Tricks of the Trade

kaleber

This is just some of the things I have started doing to help me reach my goal. This is not for everyone, but I believe it will help. Remember to do what works for you, you know what is best for your body.

1. Drink 8 cups or 1/2 gallon of water. Seems like alot right. I bought a 1/2 gallon jug and during my 8 hour work day I set a goal to finish it. The water fills me up and I am less hungry.

2. Trick your body. If you work out everyday, switch it up by going twice a day for a week or so for 2 weeks. Go back to 1once a day for awhile and then back again. If you can workout during work (something easy, not where you would sweat too much), such as situps, pushups, squats, pilates, etc...try it and set a goal to do 25 a day for 1 week, then go to 50 a day for week 2, and increase as you feel confident. Just mix it up.

3. If you are hungry eat. I eat breakfast at 7, snack at 9 (100 calories), snack at 11 (100 calories), lunch around 12, snack at 2 (100 calories), dinner when I can. If I am hungry at 8 I will snack, the point is not to be hungry to where you fill you are starving yourself...this is bad remember Between 2 and dinner time is hard to grab a snack usually since I am on the way to the gym. If you can grab a quick snack. When I mean snack I mean healthy choices such as a banana, apple, nuts, veggies, hummus, etc.... The snack should give you some satisfaction of being full.

4. Each meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) should be around 200-500 calories...this is all dependent on your calorie goal. Try to keep it in a range for easier calculations.

5. Portion out your food, sounds like a pain but it helps. If the serving size says 1 cup measure it out. For some cereals that ask for a cup, I only use 1/2 which gives me a variety of other food choices.

6. My favorite trick is to curve that sweet tooth. NUTELLA is my favorite magic trick, like pulling a rabbitt out of a hat. When I crave something sweet I grab 1 teaspoon which is 100 calories with 11 g of carbs and 10.5 g of sugar (a serving is 2 teaspoons and just double the rest). Hazelnuts and chocolate, a healthy yet satisfing fix. If you ever check the back of candy bars you will see this is way better.

7. To curve my soda habit I switched it our woth Seltzer Water, not carbonated water, that has sodium...so watch the labels and make sure you grab the right stuff. Most of the soda craving was carbonation anyway. Seltzer has no calories so YAY!!!

8. Make a serving size and put the bag/jar away. It is easy to just keep eating out of the bag, so once you put it away it will be out of sight out of mind.

9. There are 21 meals in a week, if you can keep 4 of those meals as "treat yourself" meals it will help with the edge of wanting to grab that Big Mac or whatever your heart desires. Those "treat yourself" meals will only be 20% of your diet. Plus tou can look forward to that "treat yourself" meal.

10. This one was hard for me since I do not like to prepare for the week, but set a menu for the week. I can be pretty simple and eat fish for 3 days straight or chicken too. Setting a menu makes it easier to post into MFP when you have down time and helps you prepare you caloric intake for the day or week.

Hope this helps. These are just my suggestions and what I try to do. Looking forward to my "treat yourself" meal...thinking pizza and hot wings!!!!

Brittypop

Great advice!

kaleber

Wanted to add this:

The trick I do when I go out to eat and I get full or I don't plan to take it home is to get my napkin and either cover the food or squish the napkin down on the food. In my mind if I saw someone else do this and then grab the food I would think they were disgusting and therefore if I did it I was disgusting as well. This works very well when there are lots of carbs on the plate...which I have been getting veggies lately anyway