Diet

[oceana]

Today I'm starting my serious dieting again. I have gained 8 punds since January and this trend needs to be stopped. Especially because I hadn't reached my target weight after last year's diet. I was pretty successful, but with the exam and then canada I just stopped. Bad me, I know.

But today I start again. I already went running and did some exercises and I feel very motivated.

The reason why I post about this at all is that I know some of you are trying to lose weight too. No wait, are going to lose weight, that's the spirit. There will be no trying here, only success.

• Set yourself realistic goals: 1-1-5 kilos per week is realistic and healthy. If you lose more, chances are that you will gain it again. Since we are all in front of our computers all the time anyway, you may want to get yourself a ticker at http://www.tickerfactory.com/



• Same goes for exercising: exercise is THE thing to do when you want to lose weight, but don't set your goals too high.
  
  
  
  • 15-20 minutes running three times a week will already do wonders for you.
  
  
  • If you want to do more, great, but don't see it as a failure if you don't exercise every day, or you are likely to give up.
  
  
  • If you are seriously overweight and cannot run or exercise in a gym, see a doctor/diet coach and ask for options: there are gyms where overweight people can exercise while lying down, for example, so yourbones and joints won't be damaged.
  
  
  • You WILL sweat and you WILL feel tired and sore, so find an exercise that you enjoy so much that it is worth the pain. If you hate running, that's okay, try something else that you enjoy.
  
  



• Weigh yourself: you'll want to know how much weight you are losing and you'll want to write it down and lookat the pretty numbers. I can't tell you how often you should weigh yourself, but do it at the same time of the day without clothes.
  
  
  
  • I weigh myself in the morning after I get up, every day because I need to know what I weigh to be motivated for the day. Other people prefer to weight theirselves only once a week to see more progress.
  
  
  • Don't get frustrated if you weigh a bit more one day, it's normal and depends on how much you drank, what day of your cycle it is and whatever else our stubborn bodies think of. If you kept to your diet, it doesn't mean that you have actually gained weight.
  
  
  
  



• Drinking! I cannot emphasize enough how important drinking is, and when I say drinking I mean WATER.
  
  
  
  • Now, not every is a water connaisseur, but there are huge differences. If you think you don't like water, drink yourself through the different brands at your supermarket until you find one that you like. My personal favourites are Volvic (most of Europe), Labrador Source (Canada) and Poland Spring (US).
  
  
  • Yes, I have a favourite water on all continents and I'm not ashamed of it. ;-)
  
  
  • 2-3 liters of water are the minimum, if, no, when you exercise and when it's hot, it should be more. I read about people losing weight simply by increasing their water intake, so drink, my friends, DRINK! ;-)
  
  
  
  



• Resisting temptation:
  
  
  
  • Take the ugliest picture of yourself, the one in which you look really fat and disgusting and stick it onto your fridge. And then make another LARGE copy and put it in your fridge, in case you managed to ignore the other one and opened the door. Same procedure with other places where you keep food.
  
  
  • Before you eat a piece of pizza, chocolate or anything else that is unhealthy and makes you fat: think about how much exercise you'll ruin with it. Are your muscles still hurting from your morning run and you think you deserve something nice for your pain? Your weight loss is something nice: eating the chocolate means that all your running was for nothing.
  
  



• Throw food away.
  Yes, I'm serious. Think of yourself as an alcoholic: if you want to quit drinking, you quit forever. There is no "maybe one day after I quit I will drink a little glass of this." You quit, period.
  
  
  
  • So all those cookies and chocolate and chips and whatever else that doesn' go with your diet: throw it away. Give it away. Hell, send your friends real cookies instead of virtual ones for once, but don't keep it in the house.
  
  
  • You think you'll want to eat it after you've reached your target goal? Well, I think you can afford to go and buy a new chocolate bar when that time has come. Until then, throw it away!
  
  



• The Diet: I am against all fashion diets like the southbeach thing or that famous soup or whatever else is trendy at the moment. Those are for thin people who want to get even thinner.
  
  
  
  • If you hear about the great diet that allows Eva Longoria to keep her body or Heidi Klum to stay thin, compare yourself to their bodies, and unless you look like them, it's not the diet for you. You'll want a diet that will change what you eat in a way that makes it possible for you to diet every day without thinking and planning and coooking half of the day.
  
  
  • Personally, I like weight watchers, though I have never joined the program or been at a meeting. I know how it works though and I have a points chart, so I'm doing it for myself. The points chart is in german, so if you speak german and want to lose weight with the weight watchers system but didn't know where to get the points chart, drop me a comment with your email addy and I will send it to you.
  
  



• Treat yourself
  
  
  
  • If you are like me, you eat when you are feeling bad or when you've done something good or when you had a crappy day or when you exercised or one of the thousand other excuses that I find to treat myself to food. Since this doesn't go too well with a diet, find something else to treat yourself with.
  
  
  • For example: I have exercised, no i can afford to sit down and watch an episode of Stargate! or read that J/D slash fic that I've meant to read for a da, or stare at Rodney and John for an extra 15 minutes. Whatever rocks your boat, as long as you are aware that you are doing something good for yourself and as long as it is not food.
  
  
  • Another option (probably the better one, but I know my audience), is to do something good for your body: a new lotion, a hair treatment, painting your toenails... anything that makes you feel good and beautiful. Because we are all beautiful, never forget that. We are just trying to become even more beautiful and healthy by losing weight.
  
  
  • If you absolutely have to eat, eat fruit. Most fruits have the advantage of being complicated, i.e. you have to peel and prepare them before you can eat. This is a good thing: instead of eating chips which you just need to open in front of the TV, eat fruit, the most complicated you can get. Sit down, watch TV and prepare your fruit while you do it. This will give your hands something to do, and let's be honest: TV eating is mostly for our hands. You can even turn simple fruit like apples into a 20 minute task if you cut them into little Stargate shaped rings before you eat them. My summer tip is melon: take a small melon, cut it in half and eat it with a spoon: it's delicious, has next to no calories and it takes a good while. If it comes from the fridge, it's almost like eating ice cream.
  
  
  
  


• Be creative:
  You don't really lose weight with your body, you lose weight with your brain.
  So, instead of quickly eating your diet lunch, think about what Jim and Blair would do with this food! Or if it's one of those days, imagine how Rodney would complain if they served your lunch in the Atlantis cafeteria. It willbe a lot more satisfying to eat that way, and you won't get hungry again as soon. And if you are, imagine that you are Rodney on a missionand there is no food around, so you have to lick John instead. (and yes, I also imagine that I am training with Cameron or fleeing from Jaffa when I run. So what, I'm a geek, but at least I will be a thin geek soon)

That's it for now. I know we can all do it and I wish everyone the best of luck.

And now I will have an apple and some Stargate season 9.