Say NO to the Reward System

Give yourself gifts often

Say NO to the Reward System

Say NO to the reward system when losing weight! It is counterproductive and could sabotage your weight loss efforts. We have read or seen weight loss experts that promote rewarding yourself for your weight loss efforts such as the dangling carrot method as a way to lose weight. But, this dangling carrot could cause you to make decisions that you would not otherwise make and to your detriment!

Reward Is Not Really Worth It?

 

What if the reward that you decided you would get if you made your weekly goal is just not worth it. Maybe it was a massage and you really don’t have time for a massage anyway. So this becomes an anti-reward system. You are no longer motivated by the initial reward you said would motivate you, so now what is your motivation to not go for the second helping of chicken and dumplings? Nothing!

You Need the Reward No Matter What!

So you said if you made your goal you would buy a suit to wear when you go on that interview next week. The problem is that you need that new suit no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you meet your goal or not you still need to go on the job interview and you don’t have a suit that fits. So this becomes a tricky reward in that you may try hard to meet your reward but not all goals are achieved (at least not in the original time frame desired) so if you still give yourself the reward even though you didn’t meet your goal you are no longer going to believe yourself that the reward system is real, so now you have lost credibility with yourself.

 

You Can’t Reward Yourself the Way You Want

A lot of other people will use the reward system and they may buy themselves some extravagant “rewards”. This is fine if they want to, I don’t want to judge. But, what if you can’t afford to buy as expensive “rewards” as your friends? Then you will be sad, instead you should be ecstatic that you made your goal. Which is why I do not believe in rewards. Be happy that you made your goal! Write down “You did it!”, “Great job!”, “Way to go!” jump up and down, get a big smile!! But, don’t give yourself a reward.

Do Things You Like All the Time

 

You want to be sure that you are doing things and giving yourself things often and as needed. If you need some relaxation then go ahead and get a massage, if you need a suit for an interview be sure to get a suit (maybe from a discount store since you will be losing more weight), and if you want to do something fun—go do it!

Sherri Sue Fisher, author of TimerDiet

www.timerdiet.com

Beware of the 100 Calorie Snacks



100 Calorie Snack?!

Beware of the 100 Calorie Snacks

There has been a lot of talk about 100 calorie snacks being the go to amount to look for when picking out a snack. I use the word snack lightly, since most people think of snack as a cookie, or a candy bar, or if trying to eat healthy perhaps some celery and carrot sticks. But, none of these options are going to give you the nutrients that you need to get you through to the next meal (except perhaps the candy bar if they have a lot of nuts!) and help you in your ability to either sustain or lose weight. But, for now let’s focus on how you feel when you eat certain foods rather than the calories.

Use Your Own Body as a Guiney Pig (for a short time period)

I recommend using your body as a Guiney pig for a short time and really find out how your body feels when you are not eating a well-balanced meal or mini-meal (my name for snack). Well-balanced means that you are including dietary fat, protein, and carbohydrates and significant portions of each. Write down how you feel right after you eat, an hour after you eat, and then two hours after you eat. Try eating something well-balanced and do the same. How do you feel? Once you realize that you can affect how you feel by what you eat, you will look at food in a completely different way.

Why the desire or need for the 100 calorie snack?

I do not like the word snack, but for this paragraph I will use it. Sometimes you do need a little something to tide you over to the next scheduled meal. Especially if the next meal is a planned one with others or at a specified time dictated by your schedule. While 100 calories seems like a small amount and something to strive for, but as I pointed out in last week’s blog, calories are nothing more than a calculation of the nutrients of dietary fat, protein, and carbohydrates, and in and of itself are meaningless. 

Yes, calories in and of themselves are meaningless!

You do not need to eat a snack if you don’t feel like it and you also should not deprive yourself of snack if you need one. I read just yesterday that now the morning snack can lead to overeating during the day…hogwash! If you wake up early in the morning and your next meal is not going to be for 6 hours because you need to eat lunch at noon, you more than likely need a morning snack. But, if you wake up later in the morning and there is less than 4 hours between breakfast and lunch you probably don’t need one. Same applies for the afternoon, if you eat lunch at noon and dinner at 5pm, you are probably fine without an afternoon snack.

But, again it is all about when you feel you need to eat, not when someone else tells you that you need to eat. Track your progress using my journals either online or using the Apps in the Apple or Android Market – Timerdiet and you will learn how much and how often your body needs to eat and remember every day is different!

 

Sherri Sue Fisher, author of TimerDiet

www.timerdiet.com/journal

STOP Counting Calories—Please!



STOP Counting Calories

 

Calories Are Deceiving

Did you know that one gram of dietary fat is 9 calories, and one gram of protein or carbohydrates are 4 calories each. So when you are given a certain amount of calories it is this calculation that you are getting. So 100 calories could be 11.11 grams of dietary fat and nothing else. Or it could be 25 grams of carbohydrates or 25 grams of protein. More than likely it will be some combination of the above. So if you were deciding what to eat would you pick something that was 100 calories without even knowing what the grams of dietary fat, protein, and carbs are? I hope not, but many people do. They hear—a calorie is a calorie—from so called experts. Not paying any attention to how they will feel if they are getting all of their calories from carbohydrates, how it will affect their organs if all of their calories come from protein, and how little amount of food you will get if all of the calories come from dietary fat.

Nutritionists Focusing on Calories

I was watching a morning talk show this last Wednesday and a well-known nutritionist with a PhD was telling viewers she would recommend eating two pancakes with syrup instead of two eggs with whole wheat toast and butter, since the pancakes and syrup only had 280 calories!!! What? Eat pancakes with syrup for breakfast instead of eggs and toast (are you kidding me?!) as the preferred choice of a credentialed doctor. This is a classic case of focusing only on the calories and not on the nutrition of the foods you are eating. Perhaps this is how eating foreign substances became a fad for weight loss, the perception that there is no calories associated with them. Which brings up another problem: calories equating to pounds.

Calories do NOT equal pounds

Yes, I am going to go out on a limb here and buck the status quo and pretty soon you will, too. Do you know how much ½ gallon of water weighs? It is about 4 pounds. How many calories does it have? ZERO. How much does a gallon of water weigh? Yep about 8 pounds, again how many calories? Still ZERO. How about 200 gallons of water? 1,600 pounds and yes you are right again, ZERO calories.  DO NOT drink water in excess it can be deadly.

 

Calories Burned Do NOT Matter

I am sure you are certain that you are exercising in an effort to burn calories, please do not think this way. It will keep you from working out for your overall health. Your body needs for you to move it—daily…yes daily, not 3 times a week or every other day. Every single day you need to do something that gets you moving, walking, lifting, just get going!! There is another benefit to exercising every day and that is that your appetite will be much more even. If you think you are working out to burn calories you are going to be sadly disappointed and more than likely you are going to say to yourself, that you will just skip a glass of wine, or latte or that dessert and along with it skip the workout!! No, no, no!!

Sherri Sue Fisher, author of TimerDiet

www.timerdiet.com/timer-diet-concepts

 

 

Dietary Restrictions

Dietary Restrictions Affect Many

 

While working on the 2^nd Edition of the Ebook TimerDIET it became apparent to me that a lot of people have dietary restrictions and while I come from a place of inclusion in my book TimerDIET, I understand the specific needs some people have due to dietary restrictions whether due to allergies, medical recommendations or doctor’s orders or even lifestyle decisions and religious reasons. What I have noticed when there is a dietary restriction is that the focus is on the restriction rather the inclusion.

 

Be Mindful of the Restriction, but Focus on the Inclusion

While you must be mindful of the restriction, you must focus on the inclusion!! Whether your restriction is by choice or necessity focusing on it may create an imbalanced approach to your diet. The 2^nd definition of diet in the Merriam Webster dictionary is my favorite, “habitual nourishment”¹ When you think about eating dairy free for instance you begin to think about all of the things that you cannot eat and decide that you can eat “everything” else. But, this is not the case. You still need to have a well-balanced “diet” i.e. habitual nourishment for so many reasons beyond keeping your weight in check.

                                                         

Decide What You Can and Should Include in Your Diet 

Make a list of all the foods that you like and are not on your restriction list. Be sure that when combined into one meal or mini-meal that you are including dietary fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Do not assume that you know the nutrients of the foods that you love. Go to the USDA Nutrient Database at www.ndb.nal.usda.gov if you are not sure of the nutrient values. You may find that you have too much of one nutrient and not enough of the others. If this is the case, then search the internet for the type of dietary restriction you have and the nutrient you want to find more of. For example, Gluten free diet protein sources and there you will find ideas of foods you may not have thought of that will help you have a more well-balanced diet.

 

Whatever You do to Lose the Weight You MUST do to Keep the Weight OFF

I cannot stress this enough! I was speaking with someone at a conference this last weekend and she said that she was drinking a diet shake of some sort for breakfast and another one at night, with a meal for lunch to lose weight. I asked her, are you OK with drinking two shakes a day for the rest of your life? She looked at me with a look of horror and questioning, and said, “NO!” But, if what you are doing to lose the weight you are not willing to do for the rest of your life, you will not be keeping the weight off for too long. Of course, there will be some minor adjustments that you will need to make when maintaining, but changing from a two-thirds daily liquid diet to a virtually zero daily liquid diet is a big change.

 

Sherri Sue Fisher, author of TimerDiet

www.timerdiet.com

¹"Diet." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.