Day 4: Tweak Your Diet | 30-Day Weight Loss-athon
Here we are at Day 4 of the 30-Day Weight Loss-athon. Today we turn to that dreaded downfall of wannabe-weight-losers everywhere – the diet.
Read the steps first, then take 10 minutes to complete them.
We only have 10 minutes, so move fast, act quickly and stop over-thinking. Just throw yourself in. Ready?
What You Need:
- Blank stickers, or post-its, or paper and sticky tape
- A pen.
Step 1
Most people with weight to lose are eating more food than they need. Or more of certain types of food.
So our first step is to choose a couple of ways we’re going to eat a bit less for the rest of the month.
You don’t need a strict diet that makes you crazy and is ultimately counter-productive in order to eat less. There are many smarter, saner and more achievable ways to do it – ways that don’t require psychological self-abuse.
For instance, you could:
- Reduce your portions by, say 10%
- Reduce your portions by using smaller plates
- Switch to low-fat milk/dairy
- Halve or cut out the sugar in your tea and coffee
- Skip the syrup in your coffee
- Cut down on desserts – skip it, skip on alternate days, share dessert, halve dessert
- Drink fewer alcoholic beverages – alternate with water, dilute with ice, substitute with lime and soda
- Find something you eat most days but could do without, and stop eating it
- Stop putting butter on sandwiches
- Add less (or no) mayonnaise, gravy and sauces to your food
- Cut down on snacks – skip them, skip on alternate days, share snacks, halve snacks
- Use less fat when you cook
- Switch to lower-fat cooking methods like baking and roasting versus frying
- Use less butter or a lower fat spread.
For some people, just giving up alcohol or desserts could make a huge difference to your daily calorie intake – and your weight.
For others, several smaller changes – like switching to low-fat dairy, cutting down on sugar and reducing portion sizes by just 10% – could combine to pack quite a weight-loss punch.
You need to find actions that you can make for the long term – so don’t go too drastic. Better to aim low, have some success and then use that to bolster your efforts, than to aim too high and give up because it’s too great a sacrifice. Pace yourself – you will get there.
So choose a couple of tweaks to your diet that you can live with for a month – tweaks that won’t drive you or the people you live with crazy.
Step 2
Depending on the tweaks you’ve chosen, now take whatever action you need to take to cement these tweaks in place.
For example:
- Find smaller plates and put the larger ones away
- Put a ‘10% Less’ sign in your kitchen
- Go buy low-fat dairy products
- Put ‘Use less’ stickers on your sugar, oil, butter, alcohol or whatever
- Find smaller bowls for your snacks or desserts and put them in front of the bigger bowls
- Cut your treats in half or portion them into baggies.
Check in!
And you’re done!
Be sure to leave your comment below to check in and stay accountable. If you’re reading this by email or in a reader then please click here to leave your comment.
See you tomorrow!
Portion control is a big issue for me. I think I do a lot of mindless eating. I am planning on eating smaller portions, and then putting my plate in the kitchen so that I won’t be tempted to eat 2nds when I don’t need them.
This won’t be too hard for me. My diet has been pretty good. My issue is being a “mindless snacker”. So simply, I have very few snacks in the house or if I do they are already are the 100-calories snacks or individual versus a full bag.
One small change that I can make is to drink more water. I used to drink a lot of diet soda and alot more coffee. I have been replacing some of the soda or coffee with a bottle of water. I am going to try to work on portion control. I just can not seem to curb the hunger in the middle of the night. Any suggestions?
Yesterday I appreciated the voice in my head…. asking..”what could you do different. Instead of the voice that condemns…. Today I’m looking for the things I will do less of or leave out… just because I can. The ‘all or nothing’ mentality just destroys me.
putting a use less sugar sign on the coffee pot. Try to remember to not ask for “extra” condiments such as ranch dressing, or mayo at the cafeteria at work or better yet make a lunch for me at night when I make hubbies for the next day. I could put that sign near the coffee pot (set up morning coffee at the same time as I do the lunch) or on the fridge…
When I drink wine, I am going to cut my wine half and half with sparkling water…a wine spritzer is a treat for me! I will also make my mid-afternoon snack a healthy snack rather than an unhealthy one. I already bake or roast more than I fry, and don’t use butter on sandwiches, and use low-fat dairy products.
I love the idea of choosing something I can live with, starting small and working my way up! I usually try to give up totally the stuff I think is causing me problems, then I gorge on them later. So I will be giving up junk food every other day. And controlling the portions on the days I do allow a treat. Also cutting back on Soda to only Friday or Sat (whenever we have pizza or tacos : ).
I have a snacking problem! Nothing better than watching Biggest Looser last night eating Cheeto’s out of the bag 🙁 I am going to swap out my unhealthy snacking for healthy options like fruits and veggies! I already watch portion sizes at meals and try to eat more protein at dinner time than carbs to try to stay fuller longer and fend off night time snacking too.
Oh and what happened to Day 3?
I am going to incorporate more fruits and vegetables for my snacks instead of cookies, chips or whatever is handy from the vending machine. So, my plan is to designate one day each week as my “freggie shopping day” and stock up for the next week. Also, I need to stock my desk with healthy snack options so I won’t even be tempted to visit the kitchen where the vending machines are!
I’ll be tweaking my diet by adding in better snack foods. A soda and candy bar do little for me besides add extra bulk. If I don’t have a snack, I tend to eat a larger than necessary meal and/or snack on everything in sight.
I will be purchasing grapes, strawberries, carrots, and celery to clean & portion into baggies. Instead of ranch dressing, I’ll pair my celery with peanut butter for some protein. Almonds, some sort of healthy crackers, and string cheese will also be on my list of purchases.
Wow, mebbe I’m doing better than even I thought. After reading thru this mission, I realized I’ve been doing most of what was suggested. However, looking back, the one that stands out the most to me is that I noticed that I had begun drinking more carbonated beverages than I need to during lunch so that is where I’m starting. No more soda’s for me (diet or otherwise)! I do my best to get in 2 litres of water a day so I’ll have to increase my water consumption to replace the soda at lunch.
For me, diet isn’t really the problem. I eat well. Don’t drink often. My problem is that I need to find something to keep my hands occupied when I finally hit my “down time” in the evening. After the kids are in bed, and the dinner dishes are done. When I sit on the couch to relax and watch a show or the news, I inevitably grab something to much on. Last night it was pistachios. But it might be pita chips, or Twizzlers, or popcorn ( the whole bag of micro popcorn, because those mini bags never make it out of the micro unburned!). Should I take up knitting?
So much of this I am already doing….bake or broil, no sugar but I do use a lot of artificial sweeteners, never use gravy and I have been drinking skim milk for years. I fall down on the desserts because if I eat one bite I will eat the whole cake…switch has been to keep fresh fruits in the house and only dark chocolate Dove squares, it’s hard to eat more than 2 dark chocolate pieces. I also bought a kitchen scale last week so I could get a better visual of what a realistic portion size should look like. I like the idea of luncheon plates too, especially since I am one of those kids who was forced to clean her plate at every meal.
done
🙂 done
10% less
I can do this!
Checking in!
This sounds like a plan!
Simple enough -done!