Over the years there are some common ideas I had acquired about food and weight loss that I mistakenly held on to. I have learnt to address each of them and can now think differently about food and eating habits. The following are some common ideas related to eating that I address not only within myself but with some of the clients I work with. I list some of the wrong ideas and explain why thinking that way is wrong and how we need to think instead.

1. It's not fair: Why do others get to eat whatever they want?
The truth is you can’t compare yourself to people who are not on the same journey as you. In other cases different people respond differently to different foods. Some people can eat pizza every day for months and not gain any weight. While others like myself need only look at it and the pounds pile on. It’s probably why I was confused about the importance of eating well for so long. My husband ate anything he wanted and was totally ripped so for years I failed to make the connection between my eating habits and inability to lose weight. And truth be told, whatever food you are coveting will always be there, a week, a month or a year from now.
2. Hunger is a bad feeling.
Actually hunger is a normal response when you are trying to lose weight. You are eating less food than you are accustomed to eating. The times where you eat less food than you burn are the times when you lose weight. The sooner you embrace it and look at it as a positive the easier losing weight will become. In fact if you are trying to lose weight and you don’t feel a little hungry now and again, chances are you’re eating too much and need to cut back so you can lose weight. Please note that I’m not talking about starving to the point of being weak and tired. I am referring to eating just below the number of calories you need on a day to day basis with just enough of a shortage that you will lose weight gradually.

3. I have to resist cravings at all costs.
There are three things about cravings. The first is the harder and longer you fight a craving, the more likely you are to give in to it and eat not just one cookie but the entire box. Also, cravings can sometimes be a signal that you are missing a key nutrient in your diet. I remember going on an extremely low carb diet for months and developing an insatiable craving for cupcakes. I probably could have gotten rid of the intense cravings by eating a bowl of oatmeal daily. Finally, cravings can be psychological. So while my body had a definite need for carbohydrates at the time, my mind developed a fixation on cupcakes and the more I thought about cupcakes and the fact that I could not have them, the more I wanted them. Understand your cravings and take the right steps to work through them.

4. I don't need a meal plan or an exercise program.
I can’t stress enough the importance of planning your meals and exercise. You could try to wing it but if you leave it to chance, the outcome is less likely to be favorable. I am extremely busy and am always running from one thing to another. If something is not scheduled then it is not happening. I have to schedule time to grocery shop, time to prep my meals and time to eat my meals. I also have to schedule my workouts, from when I am going to the gym to what I am going to do at the gym. If you are going to be successful in your weight loss journey you must plan for it.

5. Some foods are "evil,"and should be avoided forever.
Everything is ok in moderation. The issues come when you eat certain things on a regular basis. It is also important to note that during a weight loss phase it may be best to avoid certain foods altogether, knowing of course that if you so wish to eat them again, you can reintroduce them gradually and eat them occasionally. A really good example is alcohol. I love my margaritas as much as, maybe more than the next person. However I have now come to realize that when I am working towards a specific goal it is best to avoid it because it contains many empty calories that are of no real benefit, it affects my performance in the gym and impairs my judgment thereby increasing the chance that I will eat other things that would hinder weight loss.

6. Food makes me feel better when I'm emotional.
This is the most difficult form of wrong thinking to undo. When you are suffering emotionally it is very difficult to think and act rationally. By design we try to do everything we can to get rid of negative feelings. Unfortunately we have conditioned ourselves to be comforted by food. Here is a thought, if someone or something is hurting you, why would you punish yourself further by eating something unhealthy? Recognize your triggers, whether it is people or situations and manage them differently. Come up with a plan and do something to distract you. Call someone, go for a walk, take a shower or go to bed. Usually if you can remove yourself from the situation or the moment you can overcome the situation. In life you will always have difficult circumstances however, you can learn to overcome them.

7. It's OK to take a break because I don't feel like eating well or exercising today.
Hmm, not really. When it comes to weight loss, consistency is key. EVEN when you don’t feel like it. And most times a break turns into a never ending struggle. How many times have you stopped going to the gym and had a really tough time getting back into it? Or worse, after successfully kicking the sugar habit, you eat a little and before you know it you’re addicted again and eating even more. Now this should not be confused with working out when you are actually sick. No one should try to be a hero like that. It’s not impressive and it will do more harm than good. I am talking about pressing through bad moods, bad days, lazy days, and lack of self-control days.

For each idea or wrong form of thinking there is a direct opposite idea or thought. Looking back on each of the wrong thoughts about food and weight loss, are you going to be prepared to counter them whenever they occur with either an opposite statement or opposite action?

The other day I took my girls to the gym with me. They saw how hard I worked and afterwards all I could talk about was how hungry I was. Walking back home my 7 year old said, ‘Now that you are done, you can eat whatever you want.’ I had to stop in my tracks and put an end to that thinking right there. I will say that for a 7 year old that reasoning seems perfectly logical. The problem is we continue to think that way well into our 20s and beyond. I wrote this blog to emphasize that you can’t out train a bad diet. This means you can’t work out for the purpose of negating the fact that you eat poorly. I would even argue that when you work out regularly, your eating habits become even more important. I have been a runner for years and unfortunately I was a fat runner. That is because I did not use food creatively and eat with a purpose. After years of running and eating haphazardly I finally experienced a breakthrough in my weight loss when I learnt to eat with a purpose.

1.       Replenishing
After putting out a huge effort in the gym, your glycogen stores are depleted, muscle tissue is injured and electrolytes are low. Your body has worked very hard and responded to all of your demands. Now more than ever it is important to eat food that facilitates its repair for optimal performance in the future. Some people will go for hours without eating after a workout, that’s like punishing your body after it has served you so well. Do something good for your body and eat the right proportions of carbohydrates and proteins after every workout.

2.       Maximizing
I look at the time after your workout as the best time to maximize your efforts in the gym. After lifting weights, running or doing a group exercise why would you give your body something it can’t make use of? I remember last summer taking kickboxing classes next to a pizza restaurant. I can’t tell you the number of times I saw my fellow kick boxers grabbing a pizza after their workout. Now more than ever you need to eat the right amount of carbohydrates and proteins so your workout is not in vain and you maximize the results of your workout.

3.       Maintaining
Even if you have reached your goal weight and have no weight to lose or you have no desire to gain any muscle, you want to do your best to maintain the body that you have. What you eat after your workouts is just as important as it gives you energy to function the rest of the day and energy for your next day’s workouts. It is equally important to eat enough food when you are in maintenance mode otherwise you’ll keep losing weight!

4.       23 hours compared to 1 hour
There are 24 hours in a day. You work out for an hour, maybe 2. While working out for 1 hour is important, what you do for the rest of the day is just as important if not more important. It is easy to undo an hour’s worth of work in one meal. It is important to be mindful what you eat throughout the day so that you do not negate your efforts in the gym.

An important point to consider is that it is easy to over emphasize the exercise and calorie intake balance. I used to say I worked out therefore I deserve to eat a certain item or I ate something bad, I better work this off in the gym. When you make a conscious effort to eat clean, healthy, balanced meals 90% of the time, having something outside of your plan is not terribly detrimental. But the key is to eat well more often, making it a habit is what brings about positive changes.

Remember you can’t out train a bad diet. In order for your workouts to count you have to be eating the right food.  

 My journey towards weight loss has been long and arduous. Most times when I looked at myself and decided I wanted to lose weight, I did it out of desperation because I didn’t like how I looked, certain clothes didn’t fit or I had an event to go to and I needed to lose weight stat. The problem with this is that it made weight loss the focus and I was often desperate to do whatever it took to lose weight fast. I can’t tell you how many ‘magic pills’ I took or crash diets I went on in an effort to lose weight quickly. I was always concerned with how much weight I could lose and how quickly.

I finally had an epiphany when I realized that it took me over 20 years to get fat and stay fat. I was not going to lose weight and keep it off ‘overnight’. I needed to realize that in order for me to see the results I wanted I need to be patient, consistent and persistent.




1.       Patient
It took me years to get the body I had and while it may not take years to get the body I wanted, I had to recognize that I needed to stick to a sensible plan and allow the changes to occur over time. I began to work on my body and gently manipulate it into letting go of the weight permanently through a balanced meal plan and exercise. I stopped focusing on 30 day, 60 day and 90 day plans and the results I was 'supposed to see' and began sticking with the process and allowing my body to make changes at its own pace. Give your plan a fair chance to work. You can’t write something off if you haven’t given your best effort and stuck with it long enough.

2.       Consistent
Perhaps the most important lesson I learnt was that of being consistent in my effort. It has been my experience that the results of weight loss are cumulative. That means that the combination of ones effort over time has the greatest impact. Remaining consistent with a clean, healthy diet and avoiding bites and extra food that was not on the plan is what gave me amazing results. I found that having one bad day or a bad week had disastrous effects and as a result I was highly motivated to stay on plan. 

3.       Persistent
When you embark on your weight loss journey, you need to be persistent and adhere to your meal plan day in day out and be persistent with your exercise routine. Your combined effort will yield the best results over time. You need to remain persistent in doing all the things that you know and understand will yield results, even when you don’t see results right away. Just continue to believe that positive changes are occurring even when you cannot see them.

After reading this some of you are still asking how long will it take. The point is, no one can pin point with any certainty how long it will take to lose a certain amount of weight. But everyone can comit to the process and stick to it for as long as it takes to reach the desired results. The benefits add up plenty fold not only as it relates to your weight but also to you

Picture this, the year is coming to an end, I would sit down to make a list of all the things I wanted to do including reading more books, getting a new job, going sky diving and losing weight. Year in year out I would have different things on my lists and somehow losing weight always made it back on the list (as you can see from my pictures). I am at a place where I can now look back and think of all the things that I did that kept me fat. Most of these things were done unknowingly and I truly believe lots of people are doing these things in one form or another.  
 




1.      Crash Diet
I was the queen of going on crash diets whenever I had a vacation or big event coming up.
Why it didn’t work: The problem with doing this is that I would follow a set of rules for a certain amount of time and throw them out of the window when I reached my goal.
Solution: I experienced drastic weight loss when I took the time to understand food and make a lifestyle change. I have been able to maintain my current size for over a year and don’t feel restricted in any way.

2.     Counting Calories
The premise behind counting calories is fundamentally a good one. In order to lose weight, calories out need to exceed calories in.
Why it didn’t work:  I reached a point when my sole focus was on a number and not the quality of food thereby setting myself up for failure. The truth is anyone can slash calories and eat less and less food but that has negative effects on basic body functions and overall well-being.
Solution: When I began to focus on eating more of the right food and creating balanced meals that contain key nutrients I lost weight fast. Interestingly, I lost the most amount of weight when I began eating more food.

3.     Too Many Bites and Nibbles
On their own bites and nibbles don’t add up to much. I would reason with myself and say oh, it’s just an extra teaspoon of peanut butter, surely it shouldn’t matter.
Why it made me fat: While I understood the importance of balance and allowing myself a bit of something that I was craving so I didn’t feel deprived and go crazy there still needed to be some structure to it.
Solution: I found it was best to eliminate bites and nibbles and schedule a treat/cheat item once a week. That way I knew it was coming and when it came it remained structured so I could continue on my meal plan without getting seriously derailed. I recognized that I needed to allow myself these items in order to make weight loss easy.

4.     Not Measuring Food
Even after I learnt how I needed to eat and what I needed to eat I used to slack on my serving sizes. I would eat half a rotisserie chicken and argue that protein was good right.
Why this was problematic: While I understood the right combination of foods to eat, I was exceeding optimal caloric intake. The healthy foods I was guilty of eating too much of were oily fish, nuts and fruit.
Solution: When I became more mindful of the appropriate serving size and measuring the food I ate I lost weight with no problem. I also learnt not to have too many calorie dense foods in one day and to space them out appropriately.  

5.     Eating Out Without A Plan
Everyone who knows me well knows that I love eating out. For years this was the thing that made it difficult for me to lose weight.
Why this kept me fat: When I ate out I repeatedly fell into several traps. These include ordering what everyone else was ordering, sharing plates with people who were not watching what they were eating and being tempted by the pictures on the menu and ordering something that would clearly be bad for my diet.
Solution: Most restaurants have a menu on their website. I became diligent about looking at the menu before I went to a restaurant and would make a decision without too many external influences. Sometimes I decided against going to a restaurant if I knew there was nothing healthy for me to order. 
 
6.     Setting Unrealistic Goals
I used to set unrealistic goals for myself and was bitterly disappointed when I didn’t achieve them and would throw the towel in. For a long time my unrealistic goal was that I wanted to be thin.
The reason why it kept me fat: It was such an absurd and unrealistic goal that I embarked on drastic and unhealthy tactics to achieve it. With periods of extreme deprivation came periods of extreme binge eating and the cycle continued
Solution: When I set the small goal of simply losing 10 pounds I was kinder to myself and allowed myself to take a  practical approach to achieving it thereby giving me successful weight loss. 
   
7.     Not Planning Meals for the Day
After I had learnt the right foods to eat I still carried on about it rather aimlessly and ate whatever struck my fancy. Most times I had healthy food in my house but it the meals remained unstructured.  
Why it kept me fat: I discovered that I would over eat whenever I threw my meal together randomly. By the time it was lunch time, I had forgotten how much I had eaten at breakfast and put together food without any thought about how it worked with my previous or future meals.
The solution: When I started to create meal plans it helped because I knew in advance what I was supposed to eat at different times, I was more likely to stick to my plan and less likely to over eat. 

Are you doing some of these things and keeping yourself fat? What commitment will you make to yourself to help you eliminate these bad habits and see amazing changes?

If it doesn’t get measured it doesn’t get managed. Last week I wrote about measuring yourself to see where you stand and to check your progress. Today I am talking about measuring your food in order to manage your intake. I have always loved healthy food. Huge fan of vegetables, fruits, vegetables, whole grain this and whole grain that. I wondered why I could never lose weight; after all I was eating the right foods wasn’t I? In addition I ate a cupcake or a pint of ice cream now and again, surely it didn’t matter because I ate so healthy all the time? Well I was wrong for several reasons and it showed by my lack of progress or lack of weight loss. 

Let’s get back to the basics shall we? In order to lose weight you have to have
a caloric deficit. The recommended caloric intake for men is 2500 calories per
day; the recommended caloric intake for women is 2000 calories per day. This
varies based on your level of activity or how sedentary your lifestyle is. With that in mind in order for you to lose weight you need to consume less than 2000 calories (for women).  In order to lose 1 pound there has to be a caloric deficit of 3500 calories. If for example a woman wanted to lose 1 pound per week (7 days) she would need a caloric deficit of 500 calories per day and consume 1500 calories per day. This calculation does not take into account any physical activity which would increase her caloric demands accordingly. However keep in mind that walking for 30 minutes only burns about 200 calories for an average  size woman so if you walked that day, you caloric intake would only need to be about 1700 calories. 

With all that in mind let’s talk about the need to measure your food. If you recognize that weight loss is simply a matter of
caloric deficit, shouldn’t you then be aware of exactly how much you are eating? This is where the importance of measuring your food comes into play. When embarking on your weight loss journey, some tools you will need to ensure your success are measuring cups, a food scale and measuring spoons. My favorite example is how people typically serve rice. Most people will use a serving spoon and pile 2 or 3 serving spoonfuls onto their plate. The problem is by the time you do this you probably have 2 cups of rice on your plate. One cup of rice is about 225 calories therefore you have 450 calories in rice. This is before you have factored in the meat or sauce. Most times people’s dinner is 1000 calories and they are not even aware of it. Never mind what they would have eaten for breakfast, lunch or snacks. Still on the rice example, you need to realize that a reasonable serving of brown rice is ½ a cup. A mere 115 calories, this gives you room for a lean protein (4-6 oz is the appropriate serving) and 2 cups of steamed vegetables which can add up about to 350 calories. This composition will leave you full and provide a balance of nutrients which when followed closely is optimal for weight loss.

Measuring your food is even more important if you are following a well-designed meal plan. It is important that you stick to the recommended quantities because eating extra here and there can add up and be a hindrance to weight loss. There can be the temptation to eye ball a serving and decide that it looks approximately right. This too can be detrimental because you can end up with more food than what is designed for your meal plan which over time can hinder weight loss and in some cases lead to weight gain. 

This brings us back to our initial saying, if it doesn’t get measured, it doesn’t get managed. If you do not measure your food and remain within a certain caloric range, it will be very difficult to manage your weight loss. Get in the habit of checking labels for the appropriate serving sizes. Record what you eat on a daily basis to help track what you are eating. This will help you become more mindful of what you are eating and help you make wiser food choices.

Do you have a measuring cups and spoons at home? What foods do you eat regularly that you need to start measuring?

It seems like I’ve been on a roll by using these business management terms to explain weight loss. I have had a ton of people inbox me and tell me that it really made a difference in how they understood weight loss. Continuing on that same vein I’d like to start Part 1 of the ‘If it doesn’t get measured’ series. 

For a long time I had some idea that I wanted to lose weight. I would look in the mirror and did’t like what I saw, my clothes didn't fit anymore and I was in perpetual fear of encountering a health crisis. I knew that something needed to change and as such decided to embark on a weight loss journey albeit rather aimlessly. Restricting this and restricting that in the hopes that something will magically happen for me. The funny thing is I wasn't really sure what I was tying to attain. In fact for many years I had no idea how much I weighed. I spent those years going through the motions without a plan, never succeeding and always frustrated. One day quite by chance I stumbled upon a weight loss challenge and one of the entry requirements was taking a number of different measurements. Needless to say knowing my measurements and knowing what needed to change helped me set a goal and stick to it.

In order for you to know what changes need to be made you will need to measure youreself. This can be done in several
ways.

        1. Get on a scale
Many people are afraid of the scale and as a result have no idea how much they weigh. In order to decide what changes need to be made you need to know what your starting point is. This will help you quantify they changes that need to be made and set a definitive goal that you can work towards. Be careful not to get overly obsessed with the scale. Weighing yourself several times a day every day can be a hinderance. Instead, weigh yourself and put the scale away. Only bring the scale out at various check points such as every two weeks or every month. 
 
        2. Get a tape measure
You can measure different points on your body but the most important measurement is your waist circumference. According to the National Institute of Health, a waist circumference greater than 35 inches for women and greater than 40 inches for men is
associated with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease particularly with a BMI above 25. Other parts of your body you may want to measure include your chest and your hips. 
 
        3. Calculate your BMI (Body Mass Index)
Use a BMI calculator to figure out your BMI. I understand that there are numerous debates about the accuracy of using BMI among people of color, extremely short people or extremely muscular people. I am only recommending this as a starting point. A detailed discussion with your personal trainer, nutrition coach or other knowledgeable individual will help you determine its accuracy based on your particular circumstances. 

I hope the discussion about obtaining your measurements gets you motivated to measure yourself so you at least know where
you are. This will help determine your weight loss strategy which should include a meal plan. Knowing your starting point will help inform your decision as you set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely Goals (See my previous blog post on Setting SMART goals).  In the same way you know how much money you have and create and manage your budget, you need to know what your current measurements are in order to monitor and manage your weight loss. If you don’t know where you currently stand, how will you know where you are going? How will you know what you need to do to get there? And more importantly how will you stay motivated and focused?

I encourage you to take each of these measurements today because if it doesn’t get measured it doesn’t get managed.