Heading Off Winter Weight Gain Before it Gets Started
Must We Gain Weight Every Winter
It’s that time of year we all start thinking about putting on a healthy layer of fat, just like the hibernating bears. From a nip in the air to a massive snow and ice storm, there is a palpable difference in the air. We’ve generally accepted that it is nature’s way of helping us provide a little extra winter fat, storing up for the winter, just in case. But how long since you last had a food shortage or had to wait out the winter for your next meal?
This year can be different
Today consider making one small change. When you make a small change, it is easier to handle, you are more likely to incorporate it into your daily life and you are more likely to succeed, than if you try to make a global change to your whole way of being.
Instead of taking something away, start by adding more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet. Just for today, throw out your rules, if you typically follow a diet that forbids fruit or fresh vegetables because fresh foods are too important to miss. Fresh foods are sweet, satisfying and full of vitamins, minerals, bioflavonoids, and other things that your body requires for optimum health.
Choose a few fruits and vegetables you particularly enjoy. This time of year apples are great, citrus fruits, bananas are available year-round. Get some fresh fruits you like and start carrying a food sack everywhere you go. Try little packages of baby carrots, or cut up cauliflower and broccoli. A fellow I know always has a bagful of chopped cauliflower, carrots, and others vegis he munches on. That’s smart.
Healthy Snacking
The idea with healthy snacking is that when hunger strikes (or what you think is hunger), no matter where you are you’ll now have healthy snacks handy. No more having to buy a candy bar because you’re famished. My choices for healthy snacks won’t suit everyone, but that’s fine. Choose other things that would work better for you. I enjoy things such as jerky, whole grain rolls or bagels, yogurts, and fresh fruits as I mentioned earlier. I almost always have an apple nearby.
It’s not that you couldn’t wait to eat, but what has forestalling your hunger done for you so far? It tends to set you up for later binging and out-of-control snacking. Eating a few healthy snacks during the day can end that pattern once and for all.
Follow This Plan to Healthier Snacking
Think of one or two fresh foods you could carry in a big or small cooler and then do it. As I’m writing this I’m a little hungry and I’m starting to think about having a snack. I might eat an apple, a banana or some jerky because they are all within my immediate reach. That’s far better than not eating anything now, but instead deciding to “wait it out,” while I start thinking about cookies and cake and pizza and other fast foods I can grab on the way home.
Going all day in a hungry or denied state sets you up for late night binging and out-of-control snacking. You’ll never be able to make up for the earlier deprivation. Why bother. I’ve never met anyone yet who got fat from eating too much fruit, so be brave and give this idea a chance, and let this be the winter you don’t gain weight.
By Kathryn Martyn, Master NLP Practitioner, EFT counselor, author of Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight Loss, and owner of OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com
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Weight Loss Surgery: Successful Patients Embrace Four Stages of Growth
Weight Loss Surgery (WLS) is often viewed as a quick fix for morbid obesity. One day a person is fat, the next they are not. While it may appear to onlookers that a gastric bypass patient is losing the weight without personal struggle or effort, this really isn’t true. WLS patients must follow four rules for success and they experience four phases of growth following surgery.
The four rules for successful weight loss and long-term weight maintenance are: Eat protein first; No snacking, Drink lots of water and Exercise daily. Adherence to these rules moves the patient smoothly through the four stages of bariatric growth which I define as: Conception, Infancy, Adolescence and Maturity.
Conception begins when patients consider surgery as a treatment for morbid obesity. It could be prompted by a life threatening illness such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or high blood cholesterol, asthma, heartburn or sleep apnea. Or perhaps lifestyle prompts it – a person may lack the energy to play with their children or pursue the activities they love. Maybe self-esteem is so low because of obesity that a drastic measure – surgery – is needed to restore a sense of self-worth.
Conception is followed by birth, an event left entirely to a carefully selected surgeon and staff of healthcare professionals. The surgeon partitions off most of the stomach creating a pocket or pouch that will hold one ounce of food. In most gastric bypass surgeries the digestive system is re-routed to bypass the intestine and shortcut to the bowel. This prevents too many calories from being absorbed and stored by the body in the form of fat. The patient wakes from the surgery a bariatric infant.
Infancy On the second day of my WLS infancy my surgeon stood at my hospital bedside and showed me a cup, the size in which sacramental communion is offered and he said "This is the size of your stomach now."
Just like bringing a newborn home from the hospital the bariatric patient brings home a tiny newborn tummy that has all kinds of requirements and restrictions. This new tiny tummy is completely foreign to the behaviors and habits that caused obesity. There is not one single thing an obese person has done in the past that they can continue doing. Patients who strictly follow the four rules quickly become acquainted with their new tiny tummy. This is the time of rapid weight loss. For the first time most morbidly obese patients are consistently losing lots of weight, something they have never experienced before. Infancy for most bariatric patients lasts from nine to 18 months.
Similar to parents of a firstborn child who focus completely on their new baby, during bariatric infancy patients completely focus on their new tiny tummy. Then one day, without fanfare, they wake up and rediscover themselves. They enter adolescence.
Adolescence Adolescence is the stage when patients test the system. Many patients don’t dump, vomit, snack or eat the forbidden foods until they reach adolescence. But once they approach or reach target weight a mental bad boy shows up in a shiny black corvette saying take a ride on the wild side. So a patient jumps in the bad boy’s fast ride and speeds down a dangerous road. They break the rules! Perhaps they eat sugar which results in a blood sugar imbalance called "dumping" or they may stuff themselves with starchy carbs causing vomiting. In the worst case, a patient returns to snacking, a little treat of hard candy here and a handful of popcorn there. Mark my words, nothing stops-short weight loss or maintenance more quickly than a little bit of rule breaking. But like any teenager, we all have to learn it on our own.
The good news: the duration of adolescence is up to the patient! A patient only hurts themselves when they break the rules. Successful WLS patients commit to themselves early to be in control of their own gastric bypass growth cycle. However, some WLS patients get stuck in adolescence. I’ve heard many say, "Oh, I can eat anything I want, just not much of it." Don’t believe it for a minute. They aren’t saying how often they vomit, or dump or how they never quite achieved their weight loss goal. Weight loss patients who eat anything they want are abusing their tool and stuck in perpetual adolescence.
Maturity At maturity a patient understands the gastric bypass system and is living the life they dreamed. They have achieved desired weight loss and are maintaining a healthy weight. A diligent patient can enjoy this phase for the rest of their life.
I believe WLS maturity is reached when patients understand one word: respect. Respect for the tiny tummy, respect for the science of the body, and respect for oneself. Sure, we all experience an occasional lapse of judgment; that old lover of ours – food – is flaunting temptations every single day. But the gastric bypass patient is a brave and powerful person.
Successful patients build on infant and teenage experiences and become an adult embracing all the good things gastric bypass has facilitated. The battle against obesity isn’t easy; patients will fight old habits for the rest of their life. Gastric bypass is a tool, a weapon in the battle against obesity, but it is the patient who wins the war.
Kaye Bailey is a weight loss surgery success story having maintained her health and goal weight for 5+ years. An award winning journalist, she is the author and webmaster of livingafterwls.com and livingafterwls.blogspot.com – Fresh & insightful content is added daily, check in often.
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