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YOU on a diet - Chapter 9

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Food for Thoughts When you eat sugar, you light up the motor cortex of your brain, which controls your lips, tongue, and mouth. The hippocampus, which controls memories of food, lights up when people on rigid diets crave certain foods-overwhelming their willpower and ability to resist. Swirling World As we battle with food, the cyclone of guilt and shame touches down on our psychological landscape. The collateral damage: our waistlines. Can You Spare some Change? We all know that making a change in your life is as mental as it is behavioral. Research shows that this is the best four-step process for making change; Be Positive. It works for coaches, bosses,

and parents, as well as waist managers. If you blame yourself for your weight, if you are depressed about your weight, if your mood is fouler than a subway station in August, then your first job is to refocus. You need to think about what you can do, how you can do it, why it's good for you and how you'll succeed. In the weight-loss game, poker-faced confidence trumps negativity every time. By stripping yourself of the negative emotions of guilt and shame, you'll make the right rational (and long-term)decisions about your eating obstacles. Add Some Support. You may not know it, but your world is full of saboteurs-people out to make you fatter than Microsoft's coffers. There's the boss who brings in sweets for every Thursday meeting. The friend who brings you a pie when you're upset. The spouse who suggests pitchers of margaritas and a plate of cheese nachos to celebrate the end

of the week. Maybe there's nothing wrong with their intentions, but there is something wrong with the fact that their attempts to appeal to your heart are actually damaging it. What we want you to do-no, need you to do-is develop a support system of people who know your goals, know your obstacles, know your weaknesses, and know your strengths. )Don't have anyone? You can hook up on the Internet, including on www.realage. com). This person will be your sounding board, your comfort system, and your measure of accountability. With public accountability- that is, you reporting in on those daily struggles and successes- you're more likely to make a permanent change. Make a Gesture. Small gestures (ones not involving individual fingers flung at passing motorists) can be viewed as anything from signs

of love to signs of bribery. Token gestures can also help kick-start the psychology of change. Just making a seemingly small change will help determine your long-term success, whether it's buying a pedometer, a health-club membership, or new walking shoes; throwing away the unhealthy foods in your pantry; and even setting up a computer file to record your progress. YOU-reka! If you make one small move like this, research shows that you'll be three times more likely to follow through with the specific plan you intend to follow. This small change is your way of putting the key in your waist management ignition (www.mychoicescount. com can help). Then Do It. Once you start with the small gesture, you're ready. Eat a full day's worth of perfect-for- you food. Walk

thirty minutes today, tomorrow, and every day after that. That's right, thirty minutes of walking a day is the minimum commitment. (You can break them up into smaller segments if you can't do it all at once.) Then make a second action commitment: Commit to doubling (or tripling) your daily vegetable intake. With one foot, take one specific first step. The next foot has no choice but to follow The Deep End We look for our spiritual guidance in many places, including our most sacred religious traditions, but many of us seek to temporarily satisfy this profound need in our kitchens. YOU TIPS! Make the Split. Clearly, some of us eat for physical reasons (we're just hungry) and some of us gnaw on leftover Halloween candy for emotional reasons (we're steamed

at the boss about having to start and finish a new report by 10 a.m., and it's (9:47). But sometimes it's not always that easy to figure out the difference. To help, you need to start using the YOU Diet hunger Test. Throughout the day, record your level of hunger as judged by this scale. Stay tuned to what your stomach is telling you, now what's happening outside with stresses (kids going crazy), emotions (spouse is working late again), or habits (Leno equals bowl of Apple Jacks). This process will help you really fell your hunger, so that you can let your stomach, not your emotions, dictate your habits. O Tank=Hungry. It feels as if you haven't eaten since junior year of high school. 1/2 Tank= Edge is off. You're OK, not desperate, like maybe when you're driving home from work. 3/4

Tank=Satisfied and not hungry. You can go much longer without food. You just ate nuts and a drink before dinner. 1 Fuel Tank=Full and comfortable. It's the way you feel after finishing an average-portion, healthful meal. Overflow Level S=Stuffed. You could've stooped two scoops of pudding ago. Overflow Level OS=Overstuffed. Audible groaning detected. Overflow Level BP=Button Pop/Exploding. It's the typical Thanksgiving gorge. You feel sick, and even take the name of your momma's stuffing in vain. The way the test works is, every time you find yourself reaching for the cheese sauce or cookie box, rate your hunger. Than think about whether you're reaching for the leftover lasagna because you're truly

hungry or for a reason that has absolutely nothing to do with hunger. Ideally, you'll want to stay in the 3/4 to Full Tank range-satisfied at all times. And you'll get there by eating regularly throughout the day. (See Part 4 for details.) After applying these gauges for two weeks, you'll start to instinctively know why you're eating, and better, you'll train yourself to eat simply to keep your stomach satisfied-and not your emotions. Pick and Stick. Yeah, sure, variety may be the spice of life, but it also can be the death of dieting. When you have a lot of choices for a meal, it's a lot easier to slip out of good eating habits and into ham-induced bad ones. When you sit down at a diner and are presented with a menu that's the size of a phone book, it's easy to give in. One way to get away from fat bombs is to eliminate choices for at least one meal a day. Pick the one

meal you Rush through most and automate it. For most people, it's lunch. So find a healthy lunch you like-salad with grilled chicken and olive oil, turkey on whole-grain bread-and have it for lunch everyday. Every day. Yes, every day. YOU-reka! More and more research is showing that putting a cap on the variety of foods and tastes you experience will help you control your weight. (Think of your dog: Penelope stays the same weight when she has her regular food every day. But as soon as she starts gorging on the variety of nightly table scraps, the puny poodle looks more like a massive mastiff.) How does it work? It seems that when you have meals rich in flavor variety, it takes more and more calories to keep you full (think of Thanksgiving, when you eat a lot of different things, stuff yourself, and still have room for pumpkin pie). So when we experience meals

with lots of diverse flavors-think Mexican or Indian cuisine-we tend to eat more to satisfy our taste buds. Now, we don't want you to become bored with food, but if you make this a habit for at least one meal a day, it'll decrease your temptations and help you stop thinking about food so often. In fact, we usually prescribe two meals that are the same each day for our patients. It's one of the ways to automate your brain so that your habits follow. Of course, we don't want you to stop enjoying the wonderful diversity of flavors, but it will help control your appetite. Another trick: Use extra-virgin olive oil, which has less flavor and may help control taste cravings. Find a Substitute. For avoiders, we know that eating is about as rational as an inebriated sports fan. If we all had toe ability to make rational choices, like zucchini is better for us than fettuccine-then

there would be no need for the multibillion- dollar diet industry. Eating is an emotional action, and it's an addictive one. The average person knows doughnuts are hand grenades to health. But we pass by a neighboring cubicle with a dozen cream-filled jobbies, and we've finished three before we've even turned the corner. Add to this the fact that research shows that people under the most work stress gain the most weight, and you've got yourself an obesity double whammy. So the question is really, how you can take irrational, emotional, and addictive actions and turn them into smart, rational, good decisions? For one thing you can develop that list of healthful contingency foods and clear your fridge and pantry of waist-killing foods, which we'll show you how to do in Part 4. For another, you can look for other things to fill the needs that food is currently filling. Traditionally, so much of our self-satisfaction comes from

how we see ourselves externally. But that satisfaction is fleeting, and we need to find and focus on the things in life we're truly grateful for-be it our families, our careers, or a hobby that we're passionate about. Keep Your Hands Full. You'd think that being plooped in front of a TV playing Xbox would mean that you're destined for a life of fatness. But that's not the case; studies show that playing video games is actually not correlated with obesity. Why? Turns out that when you've got your two hands on the controllers and your fingers moving faster than Liberace's, that means one thing: Your paws won't be knuckle-deep in a bowl of cake batter. (Some games even have foot mats for you to make commands with your feet, too, so you can get a complete workout; ask your kids about the Dance Dance Revolution craze.)

Now, that's not to say that an intimate relationship with Super should be your number-one strategy, but it does prove an underlying point. YOU-reka! When you keep your hands and brain occupied-whether it's with video games, gardening, or removing a spleen-it means you're putting your brain in the state you want: not thinking about eating and not automatically reaching for something to put in your mouth. Walk This Way. The root of the YOU physical activity plan is a minimum of thirty minutes of walking a day (broken up into three segments of ten minutes each if you need to)-and telly somebody about it after you're done (yes, every day, no excuses). You will do it not only for the physical effects, but also (even more so, actually) for the psychological effects. Remember what self-esteem comes from: the ability to overcome obstacles and achieve

goals. Walking accomplishes both. YOU-reka! Walk for thirty; it's easy, doable, and maintainable- and it's a first step out of the tornado and back into the game of life. A lot of people feel they haven't earned the right to lose weight. Walking every day earns you that right, and telling someone about it helps you fell proud of your accomplishment. Get Lost in Your Mind. Whenever you feel the urge to eat, just sit and think about your life and what's driving you to pick up a fork or open the fridge. Would you shove that stuff in a friend's or family member's body? It's OK to cry, it's OK to think, it's OK to meditate. In fact, maybe you can learn from your pain-not make it worse by thinking you can pad it with three extra inches of abdominal fat. For some, meditation or prayer enhances their power to satisfy the

subconscious drive they have. Get Touched. Both on a physical level and on a psychological level, seek out positive interactions with other people. (Remember the phone call at the end of your walk.) Evidence shows that increased amounts of oxytocin may be able to decrease blood pressure and lower the effects of stress. And the way research shows that you increase oxytocin levels is through CCK, which helps control your appetite, and thought an increase in social interaction and touch. If nothing else, it's a darn good reason to schedule that weekly massage. And it may help reinforce why things such as meditation and hypnosis-suspected to increase oxytocin-can be helpful with weight loss. Also, while there's as much information on this as on obesity in elite marathoners, the fear of touch and lack of oxytocin release may be one reason why the abused individual often has problems with

waist management. YOU TEST Why Ask Why? The fact is, you know. You know if you need to lose weight. You can tell by the way you look, by the way you feel, and by whether your clothes feel tighter than an unopened pickle jar. But to be able to make changes-sustainable changes-you not only have to know what you've done to your figure. You also have to know why you're abusing your body, in the form of the emotional and physical triggers that led you to gaining waist. To start, preform a self-administered "why test"-that is, keep asking yourself "why questions about your weight until you

come to the real answer about why you want to lose weight and why you can't. It may go something like this: Why do you want to lose weight? Because I want to fit into my old pair of jeans. Why do you want to fit into your old pair of jeans? Because I'd have more confidence. Why do you want more confidence? Because I'll feel better trying to meet new people. Why do you want to meet new people? Because I'm recently divorced and hoping to start a new relationship. Why do you want to start a new relationship? Because I'm feeling lonely... And that's likely to be where the thread of questions stops-where you can link the first question to the last answer. You want to lose weight because you're lonely, but the likely cause of your weight gain if the very

same thing: that you're lonely. YOU Test The Personality Test Yes, you could make the argument that those marshmallow- covered corn dogs at the carnival have a little something to do with your about-to-burst waistband. The more likely saboteur? Your excuses. Here, take this personality test to see what attitudes and behaviors may be preventing you from losing weight and getting healthy (Dr. Kusher's full test is available at www.diet.com). Add up

your check marks and see how your attitude toward eating and exercise influences the size of your waist. Sorry, but with the way this test is set up in the book, I'm not even going to try to set it up in the same way. At least you have the website to go to, in order to do the full test. You can buy the book to do the version in the book. YOU Test Don't Avoid This Test It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that avoiders typically have feeling of inadequacy and are hypersensitive to being negatively evaluated. Identifying with four or more of the following statements means you

have strong avoidance tendencies. I avoid work activities that involve close interpersonal contact-not because of my deodorant level but because I fear criticism or rejection. Unless I know I'm going to be liked, I'm hesitant to get involved in relationships. When I'm in social situations, I feel more inept than an umpire with a detached retina. My shirt's not coming off unless the lights are going off. All of my social situations feel like high school; I'm preoccupied with being criticized or rejected. I don't engage in risky activities because my biggest fear is the risk of embarrassment. In new interpersonal situations, I feel the same way I feel at the beach: shy and inhibited, and I would do anything to be somewhere else.

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