WOW! A Diet That Really Works

As you can see from this blog, I have been at this weight loss thing for a very LONG time. Will I finally found an easy, cheap, consistent diet that works. I like it because I don’t have to think about what to fix and when to eat. Also, you are so full all of the time that you do not even think about cheating-but we do once a week on Sunday. This diet is Ann Louise Gittleman’s Fat Flush Soup Diet. http://www.fatflush.com/blog/fat-flush-soup-diet/  It is easier to add the link than to copy the recipe. Besides you also want the other elements of the program.
I found this diet through my son’s counselor. He needed to lose a hundred pounds and nothing had worked. One day I went with him to his appointment and she said that she had lost thirty pounds on the diet. It looked great off of her and I decided we needed the same thing. The first week I lost six pounds and my son lost fifteen!!!! Now it is a detox diet as well so that was a lot of garbage and fluid in our systems. We felt better and found it easy to follow. One trick that we read on another blog of a gal who was having great success was from her doctor. She suggested that you keep a coffee type mug on the counter and eat a mug of soup about every two hours. That was great for us. We would reach for the soup instead of other things and it was filling and delicious. Our favorite meats in the soup are either the ground turkey or the hamburger. We eat more of the turkey than the hamburger but when we need a change we go to the hamburger. Also the same doctor suggested adding other green veggies like collards, spinach, green beans or cabbage. I change it up as the mood hits.
We have been on the diet for about ten weeks and my son has lost forty-three pounds and I have lost twenty. That is a great success for us. We both have struggled for a long time but no more.  We both are looking forward to the next twenty or so pounds. 

Food Plan vs. Diet

What we eat today we become tomorrow so if you want to be a gooey chocolate chip cookie,eat one today. This is where we decide what is the best food plan for you. Notice I did not use the word diet. A diet says we are doing this until we get to size we desire then go back to eating in the old pattern that got us there in the first place. A food plan is something that is with you for the rest of your life.

A food plan allows for all the things you love in moderation and a diet takes everything away that you love. So what makes sense for the long term? Take door number one the food plan!

The next step is to decide how many calories is going to get you to your goal weight. This is based on the amount of weight you are now. Everyone has been lead to believe that a 1200 calorie diet would make you thin. Well if you weigh over 180 pounds that will only slow down your metabolism! Then your body starts to make fat out of everything you eat and you lose muscle instead of fat.

Heavier people are heavy because they do not eat ENOUGH! You heard me right. If you are over 180 pounds and want to weight between 125-135 pounds, then eat more!! Start with a 1500 calorie diet that has a lot of vegetables and meat or protein and a few carbohydrates which include low density fruit. A typical diet would look like this:

Before Breakfast

1 Cup of hot water with a teaspoon of lemon juice

Breakfast

two eggs or egg substitute scrambled with 1/2 cup of green vegetables like frozen spinach,green peppers, broccoli, or another of your choice

pan sprayed with a vegetable oil.

1 slice of toasted 60 calorie bread sprayed with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter butter spray

1 cup of decaf coffee or tea sweetner if needed

or

1 tablespoon of peanut butter

1 60 calorie English muffin toasted

1 stalk of celery (to put the peanut butter on)

Mid-Morning Snack

a small apple and a low fat mozzarella cheese stick

or

1/4 cup almonds and a small apple

or

1/2 cup of strawberries and the low-fat mozzarella cheese stick

Lunch

3 ozs. of white meat turkey

1 1/2 cups of salad with 2 tablespoons of a lite dressing (on the side for dipping)

2 Kavli type crackers

or

1/2 cup of lowfat cottage cheese with 1/4 cup of drained pineapple chucks and splash of cinnamon to taste and a packet of sweetner

2 Kavli type crackers

1/2 cup of green salad and 1 tablespoon of lite dressing on the side

Afternoon Snack (between 3-4PM)

This is a real difficult time for dieters and the magic time to get through until dinner is 3-4 PM.

1 cup of sugar free jello any flavor

1 low fat mozzarello cheese stick

Dinner

6 ozs. broiled lean poltry

1 cup of green beans or 1 cup of green salad

2/3 cup of brown rice

Snack before 8 PM

1 cup of sugar free jello

Add eight to ten glasses of water during the day and you have a plan that will move fat. There are a lot of diets out there to chose from but this is a basic diet for people who need to start at 1500 calories and then move down to 1200 calories. Weight Watchers works this way as well.

They use a point system which effective for people on the move which works well as long as you do the maintance.

A diabetic diet is another good choice for a starting diet. It has a lot of fruits and vegetables plus a lot of good protein in a three meal and two to three snacks which keeps the metabolism burning.

On L.A.Weight Loss and the other diet programs they sell you a protein bar that has other nutrients in them. They were very helpful and tasted good too. These were great snacks and easy to carry. If you want to carry a protein bar for a snack instead of the suggested snacks that is a great choice as well.

For most people it is better to look at different food plans and then choose the one that is the most comfortable for you. Two that are comfortable for me and have the choices I can live on and be satified with are Weight Watchers which I mentioned earlier and South Beach. I have friends who are Atkins eaters and they do very well on this program. There are so many to select from that it is a personal choice. Just remember you are making a life choice not a temporary decision.

Where and How to Begin

Changing anything in your life is a process. If you want to lose weight you need to think about what the end result is going to be and how will this affect your happiness level. When I worked for L.A. Weight Loss I saw a lot of people losing weight for a different result. The people who had a hundred pounds or more to lose were trying to take the weight off the prolong their lives. The people who came in to lose twenty pounds were scared that they might becomes the ones who had a hundred or more pounds to lose. There were others who came to remove forty to sixty pounds to help their self-image or to make someone in their life love them more or pay more attention to them.

Yes, these were the top reasons and outcomes that people were looking to accomplish. The weight was the factor that helped them to achieve the result. So what is your reason and what result are you looking for along with less pounds?

I promise you that the weight will not move if you can't answer my question to you. This was always part of my initial discussion with new clients that came in even if the doctor had sent them. They needed to say out loud to me and especially to themselves what they wanted out of the weight loss. When I had this information, I could melt them like butter. And when you have this information you will melt too.

When you can answer this question here is what you do with the answer. You write it down and use it to re-enforce your will-power and determination to succeed. Let's say that you want your significant other to pay more attention to you. Then you need to remember that everytime someone passes fattening foods. If you can say to yourself, "will this get me to my goal as an item on Harry's plate?" When you say no to the food then you are saying yes to getting more attention from Harry or Sam or Sue or the world. This is the first step in winning the battle and keeping it going.

The underlying goal is more important than food and feeling good for the moment. I had a Hispanic gal come in whose husband had run off with another woman. She wanted him back so she figured that losing weight would do the trick. We struggled to get the hundred pounds off and she would yo-yo up and down. He would come over to get the kids and say things to her that would drive her to eat. When I finally showed her that the weight represented getting him back she started to lose steady and her attitude towards him improved. He could not set her off to the kitchen to eat rice and beans. She had taken control of her situation and her self-esteem. The ending is not what you expect. After we worked off about fifty pounds she went to the casino met a guy who liked her just as she was and she didn't have the need to lose weight anymore and stopped the program.

I am sure this is not what you wanted to hear but it was the true ending. She received the result that she had come for-more self-esteem and someone who would love her for herself. It did not take a hundred pounds to reach the happiness level that she thought she needed. Fifty did the trick.

So, for you to begin a program find what you really want out of the weight loss and make that your goal. Then we will look at how much in pounds that is going to be worth.

Thin is a choice

Merry Christmas! I know as you eat the turkey, ham and trimming today you are saying that tomorrow you shall diet or maybe for you it is after the holidays. There is no time like NOW to think about you weight. So you just waddled away from the table and ate extra helpings of everything, how can you think about losing weight. The good news is that was ONE meal. It may have been a big meal or equal to a couple of meals but the truth is it only one meal. Now your choice is what are you going to do at the next meal?

I can hear your answer, I will just eat a salad. Will a salad make you feel as if you had a meal or will you feel deprived while everyone else is chowing down on left over mashed potatoes, gravy and the like? This is your dilemma. What choices can you make faced with a table full of food that won't make your pants or buttons pop? Oh, did I hear you say you wore elastic in your waistband so they would "give" when you needed them? Well, that is one way of handling the situation. Our problem is we probably do this at more than the holiday season. Most people add about 6 to 10 pounds during this time of year. Yep, you heard me right.

So our first step is making choices, do I let my head and my stomach run the show or my brain? Can I find things on the table that are not going to slow down my metabolism or that are calorie loaded that I can eat and be satisfied? If I eat some of everything I like can I make small portions to taste not "pig out" on?

Life is full of choices and being thin is just one more. You can choose to be thin or run around trying the latest fads diets and running your metabolism up and down like a yo-yo. When you mentally choose to be thin, you will be. There are things and people who keep us from making that choice. The stress in life can keep you from that choice, the pressure from people who are always saying, "go ahead, you can have one more. You can diet tomorrow." These people are not your friends! They are food-pushers just like drug dealers, they know your drug and they are pushing. JUST SAY NO! If they get offended then you know they are food-pushers and run to the diet police, well anyway run.

Our lesson today is making a choice to be thin. When you decide that is what you want more than a quick fix, then you are more than halfway there. Remember, nothing taste as good as being thin feels!