So – I started on the Naturally Slim program at work this week. This is a 10 week online training course to help you change your eating habits and lose weight without traditional dieting. The premise is pretty straighforward – diets don’t work. Lifestyle changes do work – you need to learn to eat like a thin person does.
So – week 1 started off with weighing (311.1 – YIKES!) and measuring (which I still have to do). This allows you to keep track of progress as you go through each week. I listened to the video testimonials of the program, then started leraning the core principles of the program. They are pretty simple:
- Eat only when you are hungry
- Keep hydrated – they have a concoction they recommend (H2Orange) to keep blood sugar up while you hydrate
- Eat slowly and chew thoroughly
- Eat your favorite food first
Pretty simple, huh? Yeah – there are a few catches. The program recommend you drop sugar cold turkey and stay off of it pretty much forever (at least as far as I can tell in week one). You at least need to come off sugars for the first three weeks. Same goes for milk and cereal – no milk or cereal for the first three weeks. It’s similar in some ways to the induction phase of the South Beach or other low carb diets – eliminate the sugars in your diet to cleanse the body and reset the sugar levels and cravings you have.
So – obviously that is the part I’m struggling with. I love drinking my milk, and I eat a high fiber cereal every day to get the fiber I need into my system, since I don’t eat breads. So I’m going to have to monitor what I do very closely in this area and see if I can still lose weight while drinking milk.
I’ll do my weigh-in for the program next Monday (March 9) so we’ll see if the pounds are coming off. I did an “unofficial” weigh-in on Wednesday of this week, and I was down 2 pounds already, so we’ll see!
I also think I’m going to start charting the principles of the various diets and eating plans/lifestyle changes I’ve been researching so far this year, to see where the commonalities are. I suspect that they all have the same core principles – eat less, stop when you are full, eat lots of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and complex carbohydrates in their whole gtrain forms, exercise, drink lots of water, moderation in all things. Maybe if I can figure that out for my needs, I’ll start being successful.
Also – on Monday my husband and I have a personal training session at our local recreation center gym. It’s only $40 to join (per person) for the whole year, and you get access six days a week to weight machines, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, and treadmills. It’s way cheaper than joining a commercial gym, and I figure even if I can only make it there 2 days a week, I can get some weight training in, then focus on walking at work. I didn’t get a walk in this whole week because of a busy schedule during the day and a pulled muscle in my hip (as well as a sore knee from taking the stairs last week). But I know that exercise will be key to my weight loss – so here I go!
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