a higher quality of fiber and tend to be low on the Glycemic Index, meaning that they won’t spike your sugar levels and leave you feeling fuller longer. Also, try not to get all your fluids from caffeinated beverages since they only have the opposite effect and are dehydrating. Drink water. I always have a water bottle on hand. Water also regulates your appetite since dehydration is often misunderstood for hunger. I also keep a stash of healthy snacks in my desk drawer like nuts and cereal bars (always check the labels as some are higher in fat), and fruit.

4.       After a busy and stressful day at work you find your stress level only gets worse as you sit in rush hour traffic. Traffic is inevitable, how you respond to it is not. Take the drive home as a time to decompress from the day. Listen to books on tape, or practice some deep breathing. For many people, this is usually the only time they get to themselves every day, so make it worth your while.

5.       When getting home, it is tempting to pig out on chips and cookies. Cooking dinner should not feel like a chore. You know the saying “You are what you eat”. This true. What can make this less of a burden? I like to set aside Sunday afternoon and prep my meals for the coming week. I will make a enough salad to fill a large tupperware container. I will precut my fruit and vegetables, package them into daily portions and store them in the my fridge. This way, they are always easily accessible and ready to eat. It may seem like a chore to do this but the reward is effective enough to make me want to stick with it. Try to eat as much “fresh” food as possible. Anything that comes out of a can, or box has a lot of hidden culprits, A.K.A. fats, salt, sodium, etc”.

6.       Make meal time ONLY meal time. Avoid doing any other activity while eating. Focus on what you are eating. Take the time to chew your food properly, stop eating once you start to feel full. Your mind takes about 20 minutes to realize if you are full or not. When you rush through eating, you also take in extra air which can cause you to feel bloated afterwards.

7.       Snacking before bed is also detrimental. Any calories consumed before bedtime, stay as unused calories during the night which become stored as fat because while you sleep. They will not have time to be burned. Avoid eating 3-4 hours before sleep. When your body sleeps it needs to focus on rest and not digesting a bag of chips. This can cause restless sleep or difficulty falling asleep.

Your body is yours and only you have the ability to keep it happy and healthy. Habits are hard to break at first but when you start to see that you feel more energized, lighter and healthier, you know you are on the right track. Be patient with this process but know that you are absolutely worth it!

Next week: Total Body Workouts Made Easy – Under 20 Minutes!

Tags: diet, health advice, healthy eating, stress management

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Health and Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.