Low-Calorie Dieting For Dummies E-Book

Susan McQuillan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 570

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Break your bad habits and start enjoying a low-cal lifestyle! Want to lose weight and keep it off for good? This no-nonsense guide shows you how to consume fewer calories than you burn, providing a delicious, easy, and safe low-calorie plan you can follow for life! You'll find tools to improve your eating and exercise habits, cope with stress and boredom, assess your progress, and live healthier and happier. Discover how to: * Understand your metabolism. * Set realistic, attainable goals. * Maintain a healthy weight. * Stock a low-cal kitchen. * Eat right with simple, scrumptious, low-calorie recipes. * Stay motivated long-term. * Find outside support. Order your copy today!

Leseprobe

Low-Calorie Dieting For Dummies®

by Susan McQuillan, MS, RD

Low-Calorie Dieting For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2005933595

ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-9905-7

ISBN-10: 0-7645-9905-4

Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Susan McQuillan, a registered dietitian, writes about food, nutrition, and weight control from her home in New York City. She received her bachelor’s degree in dietetics management from New York University and her master’s degree in human nutrition from Hunter College, both in Manhattan. She was formerly a food and nutrition editor at American Health magazine and Reader’s Digest general books division. Susan is the author of Breaking the Bonds of Food Addiction (Alpha/Penguin) and a contributor to many health and nutrition-related books and cookbooks. Her articles and recipes have appeared in Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Cooking Light, Prevention, Fitness, Women’s Sports and Fitness, McCall’s, and Fit Pregnancy magazines.

Dedication

To Molly, who never misses a meal, but who often has to wait for dinner while her mom is helping other people find better ways to eat.

Author’s Acknowledgments

First, I must thank my acquisitions editor, Mikal Belicove, who recommended that I write this book and then worked very hard to get it off the ground. My project editor, Georgette Beatty, was my best motivator throughout this project, showering me with words of praise and encouragement at every turn. Thank you, Georgette! Many thanks also to Chad Sievers, copy editor extraordinaire, for ensuring clarity and adding a touch of humor, and to Emily Nolan and Patty Santelli, for double-checking the accuracy and taste of the recipes and making sure my calorie counts were correct.

I’m in great debt to every dieter who has ever shared his or her weight-loss story with me and every weight-control expert who understands that it’s not just about the food. Your contributions are invaluable.

Much gratitude goes, as always, to the ever-growing list of people who provide me with such generous amounts of friendship and support. Special thanks to David Ricketts, Dui Seid, Ray Robbenolt, Lorraine Kenny, Sally Xuereb, Juliette Knight, Andrea Sperling, Esther and Jaimie Meyers, and last, but never least, my mother, Irene McQuillan.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Georgette Beatty

Acquisitions Editor: Mikal Belicove

Copy Editor: Chad R. Sievers

Technical Editor: Stacey Lyn Faryna, RD, ACSM Health/Fitness Instructor

Recipe Tester: Emily Nolan

Nutritional Analyst: Patty Santelli

Editorial Manager: Michelle Hacker

Editorial Assistants: Hanna Scott, Nadine Bell

Cover Photo: © Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Kathryn Shanks

Layout and Graphics: Mary Gillot, Lauren Goddard, Stephanie D. Jumper, Barbara Moore, Julie Trippetti

Special Art: Elizabeth Kurtzman

Proofreaders: Laura Albert, Leeann Harney, TECHBOOKS Production Services

Indexer: TECHBOOKS Production Services

Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director, Consumer Dummies

Kristin A. Cocks, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies

Michael Spring, Vice President and Publisher, Travel

Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel

Publishing for Technology Dummies

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Contents

Title

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

What You’re Not to Read

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I : Understanding the Basics of Low-Calorie Dieting

Chapter 1: Living a Low-Calorie Lifestyle

Deciding How Much Weight to Lose

Understanding How to Live a Healthy Low-Calorie Lifestyle

Getting Started on Your Low-Calorie Plan

Staying on the Low-Calorie Track

Chapter 2: Figuring Out the State of Your Weight

Ups and Downs: Discovering How People Gain and Lose Weight

A Trip through Time: Taking Stock of How You Arrived Here

A New Beginning: Altering Your Diet Plan

Tools of the Trade: Figuring Out How Overweight You Are

Chapter 3: Working with Guidelines for Healthy Low-Calorie Living

Cutting Calories for Weight-Loss Success

Focusing on Formulas for Low-Calorie Living

Understanding the Nutritional Nuts and Bolts of a Low-Calorie Diet

Using Proven Strategies for Cutting Calories

Part II : Getting Started: The Four-Week Plan and Beyond

Chapter 4: Kick-Starting Your Low-Calorie Plan

Examining Your Current Diet Habits

Giving Yourself a Lifestyle Makeover

Checking Your Attitude

Using Tracking Tools As You Get Started

Practicing Mindful Low-Calorie Living

Chapter 5: Cooking in a Low-Calorie Kitchen

Gearing Up for Low-Calorie Meals

Shopping for Low-Calorie Foods

Setting Up a Low-Calorie Kitchen

Chapter 6: Planning Low-Calorie Menus: The First Four Weeks

Preparing Yourself for the First Four Weeks

Taking the Plunge: Week 1

Whittling Down Your Calorie Intake: Week 2

Making Adjustments: Week 3

Watching Your Weight Drop: Week 4

Chapter 7: Pulling through Your Plan’s First Few Months

Reassessing Your Low-Calorie Plan

Motivating Yourself, Bit by Bit

Getting into Fun Menu Plans

Chapter 8: Working Out and Working the Weight Off

Recognizing the Advantages of Different Kinds of Exercise

Fitting Exercise into Your Life

Putting Together a Safe and Effective Exercise Plan

Exercising Additional Workout Options

Exercising for Body and Mind

Knowing How Much Exercise Is Too Much

Part III : Overcoming Obstacles and Moving On

Chapter 9: Making Your Way through Trials and Tribulations

Recognizing and Solving Predictable Problems for Emotional Eaters

Meeting Typical Long-Term Challenges and Temptations

Eating Away from Home with Ease

Chapter 10: Staying Fit and Stopping Regain in Its Tracks

Adding Calories and Keeping Up with Your Workouts

Managing Your Weight for the Long Term

Recognizing Your Body’s Changing Calorie and Nutritional Needs

Chapter 11: Helping Yourself with Outside Resources

Asking Other Folks for Help

Sorting through Commercial Weight-Loss Plans

Getting the Scoop on Medically Supervised Programs

Seeking Out Support Groups

Considering Counseling

Part IV : Trying Time-Tested Low-Calorie Recipes

Chapter 12: Benefiting from Breakfast

Getting Off to a Good Start

Drinking Up in the Morning

Peanut Butter–Banana Shake

Tropical Fruit Smoothie

Beginning Your Day with Berries

Berries with Custard Sauce

Blueberry Breakfast Bars

Bulking Up Your Fiber Intake with Grains

Toasted English Muffin with Apple and Cheese

Toast Topped with Ham, Tomatoes, Asparagus, and Hard-Cooked Egg

Pumpkin Pancakes

Good Morning Cake

Homemade Granola with Pecans and Dried Cherries

Making Eggs-cellent Breakfasts

Baby Spinach Scramble with Toast

Potato, Bacon, and Cheddar Omelet

Huevos Rancheros

Spanish Tortilla

Ham and Cheese Breakfast Strata

Crustless Bacon Quiche

Chapter 13: Preparing Tasty Lunches

Putting Together Midday Meals

Mixing Salads

Beefy Romaine Salad with Basil Vinaigrette

Meaty Potato Salad

Chicken Salad with Roasted Peppers and Toasted Pine Nuts

Chinese Chicken Noodle Salad

Tuna Nicoise Salad

Salmon and Asparagus Salad

Italian Rice Salad

Pasta Salad with Tomato, Mozzarella, and Basil

Pear and Blue Cheese Salad with Walnuts

Serving Up Sandwiches

Pita Pizza with Artichokes and Mozzarella Cheese

Herbed Roast Pepper and Goat Cheese on Crusty Rolls

Toasted Italian Bread with Herbed Tuna-White Bean Spread

Savoring Soups

Turkey Noodle Soup

Spicy Corn Chowder with Ham

White Bean Soup with Kale and Sausage

Chapter 14: Sitting Down to Delicious Dinners

Keeping Supper Simple and Enjoyable

Preparing Pleasing Poultry Dishes

Skillet Chicken Parmesan

Poached Chicken Breasts with Spinach-Basil Sauce

Indonesian Chicken and Vegetables with Peanut Dipping Sauce

Chicken Breasts with Honey-Mustard Crumb Coating

Jamaican Jerk Chicken Kabobs with Rice

Hot Turkey Sandwiches

Roasted Red Peppers Stuffed with Turkey Sausage and Rice

Making the Most of Meat

Asian Beef Kabobs

Grilled Steak with Blue Cheese–Mashed Potatoes

Cranberry Pork Chops

Risotto with Ham and Peas

Glazed Ham Steaks

Fishing for Seafood Dinners

Cod Stew Provencal

Oven “Fried” Fish Fillets

Pasta with Tuna, Olives, and Tomatoes

Steamed Ginger Shrimp with Snow Peas

Trying a Variety of Vegetarian Dishes

Simple and Savory Black Bean Chili with Cheese

Tostadas with Avocado, Corn, and Refried Beans

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

Curried Rice Pilaf

Chapter 15: Fitting In Snacks and Desserts

Being Smart about Munching between Meals

Sampling 100-Calorie Snacks

Watermelon Freezies

Just a Little S’More

Garlicky Herb Pita Chips

Salad Scoops

Bean and Cheese Nachos

Yogurt-Cheese Dip with Spinach and Dill

Dishing Up 100-Calorie Desserts

Cannoli Creme Topping

Oranges in Spicy Syrup

Raspberry Baked Apple

Chocolate-Frosted Frozen Banana

Cocoa Meringues

Chocolate Bread Pudding

Part V : The Part of Tens

Chapter 16: Ten Benefits of Following a Low-Calorie Diet

Looking Good, Feeling Great

Boosting Your Energy

Sleeping Better

Saving Your Back

Lowering Your Blood Pressure

Maintaining a Healthy Heart

Preventing Diabetes

Fighting Cancer

Simplifying Pregnancy

Living Longer

Chapter 17: Ten Low-Calorie Success Stories

Finally Fitting into My Genes

Eating Small Portions All the Time

Consuming Fewer Calories and Adding More Workouts

Knowing What Works and Making Time for It

Making Four the Magic Number

Eating Smart While Eating Out and Cruising to a Lower Weight

Having a Baby, Losing the Weight

Counting Calories as the Years Go By

Buddying Up to Lose Weight

Staying Strong with “Want Power”

Part VI : Appendixes

Appendix A: Calorie Counts of Select Foods

Appendix B: Calorie Counts by Food Groups

Vegetables

Fruits

Proteins

Grains and Starchy Vegetables

Dairy Products

Fats and High-Fat Foods

Appendix C: Metric Conversion Guide

Introduction

I f your love affair with food is out of hand or if you’ve developed a love-hate relationship with food that makes eating an unpleasant experience, you have the right book in your hands. I’ve been a dietitian, and a food and nutrition writer and editor, for almost 20 years. I’ve seen it all when it comes to weight control — every diet, every gimmick, every scheme devised to trick people into thinking that weight loss will come easy if you just buy the right product or read the right book. I’m here to convince you that the only real solution to weight control is to eat right, exercise regularly, and stay away from fad diets. I offer no gimmicks, but I can make this promise: If you’re ready to give up on quick-fix diets and commit to a low-calorie lifestyle, you’ll shed pounds and maintain a healthier weight for good.

Whether you’re trying to lose 15 pounds or 150 (or some number of pounds in between), there’s only one sure way to do it. You must eat less and exercise more. If that’s all you need to know, then you can close this book and start losing weight. If you need a little more guidance, read on.

About This Book

In this book you can find a low-calorie diet plan, complete with weeks and weeks of calorie-controlled menus and more than 60 optional recipes. (Optional means that the recipes fit right into menu plans, but you don’t have to use them if you don’t feel like cooking.) You can skip the first five chapters of this book, if you prefer, and go straight to the plan. Or, if you need some time to prepare yourself, you can start reading anywhere in this book and pick up plenty of weight-loss advice and inspiration.

I like to think that as soon as you start reading, you won’t be able to put this book down; you’ll want to consume every word (so to speak) from cover to cover. Every chapter is an independent, self-contained unit. If one chapter has something that needs explanation or information found in another chapter, you find a reference. You know where to go for more information.

Much of what’s in this book may not apply to you right now. Weight loss happens in stages, and this book covers all those stages, so you probably want to find out what you need to know to get through the stage you’re in right now. Then, when you’re ready to move on to the next stage, you can flip to the appropriate chapter and read more.

That’s the great thing about For Dummies books. You can open them up to any chapter and start reading; you don’t have to start at the beginning and end at the end. In fact, For Dummies books never really end. They’re reference books that you can keep on your bookshelf to refer to again and again.

Conventions Used in This Book

This book contains more than 60 recipes and several conventions hold for them. The best way to prepare any dish from a recipe, by the way, is to read the recipe through before you begin, gather all the required equipment and ingredients, and measure and prepare any ingredients as indicated in the ingredient list before moving on to the general directions.

For successful cooking, follow the recipe directions in step-by-step order and be aware of the following conventions:

Ingredients are listed in the order in which they’re used. Arranging them in this order on your work surface can be helpful.

All measurements are level. Flour, sugar, and other dry ingredients are measured in graduated metal or plastic cups that can be filled to the top and leveled off with a metal spatula or the dull side of a knife. Liquid ingredients are measured in a spouted glass or plastic measuring cup with extra room at the top to prevent spilling. Place the measuring cup on a flat surface and fill with liquid, bending to read the measure at eye level, if necessary.

Dairy products are usually reduced-fat or fat-free varieties unless otherwise specified.

Eggs are large.

Onions are yellow unless otherwise specified.

Salt is table salt.

Pepper is freshly ground black pepper unless otherwise specified.

Preheating directions are included in all recipes that call for the use of an oven, grill, or broiler. Allow at least 15 minutes for the oven to come to the correct temperature.

All temperatures are Fahrenheit. (Check out Appendix C for information about converting temperatures to Celsius.)

A recipe that yields 4 servings may serve four people or it may serve only two or three, depending on the eating habits of your fellow diners. For you and anyone else who is following a low-calorie diet plan, a single serving fits the parameters of this diet.

The nutrition information at the end of each recipe is based on the ingredients called for in that recipe. If you change the ingredients, the nutrition information will change too.

If you need or want vegetarian recipes, scan the list of “Recipes in This Chapter” on the first page of each chapter in Part IV. A little tomato in front of the name of a recipe marks that recipe as vegetarian. (See the tomato to the left of this paragraph.)

Here are some other nonrecipe conventions you find in this book:

Italic emphasizes and highlights new words or terms that are defined in the text.

Boldfaced text indicates the action part of numbered steps.

Monofont identifies Web addresses.

When this book was printed, some Web site addresses may have been broken across two lines of text. If you come across one like that, rest assured that I didn’t put in any extra characters (such as a hyphen) to indicate the break. When you go to find the site, you can type in exactly what you see in this book, as if the line break doesn’t exist.

What You’re Not to Read

In a handful of instances in this book, you may find text preceded by a Technical Stuff icon. You can ignore this information if you’re not interested in knowing more about the topic at hand. If you’re in a hurry, you can also ignore the few sidebars (those shaded gray boxes) you see throughout the book. Although the information in these sidebars is topical and interesting, it’s not essential to understanding the subject. Sidebar material and anything marked Technical Stuff both fall into the category of information that is merely nice to know.

Foolish Assumptions

I make very few assumptions about my readers, but I do know that some of you have been down this road before. Using this book may not be your first attempt at losing weight. If that’s true, I can assume that you already know a lot about the basics of low-calorie dieting, so I try to keep everything as interesting and eye-opening for you as it is for first-timers.

Regardless of how many diets you’ve been on in your life, I can assume that right now you’re looking for motivation and a good weight-loss plan because you’re holding on to a strong vision of a leaner, healthier, you. Rest assured; this plan can help turn your dream into a reality.

How This Book Is Organized

This book contains 17 riveting chapters that have been organized into six parts, including the three appendixes. What follows is a summary of what you can find in each part.

Part I: Understanding the Basics of Low-Calorie Dieting

This part of the book helps you start a low-calorie diet plan by introducing you to easy-to-read weight charts and simple formulas so you can figure out how much weight you can realistically expect to lose and how many calories you need to cut from your diet in order to lose them. This part assists you to evaluate your weight-loss history, understand your metabolism, and see why eating well is so important on a low-calorie diet.

Part II: Getting Started: The Four-Week Plan and Beyond

In this part of the book, you establish your diet and fitness goals and discover how to prepare yourself (and your kitchen) for living a low-cal lifestyle. This part provides the actual diet plan, including four weeks of calorie- controlled daily menus you can follow strictly or use as guides to low-calorie eating. You can find food shopping tips and “alternative” menu plans to help keep your diet interesting. One of the most important chapters in this part helps you examine your attitude and see how it affects both your behavior and your ability to lose weight and maintain a healthier weight. You also find tools to help you improve your eating habits, increase your physical activity to burn more calories, find the motivation you need to stick to your plan, and track your progress.

Part III: Overcoming Obstacles and Moving On

Even though food is a central theme for dieters, it’s really only one piece of the weight-loss puzzle. Losing weight and living a low-calorie lifestyle is also about facing the issues that drive you to overeating and finding nonfood ways to cope with stress, boredom, and other day-to-day frustrations that may or may not have something to do with your diet. In this part, you discover how to deal with situations that trigger overeating in and away from home. You figure out how to stick to your low-calorie lifestyle, prevent weight gain, and maintain your new, healthier weight after you’ve reached your goals. You also find resources for helping yourself and getting outside help when self-help isn’t enough to keep you on your diet.

Part IV: Trying Time-Tested Low-Calorie Recipes

This part of the book is what my friends like best because here is where the food is, and my friends are the ones who get to taste most of the recipes before the book goes to print. Besides recipes and good ideas for low-cal breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, you also find plenty of treats and sweets. Along the way, this part helps you figure out just how to fit all this fabulous food into your low-cal diet plan.

Part V: The Part of Tens

Every For Dummies book has this part, which gives the author an opportunity to highlight important information. My favorite chapter in this part is the one that contains weight-loss inspirational stories from men and women who shared their own success stories. In this part you also find the “best of the best” reasons for losing weight and living a low-calorie lifestyle.

Part VI: Appendixes

Here you find two ways of counting calories — by individual foods and by food groups — plus a useful metric conversion guide.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, in the left margins, you find icons, or symbols, that serve as a guide to the type of material you’re about to read. Here’s what those icons mean:

The Remember icon points out information that has been summarized to make an important point. All information marked with a Remember icon is worth remembering!

The Tip icon marks helpful or practical information. It’s not just reading material, it’s news you can use. Wherever you see this icon, you can find advice, tips, and shortcuts for eating leaner, thinking smarter, moving more, and feeling better about yourself and your weight-loss plan.

When you see a Warning icon, it doesn’t mean you’re about to hear bad news or that anything scary is about to happen or that you need to avoid that particular paragraph. Au contraire! Warning icons point out information that can help prevent bad and scary things from happening, so don’t step around that paragraph; read it just in case it applies to you.

Any information marked with the Technical Stuff icon is material that is a bit more academic than the rest. You can read it or skip it. It’s not essential information, but if you do read it, you may find out something new.

Where to Go from Here

Every dieter is different, so a book like this one has to include a wide breadth of information and a variety of suggestions to help satisfy many needs. Many of the tips and advice in this book can help you. Depending on how long you’ve been trying to lose weight, you may have heard some of them before.

Your task, if you choose to accept it, is to decide, while you’re losing weight, what will and won’t work for you in the long run. Start wherever you want and work your way through this book to see what’s in it for you. Regardless of where you begin, you’ll end up knowing just what it takes to stay at a healthier weight.

Part I

Understanding the Basics of Low-Calorie Dieting

In this part . . .

R eading this part can help you ease into your low-calorie diet plan. In this part, you find help figuring out how overweight you are, how much weight you need to lose, and how best to approach a low-calorie plan. I hope you come away with a better understanding of how your metabolism works, the role of calories in weight control, and how important planning a nutritious diet at any calorie level is.

Chapter 1

Living a Low-Calorie Lifestyle

In This Chapter

Making initial decisions about how much weight to lose

Experiencing a new low-calorie way of life

Winning at losing weight with great tools and techniques

Sticking with the plan through trials and tribulations

O n any given day, one out of four Americans is doing something to try to lose weight. They change their diets, join gyms, swallow pills, and even undergo elective surgery in a never-ending attempt to shed those excess pounds. In spite of all these efforts, relatively few people are successful at losing weight and keeping it off. Most diets and weight-loss gimmicks are, at best, short-term solutions for weight control, and short-term means it’s only for now, not forever.

By definition, your diet is simply the food you eat from day to day. With or without a plan, you could be following a vegetarian diet, a low-fat diet, a high-fiber diet, or a low-carbohydrate diet. Whatever it is, your current diet is how you choose to eat. A low-calorie diet is another story, though, with an altogether different meaning. To some people, it implies deprivation, suffering, and hunger. I’m here to change that point of view.

To say you’re going on a diet implies that, at some point, you’ll come off that diet and eat differently. It’s temporary, and a temporary way of eating only has temporary effects. Look at it this way: If you have heart disease, your doctor or dietitian will probably recommend a low-fat diet. You can’t follow that diet for just six months and expect it to keep your arteries clear forever. You must cut calories to lose weight and, at the same time, develop healthier eating habits. You can’t turn back to your old habits if you expect to maintain a healthier weight for the rest of your life.

This chapter introduces the idea that the key to successful weight control is developing a low-calorie lifestyle plan. This chapter also explores the many facets of living a life devoted to lighter eating and better health. In this chapter you can find an overview of the tools you need, the plan’s details, and the resources available to help you lose weight without fear of gaining it back. I discuss everything in greater detail throughout the book.

Deciding How Much Weight to Lose

Think about a time when you were at a comfortable weight. Now, think about how much you weigh right now. The difference between the two is probably the number of pounds you’re aiming to lose. That’s probably your long-term goal (which means you don’t expect it to happen tomorrow, this week, or even this month, but you do expect it to happen eventually). Of course, you can rely on much more scientific ways to determine how much weight you can or need to lose. In fact, government health experts have established standards for healthy weights that you can use to gauge your own weight.

Check with your doctor before you start any weight-loss program to be sure that your weight-loss goals and strategies are appropriate for your age and state of health.

In this book, you can find six easy steps to help you figure out how much weight you need to lose, whether or not your weight is putting you at risk for serious health problems, and how to calculate a safe and effective calorie range within which you can lose excess weight. You can find more info on the first three steps in Chapter 2 and the last three steps in Chapter 3.

1.Consult the healthy weight range chart in Chapter 2 to figure out how far you are from a healthy weight for your height.

Using charts and formulas for figuring out how much weight you need to lose, or how much you need to weigh after you lose the weight, helps keep your expectations within realistic limits. Your healthiest weight isn’t necessarily the same as someone else’s, even if that person is the same height. You may be built differently. That’s why, when you look at a healthy weight range chart, you can see a range of acceptable weights for each height listed.

2.Figure out your Body Mass Index (BMI) from the chart and formula.

This step helps you figure out whether or not your weight puts you at risk of developing or worsening chronic medical conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease.

3.Determine your waist-to-hip ratio.

This ratio tells you if the way your weight is distributed on your body puts you at higher risk of developing chronic medical conditions.

4.Figure out your basic calorie needs.

Knowing this information can help you figure out the minimum number of calories you need in your diet every day.

5.Calculate the number of calories you can eat and still lose weight.

This information is vital because it tells you the maximum number of calories you can allow in your diet every day.

6.Give yourself a range of calories within which you can eat and still lose weight.

If you know this information, you can try to stick to the bottom of the calorie range and on days when you feel you need to eat more food, you can go as high as the top of the calorie range.

Many dieters aim for an unrealistic weight. If you have a tendency to compare your weight and shape to other people, you may find yourself wanting to lose more weight than is reasonable. Don’t compare your size and shape to others. The combined effect of your age, rate of metabolism, body type, genetic predispositions, exercise habits, dieting habits, and the number of fat cells you carry in your body ultimately determine how much weight you can lose and what your body will look like at any weight. That package of factors belongs to you and nobody else and that’s what makes everyone’s body different. You can’t stretch yourself any taller, change your bone structure, or borrow someone else’s genes. Be realistic in your expectations and goal setting and spend your time planning to get into your own best possible shape.

If you’re a control freak, you’re not going to like the fact that even though you can control the amount of food you eat, and the amount of exercise you do, and even the way your mind works when it comes to losing weight, you may not have as much control as you want over how much you actually weigh. You can make every effort in the world to get down below, say, 120 pounds, but nothing short of starvation will get you there or keep your there if it’s not a reasonable weight for you.

If you’ve overweight, blame your fat

When you’re overweight, you’re also overfat. Otherwise, being overweight would mean that your excess weight is coming from muscles, bones, skin, and water. That’s not likely unless you’ve built up so much muscle from strength training that you’ve gained weight from it, or you’re retaining fluids for some reason, or you have impossibly dense bones that are adding to your normal weight. At most, you may be a few pounds over your usual weight if your extra weight is muscle from working out or water retention from hormone fluctuations. But neither of these are weight concerns.

Being overweight from extra fat, however, means that losing weight will probably be beneficial to your health. If you have a family history of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, or certain types of cancer, losing weight by cutting calories and getting more exercise can lower your risk of developing these conditions. If you already have these conditions, losing weight may improve them. (You can find more information about weight-related medical conditions in Chapter 16.)

Understanding How to Live a Healthy Low-Calorie Lifestyle

Living a low-calorie lifestyle means adopting healthier eating and exercise habits for the rest of your life. It starts with a diet plan that cuts back on the number of calories you’ve been consuming so that you can achieve a healthier weight. Your new diet plan is designed to help you lose weight safely and effectively, and to grow into a lifelong plan for weight maintenance.

A safe low-calorie diet not only supplies enough energy to get you through each day, but it also provides the essential nutrients you need to get from food to stay healthy. The fewer calories you consume, the harder it is to get enough of those essential nutrients. The way to get the most nutritional value from your diet at any calorie level is to eat a well-balanced diet that contains a wide variety of foods. In Chapter 3, you find more information about the nuts and bolts of a nutritionally sound low-calorie diet.

Knowing exactly how many calories actually go into a low-calorie diet is also crucial. Chapter 6 contains four weeks of daily menu plans that contain from 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day. You may be thinking these menus contain the maximum number of calories you need to consume on a low-calorie diet, but in fact, I call them minimum-calorie menus. Yes, you need to put a top limit on your daily calories when you’re on a low-cal diet to lose weight. But you need to put a bottom limit on your calorie count too, because if you go too low, you’ll just trip yourself up. You’ll find yourself caught in the type of starve/binge cycle that sabotages many a dieter’s best intentions. When you start cutting calories, you can work within this range of 1,000 to 1,500 calories because most people can lose weight in this range. The top of this range (1,500 calories) may even be too low for you. If that’s the case, you can add calories back in until you get to a point where you’re more satisfied with the amount of food you’re eating and still able to lose weight. You can always cut back again if you stop losing weight before you reach your goal.

You never want to go lower than 1,000 calories on a self-help diet plan. Just about anyone who needs to lose weight can lose it on a diet that allows between 1,000 and 1,500 calories, so you don’t need to deprive yourself and eat less. Keep in mind that the closer you get to your goal weight, the more you may have to cut calories in order to keep losing. So first start your diet at the highest calorie count that, combined with enough physical exercise, allows you to lose about a pound or two a week.

Two things happen when you don’t consume enough calories.

Your body puts the brakes on your metabolism and you start burning calories less efficiently. That’s your body’s way of saving itself when it’s afraid you’re going to starve. If you don’t give your body enough food, it has no way of knowing whether or not you’ll be giving it more and so it prepares itself for living on less by slowing down the rate at which it uses food to produce energy.

The other thing that happens when you don’t eat enough is more immediate and more obvious: You get very hungry. If you allow yourself to get too hungry, guess what happens? You overeat. And there goes your diet.

Getting Started on Your Low-Calorie Plan

Living a low-cal lifestyle means putting your all into it — setting your life up in ways that accommodate your diet, such as stocking your kitchen with low-calorie cooking equipment, discovering new cooking techniques, if necessary, committing to an exercise program, and taking the time to find out as much as you can about food, nutrition, and fitness.

The very first step in a self-help weight-loss plan, though, is to look inward and figure out everything you can about yourself and about your eating and exercise habits. Then you can begin to change your bad habits and practice healthier new ones. Awareness is the first step because you have to know what you’re doing wrong before you can make it right. (See Chapter 4 for more about looking inward.)

Psyching up with goals, tools, and more

Planning and record keeping are essential tools for weight loss because they provide both structure and a way of monitoring whether your program is working for you. I treat the following tools of the trade separately in this book, but you can keep these records in one journal. That way, you always know exactly where to find each one when you need it.

Establishing short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals (Chapter 4)

Keeping a food diary (Chapter 4)

Filling in a weight change chart (Chapter 4)

Maintaining an exercise log (Chapter 8)

You can also use this same journal to write down all your thoughts and feelings while you’re trying to commit to a low-calorie lifestyle. If your journal is large enough, you can write down any interesting tips or advice you pick up along the way or even store a special low-calorie recipe that you don’t have time to prepare right now but hope to use in the future. If you want to be ultraserious with your notebook, a three-ring binder with pocket inserts and tabbed dividers may not be a bad investment.

Setting up a low-calorie kitchen

People who are successful at weight loss often cook many of their own meals as a way of controlling the types and amounts of food they eat. You can find everything you need to know to get cooking in Chapter 5, which discusses healthy eating guidelines and shows you how to use those guidelines to create a nutritionally balanced low-calorie diet plan.

Chapter 5 also contains plenty of aisle-to-aisle advice on the best foods to buy in the supermarket to create healthful, low-calorie meals, how to stock your cupboards with the most healthful convenience foods, and how to equip your kitchen with a good selection of cookware and tools for steaming, poaching, and other great low-cal cooking methods.

Planning marvelous meals

The daily menu plans in Chapter 6, and the alternative “theme” menu plans in Chapter 7, are all designed to keep your diet life interesting by including different types of foods at every meal. If you’re a creature of habit, you’ll probably pick two or three menu plans at first and repeat them day after day. That’s perfectly okay, as long as you don’t get bored. And if you do eventually get bored, you have plenty of other menu plans to choose.

I developed the recipes in Chapters 12, 13, 14, and 15, covering breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts, to fit right into the menu plans in Chapter 6. I also designed them to be appealing to friends and family who aren’t watching their weight. In other words, they taste good. They don’t taste like “diet food,” which is the beauty of preparing your own low-calorie meals from scratch, rather than relying entirely on calorie-controlled frozen dinners or liquid meal substitutes from the supermarket. After you’ve lost weight, you won’t have to make a huge transition from “diet” food to “real” food because you’re already eating real food every day.

When you cook, pay attention to the serving sizes of the dishes you prepare. If a recipe yields 4 servings, then one-fourth of the dish is the amount of food you can eat. By taking a good look at the portioned-out foods you prepare at home, you can figure out how to eyeball portion sizes when you eat out, and you can develop a good sense of approximately how many calories are on your plate, regardless of where you eat.

Exercising to burn calories and improve your health

As a dietitian, I focus mainly on food and nutrition, so to tell you the truth, it was years before I really understood just how important physical activity is to losing weight, maintaining weight, and staying as physically and mentally fit as possible. In fact, many people focus on food more than anything else when it comes to healthier living. You can only make so many changes at once and when the issue is weight control, it’s natural to look at your diet first. But I’m here to tell you now that food is one half of the calorie equation and exercise is the other half. They carry equal weight, so to speak.

In Chapter 8, you find out that strength training is just as important as aerobic exercise. This chapter also discusses the many benefits of mind-body exercises, such as yoga, pilates, and t’ai chi. Make sure you check out the long list of ailments that exercise can help prevent and cure, because it’s good motivational material for sticking to an exercise program for life.

Even if you already recognize the benefits of exercise in a low-calorie lifestyle, you may have trouble actually fitting it into your daily routine. Fear not; in Chapter 8, there are plenty of tips for finding your motivation to exercise, choosing the type of exercise that’s right for you, and fitting exercise into your already crowded schedule.

As you age, staying the same shape and weight you were when you were younger becomes more difficult. For many, it’s a never-ending battle trying to stop your various body parts from getting thick and baggy. Although some health experts say gaining some weight in midlife is normal, you may not like the direction in which your body is moving. I’m with you on that one! Eating light is important for both your weight and health as you get older, but exercise is the real weapon against the stalling metabolism and thinning muscle tissue that causes your weight to creep up with age.

Staying on the Low-Calorie Track

Food isn’t everything when it comes to weight control. Sure, excess food packs on the pounds, and a lack of food helps you shed them, so food plays an extremely important role. And you absolutely have to know how to eat better in order to lose weight and maintain a healthier weight for life.

But consider this point: Everyone eats, but not everyone becomes overweight from eating. Some people seem to live on junk food but never gain weight. So there must be something else to this weight stuff, right? Right. And that something else may have more to do with what’s happening in your mind than what’s happening on your plate.

If you’ve been on weight-loss diets before, one of your first steps at this point is to look back over your previous diets and see what worked and what didn’t. Focus on the time period when you started gaining back the weight you’d lost. What was going on? Why did you start overeating again? Or did you just stop going to the gym? Remembering what went wrong with your past diet plans helps prevent the same thing from happening again.

Even if this time is your first attempt at weight loss, read on, because it pays to be prepared for the challenges faced by most dieters. In the following sections, I discuss the roadblocks you may face, explain when and how to reassess your plan to be sure it continues to work for you, and give you tips for seeking extra help.

Working through challenges

What happens when you’re trying to stick to a low-cal diet and you find yourself in the midst of an office party or your parents’ 25th wedding anniversary celebration? One thing is for sure: You need a plan. For instance, you can bring a very light lunch the day of the office party and plan in advance to have a light dinner waiting at home. You can spend an extra 20 minutes at the gym the morning of the event.

You can find more ideas for dealing with special circumstances in Chapter 9, but remember that you’re not going to blow your diet with one evening of celebratory overeating. The best advice anyone can give you is simply to enjoy yourself, try not to go overboard, and get back on your plan the next day. Every day can’t be a party when you’re on a low-calorie plan to lose weight, but when you’re watching what you eat on a regular basis, you do have room in your calorie budget for occasional excess.

The challenges you face when you’re trying to lose weight also include the daily events in your life that trigger you to eat in response to your emotions or to eat when you’re not really hungry. The “cure” is to recognize and address these situations so you can eliminate eating triggers that have nothing to do with real hunger. Some of these triggers, such as boredom, loneliness, and anxiety, come from within you; others, such as dealing with an unpleasant work situation or an angry spouse, come from outside.

Regardless of where your overeating triggers come from, you have to figure out how to resist them before you can move on to a healthy weight. Otherwise, you’ll continue to turn to food whenever you’re coping with emotional situations. Chapter 9 discusses the many forms of emotional eating and offers solutions for dealing with trigger situations head on.

Assessing your progress from time to time

When you take the self-help approach to weight loss, you have to monitor yourself because you’re the only one who can do it. (If you have a diet buddy, then you can monitor each other; see Chapter 11 about finding a diet buddy.) Even with a diet buddy, self-monitoring is important. Basically, you’re both the dieter and the diet counselor. After you set up the diet plan, the dieter has to check in periodically with the diet counselor to make sure it’s working. To self-monitor, stop occasionally and ask yourself the following questions:

Are you happy with your program?

Are you losing weight at a steady pace?

Are you reaching your short-term goals?

Is your support system working for you?

What can you do to improve your low-calorie lifestyle?

Does your food plan need revision?

What’s your next step?

Some of the tools you use to assess your diet include your scale (for weekly weigh-ins), your weight change chart (from Chapter 4), and any other logs and journals you use for keeping track of the food you eat, the calories you consume, the exercise you do, and any other information that may change as you progress from a low-calorie diet into a low-calorie lifestyle.

After you start your low-calorie plan, you can check out Chapter 7 for tips on reviewing your initial progress to make sure you’re taking your plan in the right direction to ultimately reach your goals. When you’ve reached your goal weight and begin a weight-maintenance phase, Chapter 10 is a great resource for advice on adjusting your food and exercise plans and making a lifelong habit of using the weight-control techniques that have worked for you.

Looking for help

Presumably, you bought (or borrowed) this book because you’re looking for help losing weight. Good idea! This book can help you figure out everything you need to know about losing weight and keeping the weight off. But that doesn’t mean you won’t, at some point, need additional help. Don’t worry; help is everywhere!

If you’re doing everything you know how to do to lose weight but you’re just not losing anything, then seek help. Your network of family and friends is the first place to start. Successful dieters have a solid support system in place to cheer them on and help them build and maintain a healthier lifestyle. Most people can’t do it alone.

At some point, you may want to look outside your immediate circle of family and friends for additional support and advice. Depending on what type of help you need, you can look in the following places:

You can find local branches of commercial weight-loss centers in cities and towns throughout the United States and Canada.

Many hospitals have their own in-house weight-loss programs.

Some physicians specialize in weight control. Be sure to get a referral from someone you trust.

Peer-led groups such as Overeaters Anonymous meet in churches, clinics, and other community centers in most cities and towns.

A registered dietitian or state-certified nutritionist is qualified to help you formulate a weight-loss plan.

Psychologists who practice cognitive-behavioral therapy sometimes specialize in weight issues.

Chapter 11 provides more information about how to know when you need outside help and how to go about finding it. Chapter 17, which contains ten stories from men and women who’ve battled their own bulges in a variety of ways, may also be helpful.

If your eating behavior is out of control and you suspect you have a full-fledged eating disorder, you can find a list of eating disorder treatment programs at www.addictionresourceguide.com.

Chapter 2

Figuring Out the State of Your Weight

In This Chapter

Comprehending calories and your metabolism

Looking at your dieting past

Determining your next dieting move

Taking measures to get to a healthy weight

T he health and fitness business is booming, and more information about diet and nutrition is available than ever before. However, government statistics show that at least 30 percent, or almost one-third, of American adults are overweight. Translated to real numbers, approximately 60 million people in this country may improve their health prospects if they lose some of their excess weight. And that figure doesn’t include the one out of five American children who are also carrying around more fat than medical experts believe is healthy.

Assessing your current weight situation and figuring out how you arrived in this state of being overweight are important first steps toward permanent weight control. This chapter can help you uncover this information as well as provide many helpful charts and formulas for figuring out just how far you are from your healthiest weight.

This chapter also contains plenty of food for thought to help you examine your weight history and understand its relevance to your current weight-loss goals. This information is necessary for success because you have to know where you are now before you can figure out where you’re going next. And you also need to know how you arrived at the weight you are now, so that it doesn’t happen again!

Ups and Downs: Discovering How People Gain and Lose Weight

Everyone who struggles with weight control knows at least one person who appears to eat truckloads of food but never gains a pound. It’s maddening, isn’t it — especially when that other person eats so much of your favorite junk food! Pinpointing the exact reasons why one person gains weight at the mere sight of a doughnut while another person can freely indulge is difficult, but the personal food choices you make and exercise habits you practice on a regular basis greatly impact it. Furthermore, you may not know enough about someone else’s habits to judge. But differences in the less obvious, and less controllable, metabolism, basically how the body uses food to create energy, also greatly affect how a person loses or gains weight.

In the following sections, I define metabolism, describe its relationship to calories, and explain why some people gain (and lose) weight more easily than others.

Understanding the basics: Metabolism 101

Your metabolism is the sum total of all the chemical reactions and changes that are constantly going on in your body. These processes include fat production, protein breakdown, toxin removal, and the general growth, replacement, and repair of body cells that’s necessary for overall good health. Concerning weight control, however, the focus is on energy metabolism, the process by which your body breaks down nutrients from food and converts them into energy.

Energy metabolism begins as soon as your body digests food and breaks it down into its respective nutrients. Your body can use three different nutrients for energy: carbohydrates, fats, and protein. (Alcohol also supplies energy, but because it contains no nutrients and can potentially damage your health, it’s not considered a good source.) Together, carbohydrates, fats, and protein are known as macronutrients. (Check out Chapter 3 for more about these and other nutrients.) Your body metabolizes each of these macronutrients differently from the rest.

Carbohydrates make energy.

Proteins renew body cells in muscle, skin, and other organs, and produce energy if no carbohydrates are available.

Fats make energy, or if not used, your body stores them directly as body fat.

In general, your metabolism works the same way as everyone else’s, but the rate at which you metabolize nutrients is unique to you. How your body uses the food you eat to create energy, and how the different foods you eat affect your weight and your overall health, is a very individual matter. If you have a fast metabolic rate, you’re able to burn calories more efficiently than someone with a slower metabolic rate. Many factors — age, gender, hormones, body composition, body temperature, and your current state of health — affect energy metabolism and help determine how effectively your body uses food to generate energy.

Identifying calories and why they matter

You can’t see calories. You can’t hear them. You can’t even taste them. Even if you had a high-power microscope, you couldn’t identify the calories in a sample of food. That’s because a calorie isn’t a “thing.” It’s a measurement, like an inch or an ounce or a mile. A calorie measures the amount of energy produced when your body metabolizes foods — or more accurately, the macronutrients in foods.

When a certain type of food contains a certain amount of calories, what that really means is that as soon as your body metabolizes a certain amount of food, that food can provide a certain amount of energy. How many calories are in a particular food depends on how much carbohydrate, fat, or protein the food contains. (You can find the calorie content of these individual macronutrients in Chapter 3.)

If the number of calories you consume equals the number of calories you burn, you’ll maintain your current weight. If you consume more calories than your body uses on a regular basis, you gain weight and store those extra calories as fat. I’m sorry, but you can’t avoid it. If you consume fewer calories than your body burns on a regular basis, you lose weight. There’s no other way.

To lose weight and keep it off, you have to find your own individual balance between the calories you consume and the calories you burn. Exercise does boost your metabolism so that you burn calories more efficiently. The more you exercise, the more calories you’ll burn. Even when you increase your exercise, however, you only lose weight if you’re consuming fewer calories than your body needs to fuel all that additional activity. It’s that simple. If your exercise routine is very intense, you may find yourself ravenous after your workouts and, as a result, consuming too many extra calories to lose weight. The solution is to keep an eye on your total daily calorie intake and be sure to factor in some snack calories every day. That way, if your exercise routine leaves you hungry, you can use your snack calories to tide you over until it’s time to eat a regular meal.

As you age, your metabolism starts slowing down and the rate at which you burn calories drops by about 2 percent every ten years. If you’re still consuming the same number of calories at age 40 that you did at age 20, and you’re not exercising more, you can easily start putting on 10 or more pounds a year.

Figuring out why gaining weight is so easy for some people

Gaining weight is easy — many people do it! All you have to do is get into the habit of eating the types and amounts of food that contribute more calories than you can possibly metabolize as energy. That’s all it takes. The years go by, and your eating habits catch up with you. Just 100 excess calories a day (the number of calories in a handful of pretzels or a couple of mini muffins) adds up to 36,500 excess calories at the end of a year and those calories result in a 10 1/2 pound weight gain. After just a few years, you have a big weight problem.

You may be the type of person who gains weight just looking at a cheese platter, while your coworker can devour second and third helpings without putting on an ounce. Her metabolism is different from yours. It’s probably faster. Chances are, though, her attitude toward food and exercise is different too. She may dislike exercise as much as you do, but she may have figured out what she needs to do in terms of exercise because she feels the payoff is worth it.

Some people simply move more than others throughout the natural course of their day, which helps them maintain a healthier weight. Thanks to a documented phenomenon known as the “fidget factor,” these people burn several hundred calories a day just by their use of body language. They often walk fast and talk fast, and they can’t sit still for long. Even if their jobs keep them in front of a computer all day, they have to get up frequently and move around. If you know someone who frequently fidgets, you’ve probably noticed that he or she can get away with eating more food than someone with a calm demeanor.

Everyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows that losing weight isn’t always as simple as balancing eating and exercise. Other factors are involved in weight gain. For instance, if being overweight or obesity runs in your family, then you may have a genetic predisposition to easy weight gain. On the other hand, even if your parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, and uncles are mostly overweight, it may not be in your genes. It may just be that you picked up bad eating habits.