Tips To Help You Stay in Control

As the nutritionist of the program, it is my mission to help everyone that has the desire to lose weight. I will do whatever I can do to help. Life is crazy here in the D.C. area and although we may consciously want to do well to stick to our routines to lose weight, sometimes life gets in the way. We need to realize that every week will not be perfect and that is ok. All we can do is try our best.

I feel we can all use any help we can get to help us stay on track. Here are some simple things that you can do to help you stay on track with your diet and weight loss efforts:

1. Think about this, have you ever seen restaurants of any kind decorated in blue? Chances are you haven’t. Why? The color blue functions as an appetite suppressant and will cause you to eat less. So look to add blue napkins or tablecloth, use blue plates or even wear blue when you eat. Try it. Studies show it will suppress your appetite and you will eat less. Conversely, avoid red, yellow, and orange in your dining areas. Studies find they encourage eating.

2. Hang a mirror opposite your seat at the table. One study found that eating in front of a mirror slashed the amount people ate by nearly one-third. It seems having to look yourself in the eye reflects back some of your own inner standards and goals, and reminds you of why you're trying to lose weight in the first place.

3. Reduce your portions. Whether you eat at home or in a restaurant, immediately remove one-third of the food on your plate. The explosion in portion sizes in America has been an issue for about the last 20 years. We eat far, far more today than our bodies need. Studies find that if you offer greater portions, people will eat more food, regardless of their hunger level. This may go back to the “Clean plate syndrome” that many of us grew up with. We had to clean our plates to please our parents or to get dessert, etc. We do no longer have to clean our plates. Any excess food that we don’t eat on our plated does not have to be wasted, we can save it for tomorrow. The converse is also true: Serve yourself less and you'll eat less.

"I Can't" vs. "I Won't" Eat That

Yesterday I had a patient who told me that a very important mental "shift" for her was the concept of not looking at losing weight as a series of "I cannot eat that" episodes. She went on to explain that when she is involved in social situations with other people, and a high-caloric food source would appear or an alcohol containing drink, she found herself constantly explaining to people that because of her desire to lose weight she would say and think "I cannot eat that". My patient then came to the realization that thinking in this way was making her weight loss efforts burdensome, because almost like a child being told by their parent to "not do that", her food choices seemed imposed by someone else. She then went through a mental exercise of changing this concept to "I Won't have this". What she means by this is that by changing her mindset to making food choices that she is controlling as opposed to some external mandated edicts, my patient is now able to feel better about being sround others during these social events. She is now able to feel better about telling the party host that she will take a pass on the marguerita not because she wants to but it is "forbidden", but rather it is her conscious choice to bypass this in order to achieve a happier and healthier weight.

It is very difficult to be around a social event and watch others eat and drink the food and alcohol sources that we know taste good. But often it is exactly these food sources that put us at a weight that is unhealthy and makes us ultimately very unhappy. Feeling in control of your food choices as opposed to feeling that there is an external parent-like monitor telling you "not to eat this, not to eat that" would be a more psychologically favorable mindset to help you lose weight and keep it off.