I had a visit with a nutritionist Tuesday (my birthday gift to myself). She loaned me a book to read and I would highly recommend it to each of you, as I know you all struggle with unwanted weight gain. It is called Mindless Eating and it is by Brian Wansink, PhD. It is available in paperback. The subtitle is “Why we eat more than we think.”
He raises a lot of good points and the book is filled with research he has done. He has a great sense of humor, so it is quite easy and compelling reading. It was fun to find out why we eat what we do, when we do, and as much as we do. Some of the research has been published elsewhere, mostly in health magazines, so it wasn’t all new to me. But what helped was the way it was organized with suggestions at the end of each chapter as to what to do about what the research has shown. It is one thing to know about the forces that are affecting us and another thing to know what to do about it.
His biggest take-away was that we won’t be able to sustain huge changes, so it is pointless to even make them. We need to make many small, almost unnoticeable changes. He suggests making 3 changes and putting them on a chart with the days for a month, then checking off each evening which change(s) you succeeded in making that day. After a month of being even partially successful, just these three changes should have helped you avoid a good number of calories. If you’ve found that you were almost always checking one off, you can replace that one with a different one next month. But you aren’t expected to be working on more than three things at a time. And they are three pretty little things.
Anyway, I’d highly recommend reading this book and giving his suggestions a try.
These are the three things I’m trying to do:
1) Get my CLA from a capsule rather than a sports bar (saves me about 100 calories each time.) CLA is what I take for workout endurance.
2) Fill my dinner plate at the counter and not go back for refills. (Could save me several hundred calories each day, depending on how much I like the main dish!)
3) When eating out only have 4 bites of bread and 4 bites of dessert – notice I didn’t eliminate either, but just cut the portion. (Could literally save me hundreds of calories when eating out on my trip)
Those sound like really great changes for this month–and, like you said, they are small enough to not seem overwhelming. I’ll have to look into that book. 🙂 When is your trip again? I know it’s coming up….
Not eating after supper would be too big a change. I know I’d never be able to make it a habit for life. If I could just not eat sugar after supper, I’d be satisfied. But that is a ways down the list. I’m sliding into a new lifestyle, not jumping in.
Well, Erica, I got that last reply in the wrong place. But in answer to your question, we leave a week from Sunday – on the 22nd.
Two changes I’m doing right now are not eating after supper and cutting out diet soda (that pretty much means ALL soda since I don’t have regular either).
See, Amy, I replied to you up under Erica. I don’t know how it ended up there. Sorry…