Food Lovers Unite!

I know I've worried some of you by not posting for awhile.  Part of your worry is legit.  We've been extremely busy getting our bedroom ready for our new furniture and doing some much needed spring cleaning.  Sadly, that doesn't leave much time for food planning and prep.  That's never good.

Well, let's start with the results from Wednesday.  I’m happy to report I lost 0, zip, nada, big ole goose egg.

Wait, did she say, “Happy?”  Yes, I said, “Happy.”  I didn’t deserve to lose anything.  I actually deserved to gain weight this week.  That’s why I’m happy with a maintain.  Very very very happy!

To get me back on track and keep me on track, I’ve pulled out The Food Lovers Fat Loss System.  This is a “diet” plan that I bought last year after seeing an infomercial for it.  It was very intriguing, and I have to admit it is a really good plan.  I owe a lot of my beginning success to this plan.  I quit following it strictly on January 16^th.  Why?  Laziness – pure unadulterated laziness.

To help keep me on the plan, I will be blogging every day – yes, every day – to share what I’m learning.  The nice thing about this program is it doesn’t flood you with info and “rules” from the start.  It ramps you up with certain things to do each day.  It is a 21 day plan designed to reboot your metabolism and get you burning fat instead of storing it.  While I’ll be telling you about the basics of the program, I still highly recommend purchasing it.  You get so many great tools with the package including CDs to listen to each day, a getting started DVD, exercise DVDs, and more.  Check them out at www.tryfoodlovers.com.  

That’s the end of my sales pitch – I promise!  Now, onto day 1!

Day 1 is all about snacking between meals.  At this point, there are no specifics on what kinds of snacks to eat – small bag of chips, slice of bread with peanut butter (ooohhhh), ½ turkey sandwich, leftovers from lunch or dinner, etc.  The basic “rule” is if it doesn’t have a label (i.e. apple, baked potato, fried chicken leg, etc.) just eat it.  If it does have a nutrition label, aim for something in the 150-250 calorie range.  Just be sure to watch the serving size!  That bag of sunflower seed might have 4 servings at 150 calories each.  Don’t eat the whole bag!  You just need to eat a snack midway between breakfast and lunch, another between lunch and dinner, and keep eating snacks every 2-3 hours until one hour before bedtime.

I know – that’s hard.  We’ve conditioned ourselves to eat less if we want to lose weight, and now I’m telling you to eat more.  Huh?!  I love their reasoning: 

For most of mankind’s history food has been scarce – and most of our days were spent hunting, gathering and basically trying to keep ourselves from starving to death.  To help keep us alive, biology came up with an ingenious survival strategy:  when food was running low, our bodies would slow down our metabolism.  It would start burning less calories for energy and instead it would save them for later use . . . by storing them as fat.

While this has helped mankind survive through the lean times, it really hinders our dieting.  When we start dieting/eating less, our body goes, “Whoa!  Crap!  I’m not getting any fuel!  I’m starving!  I don’t know when I’ll get to eat again!  I better take what fat I have and store it!”  God created something pretty amazing in the human body.  The lack of food sends it into survival mode, it slows down the metabolism, and it starts saving that fat.  While you’re eating less, you are ACTUALLY storing more fat.

I know – that’s just not right!  That’s not fair!  That can’t be right!  Think about it . . . how many times have you dieted only to have your weight loss slow to a crawl after a few weeks?  Yeah, you’ve shut down your metabolism.  Then, to make matters worse, when you finally fall off the horse and eat the horse, you end up not only gaining back what you lost but usually even more.  

The key is to eat something every 2-3 hours.  It doesn’t have to be a huge meal every time – just something so that your body realizes, “Hey, I’ve always got food!  I’m not starving!  I don’t have to store all this fat!”

I can attest to the truth of this statement, “You’ll find that you have more energy, that you’ve reduced the cravings and hunger that cause you to overeat, and that you are now eating in a way that helps you retain lean muscle tissue which will eventually cause you to burn more calories all day long.”

That’s the plan!  See you tomorrow with info on how to build a fat loss plate!  It is super easy!