12 Months and 10 Pounds

Well I have done it now.  Over the last year of working in a natural gourmet grocery store, putting in lots of hours at work, and not that many at home or exercising, I have put on 10 pounds in a year.  I think the day after Christmas is as good a time as any (why wait for a new year's resolution anyway?) to start my diet and exercise plan.  I am taking the advice I gave my students and am now food logging and exercise logging and will record it all here for you to see.

There is no time like the present, right?

The Twinkie Diet Makes a Legitimate Point

The Twinkie Diet got more press this week. In this classroom study, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate a diet of protein shakes, canned vegetables, multi-vitamins and snack foods like Twinkies and chips for two months and lost 27 pounds.

What was his point? That losing weight is purely a mathematical equation. It has to do with consistently eating fewer calories than your body needs to burn each day and that the underlying food is irrelevant, at least as long as some of it is actually healthy.

So why all the emphasis on protein diets or vegan diets or low fat diets? They are all means to give people foods that may be more energy rich to drive less snacking. If a carbohydrate rich diet leads to a person being hungry every hour and a half and, as a result eating 3000 calories a day then, it is believed and has been proven in statistically large studies of dieters, eating protein at each meal makes it easier to get through the day and eat only 1800 calories.

If you are very diligent about food logging and very disciplined about your caloric intake, then you too can diet while eating only Oreos, Tostitos and Twinkies. That just isn't a reality for most people. Frequently, once they start snacking, dieters feel badly about abandoning their diet and take a plunge off the deep end of their diet--eating the entire family sized bag of Tostitos in one sitting, with cheese dip--rather than negotiating with themselves about how the snack will now mean that what they planned to eat for the rest of the day may have to change.

I think that the Twinkie diet makes a legitimate point that dieting does not have to mean suffering, and giving up all the foods you used to like to eat. However, it does mean a full-time commitment to negotiating caloric tables and sticking to your target caloric intake every day.

Reference Article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-twinkie-20101115,0,405998.story

Using the Internet for Weight Loss and Dealing with Plateaus

Out of the several good articles I found this week, I would like to point to the one about using on line weight loss tools. Many of you used on line programs in the last WLC to track your food logs and exercise, and it seemed that your diligence paid off with weight loss. I would be interested in hearing from you (by email) if you have continued to use the on line tools and if you have continued to lose weight. Alternatively, if you fell off the wagon from your tools, have you stopped losing weight or gained weight? Please let me know.

The other article I really liked was the one on breaking plateaus. I think all the suggestions, particularly the ones relating to changing your work out or breaking it up into smaller work outs, reminds me of the "muscle confusion" technique of the P90X videos for getting fit faster. Again, if you have feed back on these methods for breaking up plateaus, please let me know with an email or comment.

Do Your Homework and Use Caution When Buying Weight Loss Plans On Line http://newsok.com/safety-paramount-in-weight-loss-plans/article/3479226


Eating Less but Weighing More? The Camel Syndrome http://www.voiceccc.com/blog-1.107/eating-less-but-weighing-more-the-camel-syndrome

Busting the Myth of Plant-Based Protein Deficiency http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-kanner/meatless-monday-enough-al_b_655554.html

Internet May Be a Good Weight Loss Tool As Long as You Log In http://www.latimes.com/news/health/boostershots/la-heb-internet-20100727,0,3504601.story

Five Ways to Get Off A Weight Loss Plateau http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/07/27/5-ways-to-get-off-a-weight-loss-plateau/