Snacks!

Today I’m all about the snacks.  Here are some ideas for when the munchies hit that aren’t just scarfing M&Ms:

• hummus and veggies

• apple and peanut or almond or cashew butter

• cheese and celery

• yogurt and berries

• orange wedges (bonus points for doing the thing with the peel and the smile)

• nuts and raisins (careful about quantity—the calories add up quick!)

Things with a little crunch, like carrots or celery, help us feel like we are really eating.  Foods with a bit of fat and protein, like yogurt and cheese and nuts, help us stay full.

Eat Less

Yesterday I wrote about moving more as a weight loss essential.  The other half of the equation is eating less.

Possibly the most obvious way to eat less is to… reduce portion sizes!  Maybe we try having half a sandwich or a smaller scoop of potato salad.  Some folks find success using smaller plates, but we have to remember that food has three dimensions—a giant heap rising a foot high off a small plate is still a large portion.

A somewhat counter-intuitive way of eating less is to eat more… fiber, at least.  Preferably in the form of veggies.  If we eat a whole bunch of leafy greens, we get full and have less actual physical space in our bodies for higher-calorie foods.  Fiber-rich whole grains can also help us feel full longer.

Water is also an excellent help in this department.  It has no calories, reduces thirst (often mistaken for hunger), keeps us hydrated (and thus less crabby), and gives us a sense of fullness.  If it helps, we can make it fancy with bubbles or a slice of lemon or cucumber.

Once we’ve done these things, we may find that we begin to lose weight.  If not, we will have to look a little harder at what we’re eating.  We may be getting more calories than we think from alcohol, sugar, and hidden fats.

As always, I’m here to help with both the moving more and the eating less.

Move More

While I believe that miraculous and healthy bodies come in all sizes, many of us want to lose a bit of weight at this point in the year.  There are two things we need to do to make that weight come off:  move more and eat less.  Today I’m going to talk about moving more; tomorrow about eating less.

Exercise comes in three basic flavors:  cardio, strength, and flexibility.  For weight loss purposes, we want to focus on the first two (but if we neglect flexibility too long, we will be more sore and uncomfortable).  We do cardio to burn calories.  To maximize the number of calories we burn while doing our cardio, we want to incorporate intervals.  Intervals are short periods (no longer than a minute) during which we go as fast and as hard as we possibly can.  Then we take another short period (up to two minutes) to recover at a more relaxed pace (not stopping!!!).  When we repeat this over the course of our workouts, we burn more calories overall and amp up our metabolism so that we are burning more calories even when we aren’t working out.

Strength training builds muscle.  We want muscle because it is lean body mass.  Lean body mass is denser than fatty body tissue, making us smaller at the same weight.  It uses more calories as we go through our normal days, which translates to a higher metabolic rate.  It also looks better.

We can do cardio almost every day (the occasional day of rest is good for all of us!).  Unless we are body builders, we don’t need to get into the complicated systems for doing weight training every day; we should shoot for two to three workouts a week on non-consecutive days.

The best workouts are the ones we actually do, so start small and work up!