weight loss plan
Sources: weightloss
First, the bad news: My weight hasn't exactly plummeted since I started this money diet. Oh, the first week was amazing. The second week, nothing happened. This third week, I seem to have lost a pound or two.
But I am confident that I'm saving money.
For those of you who aren't in the know, I've decided to call my weight loss plan the “Money Diet.” On January 1, I declared on WalletPop that I was finally going to lose weight, and as an incentive, I was going to start adding up what I'd be saving by not spending money on junk food.
During the first week, I lost 11 pounds. I know that sounds incredible, but I think it was due to my putting on the brakes on drinking all those sugar-laden soda pops I'd been consuming. I used to drink them far too much, but since January 1, I think I've had just two Cokes. I also cut out just about every other high calorie food imaginable. I guess now the numbers are becoming more realistic — and less dramatic.
Of course, it didn't help that I went to the gym less this week, or that I broke my diet a few times last weekend when I celebrated my 40th birthday. Still, I'm pretty happy with these numbers.
- My weight when I began: 264
- My weight last week: 253
- My weight this week: 252
Sigh. I have a long way to go, though I'm not really sure exactly where I'm going. Ideally, I'd like to drop another fifty pounds, but if I can knock off twenty more this year, I'll be dancing a jig, so . . . we'll see.
Before I offer my tally of what I really, really considered buying or wanted to buy but didn't, and how much I think I've saved this week, I thought I'd seek a few opinions from some real diet experts and see what tips they could offer for losing weight as inexpensively as possible. Here we go:
Grow your own organic produce. That idea comes from Kami Gray, author of The Denim Diet (a diet book designed to help you fit into that pair of jeans you wish you could fit into, which seems like a fun concept for a book). She's also a TV wardrobe stylist, so she knows something about staying trim (being surrounded by actors every day). Anyway, Gray says that growing your own produce doesn't just save you money, but, as she puts it, “The time you've invested in your garden encourages you to eat healthier and not let your efforts to go waste.” And, you know, there's exercise involved in gardening. When the months get warmer, I may have to try that.
Brown bag it. Michelle May, M.D., author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle, had a lot of ideas for me, but this one stuck out: “Take your lunch to work,” she advises. “You'll save money and eat healthier while taking food that you choose.” No kidding. I don't think I need to elaborate — that advice pretty much speaks for itself.
Focus on cooking one big meal, a few times a week. That suggestion comes from Dr. Richard Kozlenko, the director of research and development for NXT Nutritionals, a developer and marketer of alternative sweeteners and food and beverage products, in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Dr. Kozlenko told me that he likes to make one meal of the day a “giant meal,” like a giant salad, soup or stew, with “everything in it — fresh, lean, healthy vegetables, nuts and seeds, slices of chicken or fresh or water-packed fish.” He might also add in low-fat cottage cheese or yogurt, and maybe a hard-boiled egg. For the other two meals of the day, he goes light and eats something like a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast or soup for dinner or lunch.
“Be creative but strict, with no artificial, high-calorie, greasy or overly sugary junk as ingredients,” says Kozlenko of his large meals. By doing that, he says, “you'll begin to influence a habit pattern of what and how you eat that spreads to the other days of the week in how you prepare and choose your meals.”
That “habit pattern” is what I've been hoping to get with my concerted effort to keep an eye on what I'm not spending every time I forego junk food. So here's what I think I saved in the past week:
- I went on an overnight road trip for a writing project, and I managed to avoid stopping at any fast food places (save for a Diet Coke at a Wendy's). I also didn't pick up any bags of chips for the road. Since I could have done either on my way back, I'll put my estimated savings at…$10.
- Bag of my favorite pretzels that I used to buy weekly but still haven't. Actual savings: $3.29
- Less snacks and soda pop in general…I'm going to estimate my savings was $10.
But I could have saved even more money and lost more weight if (and, granted, it was my birthday) I hadn't bought some candy at the movies. That was $4.
My weekly total saved: $23.29
Saved this year so far: $71.56
I'd rather see more progress on the scale, but that's what's nice about this goofy diet. If you aren't happy with your weight, you can at least enjoy looking at how your bank account is doing.
Geoff Williams is a frequent contributor to WalletPop and co-author of the new book, Living Well with Bad Credit.
Losing weight and getting fit preoccupied Americans in 2009:
- Nearly one out of two American women, including high school girls, were on a diet.
- Over 40 billion was spent on branded diet plans.
- Children as young as 9 to 11 years old were sometimes or very often dieting.
Yet an epidemic of obesity continues to affect more people than ever before:
- Less than a third of adults enjoyed normal weight.
- Children were two to three times more likely to be overweight today than they were 30 years ago.
Can we begin to reverse these worrisome trends in 2010?
We can if we update our old views with new ways to look at fitness in the coming year.
Old View: It's hopeless! Efforts to lose weight are inevitably doomed to fail. Even if a person manages to lose weight, he or she will eventually regain the weight and add back even more.
New View: You can do it! Strategies for making healthier choices involving diet, physical conditioning and improved self-care are available to you and can be learned. Championing this view is Kelly Brownell, Ph. D., who heads the LEARN Program for Weight Management at Yale University. And thanks to widespread access to the Internet, peer counseling in online communities is expanding. Internet support may include food and exercise diaries, weekly counseling, online weight-loss lessons and motivational phone calls.
Old View: Thin is in! Most individuals, especially women, seek to lose weight because they have internalized the media's ultrathin ideal.
New View: Healthy is in! Health is replacing vanity as the primary reason for pursuing fitness and weight loss. In 2009, researchers reported that four healthy habits could reduce or eliminate 80 percent of major medical problems: eating a healthy diet, not smoking, exercising regularly and maintaining a normal body weight. This insight, combined with rising medical costs, is triggering a focus on fitness.
Old View: If you are fat, you are a bad person. Obesity is a personal problem caused by a lack of willpower.
New View: Obesity is a disease that is treatable. The cost of providing medical care per person has skyrocketed from $356 in 1970 to $8,160 in 2009. Moreover, in 2009, the cost of treating obesity-related medical problems reached $147 billion. Given these costs, obesity has become a public health concern requiring a multifaceted community-based approach. In response, community leaders in Albert Lea, Minnesota, implemented a comprehensive lifestyle program to improve the health and longevity of the city's residents. To increase employee productivity and reduce health insurance costs and absenteeism, corporate wellness programs are proliferating.
Old View: Low-fat diets are required to lose weight. Eating fat makes a person fat. To lose weight, a dieter needs to stick with low- or no-fat foods.
New View: Total calories actually determine weight. The total calories consumed by a person, whether from carbs, fats or proteins, determines weight. Since the goal is a balanced diet, the Mediterranean diet, which includes healthy fats, is recommended by the Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association as a nutritionally sound and healthy eating plan. Nuts, which until recently were on dieters' “do not eat” lists, are making a comeback because of their health benefits, especially almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans and macadamia nuts. Momentum is growing for mandating information on the caloric content of fast foods and food products.
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Old View: Medical intervention is needed. Weight-loss drugs or bariatric surgery can solve the problem of surplus pounds for many people, and advances in medicine can address obesity-related problems such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer.
New View: A healthy lifestyle is the best way. Prevention, rather than treatment of obesity-related medical problems, will move to the forefront because of the rising cost of medical insurance and healthcare. While the number of bariatric surgeries will continue to skyrocket, family physicians will increasingly write exercise prescriptions in lieu of drug prescriptions.
Old View: Ignore overweight children. Children who are overweight will outgrow their chubbiness, so kids' surplus pounds can be ignored.
New View: Help overweight children now! Dr. Robert Murray, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health, is alarmed that nearly half of kids and teens are overweight or obese and, as a consequence, children's life expectancies are lower than their parents'. Treating childhood obesity is a serious medical problem that if ignored will place the child at risk for heart disease, diabetes and other serious medical conditions.
Old View: Don't ask, don't tell. Asking employees to modify their unhealthful behavior is an invasion of privacy and violates employees' right to choose their own lifestyle.
New View: Offer help, incentives and access to experts. In 2008, medical insurance premiums reached a record $15,609 for a family of four. Employers are proactively seeking to reduce costs (medical insurance, workers' compensation claims and absenteeism) by restructuring benefit programs. In increasing numbers, employees are being offered incentives to quit smoking or lose weight. They face penalties if they refuse to change habits that drive up the cost of healthcare.
Old View: Hard-core exercise one hour daily. Going to a gym daily for a 60-minute workout on a treadmill and resistance equipment is the best way to exercise.
New View: Diversity, fun and enjoyment. Thanks to popular television programs, dancing for fitness is back, particularly Zumba, a one-hour workout that fuses Latin rhythms with calorie-burning dance movements. Exergaming, such as Wii and Dance Dance Revolution, continues to grow in popularity with young and old alike. Michelle Obama has made the Hula-Hoop popular once again. The use of technologically sophisticated feedback gadgets, from pedometers to heart monitors, will expand. To attract members to the gym during tough economic times, more fitness centers will offer cardio cinema so members can watch a movie while exercising.
Will we continue to get fatter until 2018 when, according to research by Kenneth Thorpe, PhD, of Emory University, 40 percent of us will be obese (and another 33 percent overweight)?
If we are to succeed in reversing the obesity trends and mounting medical care costs, we'll have to find new approaches. And the more readily we learn from the past and update our understanding of the complex nature and causes of obesity, the more quickly we can successfully move into a healthy future.
Are you looking for a Quick Weight Loss Plan? Every Quick Weight Loss Plan might tell you something different, but there IS an optimum Quick Weight Loss Plan. Depending on your initial weight and body type, your Quick Weight Loss Plan should include these 3 facts.
Quick Weight Loss Plan – Fact #1 – Losing Weight Is Not The Same As Losing Fat
If you are looking for a Quick Weight Loss Plan because of being a little or a lot over weight, you need to recognize your true goals. What you need to focus your attention on is losing FAT, not just losing weight. Now this may take some adjustments in your own mind, as we are all so tuned into what the scale says when we step on it. This paradigm shift must involve being more aware of what you look like in the mirror, than what the scale says.
Why must it be this way? We need to focus our attention on losing fat, because when we focus on just losing weight, we often go about it in an unhealthy manner. We do things to rid ourselves of water weight (which we really need in our bodies) or even worse, we do things that cause us to lose muscle weight (which we really, really need in our bodies!).
Quick Weight Loss Plan – Fact #2 – Water Weight Loss is Not Healthy
If you are considering a weight loss plan that promises that you will lose 10 pounds this weekend, you need to run the other way! Any program with those promises is touting a plan to rid your body of water weight, not fat. Do you know what most of our body is made up of? You guessed it… water.
We need water to keep our bodies healthy. Statistics have shown that more than 80% of Americans are in some state of dehydration. This is not healthy, because all of our organs were designed to operate most efficiently at a certain hydration level. Take the water out of your body and you will soon see decreased function in your liver, intestines, pancreas, lungs, heart and yes, even your brain! We need water and lots of it.
Besides, as you probably already know, when it is just water that we lose, it is bound to come back – and then some! You see, the body has a self preservation mode. When it experiences dehydration, which it does not like, your body reacts to this problem by storing more water in the tissues for the next “drought”. Water weight loss will simply lead to more water weight gain in the end.
Quick Weight Loss Plan – Fact #3 – Muscle Weight Loss is Even Worse
Some Quick Weight Loss Plans promote their results without any exercise. Though it is possible to lose weight without exercising, the best kind of body shaping program (that's what you're really trying to do – reshape your body) will always include nutrition, fat loss and muscle gain. When we strengthen our muscles, our overall metabolism quickens and this in turn will cause our body to burn more calories, even when we are resting. To lose muscle as a weight loss option is absolutely detrimental to not only your overall health, but also your overall body shaping program goal. Muscles are a good thing! And no, I don't mean Mr. or Miss Olympia proportions, just strong, fit muscles.
As we try to reshape our bodies, fat loss should be just one of our goals. A very reasonable fat loss goal would be 1½ – 2 pounds per week. We should also strive not to lose just water and never do we want to lose muscle. Don't over do it, be sensible, have a plan and stick to it. You CAN achieve your goals!
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