Write down your goal weight—your ideal weight. Make a commitment to reach it. Put it on a yellow Post-it note and stick it on your mirror. Carry it with you in your purse, in your wallet. Write it down—you can reach it.
This chapter is for everyone, whether you need to lose weight or maintain your present weight. It is divided into two sections, “secrets” and “easy steps.” You are going to learn how to use these secrets and easy steps to maintain your lifestyle.
Three Secrets for Losing Weight
1. Eat Vegetables and Fruits
The first secret is to fill up on vegetables and fruits. Has anyone ever told you the secret to losing weight is to eat as much as you want? Well, that’s exactly what you can do—with fruits and vegetables, that is. There will be no limit to the amount of fruits and vegetables you eat because of two facts. One is that both foods have lots of fiber and will give you a full sensation, which will take away your desire to eat more. And second, vegetables and fruits have the fewest calories for the amount of food you consume. Your first secret to losing weight is to develop eating habits that center around getting full with the fewest calories.
I know what you may be thinking: “He is going to ask me to eat mostly . . . what?” It may not sound very appetizing, but after you incorporate this secret into your strategy for eating, it will surprise you how you become accustomed to having vegetables as a basis of your meal rather than meat. Plus, over time, your desire for the foods you think will be impossible to give up right now will decline greatly. Your desire for a thick, juicy steak will drift out of the “urgent” part of your brain. If you don’t believe me now, I just ask you to try this for eight weeks and watch it happen. You are addicted to the foods you enjoy so much. You can change that addiction to something healthier. Don’t argue. Just try it.
2. Be Mindful of Portions
Portions fall into two categories. When you eat out, whatever portion that particular restaurant presents is the portion you have to deal with. When you eat at home, you have the choice of what you place on your plate. Home is much easier to control than restaurants. At home, you simply tell yourself that you are going to place a small portion on your plate, sit down, and enjoy your meal. That situation is controllable, especially if you practice the ten-minute factor and tell yourself that, for now, this is what you are going to place on your plate—and that is all you eat.
But problems come when you eat out. You order at a restaurant and are given a huge serving of everything. So what do you do?
If you’re eating with your spouse or a friend, and the two of you can agree on a particular entrée, you can order a kitchen split. You will be given a half portion of the fish or chicken order, plus a full order of the vegetables. You can add a soup or salad and end up with an abundance of food to eat. Or they will simply split the entrée in half and serve it on two separate plates.
If you’re eating alone, you can simply ask that the kitchen place half of the meal into a take-home container. That way you have something to eat at home for lunch or dinner the next day, or you place it in your refrigerator and find it there a week later and end up throwing it away. That’s okay too—it’s better than eating it all at that initial evening. Some restaurants will even let you order a half portion. The charge will be a little more than half price, but at least you aren’t getting the entire large amount.
A third way of ordering less if you’re eating alone is to order from the appetizer menu and add a couple of vegetables on the side. That’s all you will need if you are in weight-losing mode. Don’t get trapped thinking you are eating well with just an appetizer if that starter food is fried, battered, and cheese covered. So many times they are, but many times you will see smoked tuna or salmon, or a small skewer of grilled shrimp, or similar food found in the entrée section of the menu. Plus, you can add soup or salad to your appetizer if you are really hungry and end up with a satisfying meal. Don’t overlook this option. Most of the time you will get plenty to eat if you follow this platform. A salad and appetizer is not a bad combination.
The fourth and final way, which is almost impossible when you remind yourself that you are paying for the entire amount of food, is to simply leave food on your plate. If you end up in this situation, at least give it the best try you can. Visually divide the plate into what you will and won’t eat. Once you have eaten what you decided to eat, activate the ten-minute factor and stop eating for ten minutes while you order a cup of coffee and sit and talk with your friends. That way you can return to your food if you are still hungry ten minutes later. But I assure you, nine times out of ten, you won’t eat another bite because by that time, the “I’m full” signal will have started flashing and you will realize that your main goal is to lose weight rather than to clean your plate (like your mother taught you).
By the way, if you are eating with friends, look at the mealtime as just that—time with friends. Center your attention on being with them, talking with them, enjoying them. Make them the central theme rather than your food. You will eat slower, talk more, and before long, you are not so hungry.
3. Don’t Eat Snacks
The third secret is no snacks. Listen to this next statement: controlling your snacking is one of the most significant aspects of weight loss. People add many surplus calories, resulting in extra weight, because of “just a light afternoon snack” or “just a bite of something before going to bed.” You do not realize all the extra nonproductive calories you are adding each time you snack. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you will eat less at mealtime if you snack between meals. Don’t get trapped into thinking snack calories subtract from meal calories. You pat yourself on the back for not eating a dessert at supper last night, but it doesn’t click in your mind that you can put on as many or more calories with a snack as you can with the dessert.
Begin at home and in your office by removing the snack temptations that most Americans go for. Walk through an office building and look. The majority of overweight people have some type of food sitting on their desk. I can’t stress it enough. Remove the temptation. Remove the junk. Remove them from your cupboard, fridge, shelves, and office. Don’t let your eyes even have to glance at them when you open a cabinet or drawer. Such a big part of temptation is sight. Get the snacks out of the way and out of your vision.
Relax. It’s not that you will never eat another snack in your life. Once at your goal weight, you will eat snacks, but first you will develop the habit of eating nuts and fruits. (More on that later.)
Now that you know the significance of eating fruits and vegetables, controlling portion size, and not eating snacks between meals, let’s look at some basic rules concerning what you eat at mealtimes. I call these basics “easy steps” for weight loss.
Eight Easy Steps for Controlling Weight
1. Food Focus versus Calorie Focus
Many diets emphasize calories. Calories are indeed significant because your body runs on calories. You take x number in, and it takes x number to run the ship. The calories not used are stored as fat in your body. It doesn’t take much of a medical mind to realize that if you continue taking in more calories than you burn, you gain weight. So calories are significant, but you are not going to count them. You are going to learn which foods contain the fewest calories and eat more of those foods. You count the foods rather than the calories.
Fatty foods have more calories than nonfatty foods. As you already know, fat has over twice the calories, ounce for ounce, as protein or sugar. If you fry something, you will be adding about a third more calories. Again, it doesn’t take much intelligence to realize that when someone eats fatty meals or desserts, they are taking in many more calories than with foods such as fruits and vegetables. Many fad diets will have you eating something that may be fewer calories than another food, but the lower calorie food may contain a multitude of saturated fat or dietary cholesterol that skyrocket your LDL Cholesterol. In such cases, the saturated fat factor is much more important than the number of calories the particular food may contain. Don’t get hung up on the number of calories; rather, get focused on the aging potential of a particular food.
2. Snacks
Once you have reached your goal weight, you will be able to eat snacks. Develop the habit of utilizing fruits or nuts as your snack foods. Even though they are snacks, the foods will be healthy. I remind you here that there will be days when you realize you are a pound or two above your goal weight. That is the day you go back to your “no snacks” rule until you are back on your set course.
3. No Bread before Meals
Whole-grain breads do not have saturated fat, which is good. But they do contain calories. Think of breads as sugar. Most people can relate sugar to extra calories, and that is basically what that bread represents—extra calories. During the weight-loss part of your plan, the less bread, the better. Don’t dive into that basket of bread that appears on your table. Once you see the food you ordered, you immediately realize how much better that food will taste, calorie for calorie, than the bread.
Try this: the next time you are in a restaurant where they bring you a basket of bread, hold off eating it until after you have completed your main course. Then after your meal, see if you want some of the bread sitting there in the basket. I’ll bet nine times out of ten you will not wolf down the bread like you would have when they first set it before you. Taking in those premeal bread calories is completely preventable. Even after reaching your ideal weight, you can have your toast for breakfast and half sandwich for lunch, but no extra-calorie bread before your meal is still a good habit to have developed.
4. No Desserts
This step is difficult but important. Enjoy the company of your friends while they eat their dessert and you have your coffee or tea or just chat. If you are losing weight, no dessert after your meal is on your primary platform strategy for eating. Most desserts have far more calories than that bread you just convinced yourself to avoid.
5. The Portion Habit
From time to time you will gain a pound or two. I like to weigh myself every morning to see if I need to go back to my “no snack” and “smaller portions” rules I used when losing weight. If I am a pound too heavy one morning, I revert to the “snack” and “portion” secrets I used in losing weight. It is much easier to maintain your weight a pound at a time than one day realizing you are five pounds over your goal weight. Don’t ever forget the significance of portions.
6. No Calories from Beverages
Many individuals enjoy drinking Coca-Cola and other soft drinks—regular and diet. The weight-loss phase of the plan recommends that you drink no beverage that adds calories to your diet. Having said that, I will give you a personal example of when I do drink Coke with every calorie it has.
I travel overseas a lot, many times to third world countries. You do not drink water from the tap in third world countries because it is contaminated. You don’t even use tap water to wash your toothbrush. When I travel to such places, a major intake of liquids is Coke. Let me tell you the reasoning.
I try to consume the least amount of food possible while traveling because so many times I have eaten foods that did not agree with my intestines. I have had bottled water that has not agreed with me (or at least I thought it was filtered clean and bottled). I read an article in the Nairobi, Kenya, newspaper, on the front page I might add, that reported a study they did in that city. Eight out of eleven bottled waters sold in restaurants there had regular impure tap water in them. They were sealed around the bottle cap, and they were delivered to your table sealed, but the water inside the bottle was from the tap. I also visited a Coca-Cola plant nearby and saw how they filtered all their water through several feet of sand, guaranteeing its safety. After reading the article in the newspaper, and seeing the plant, I began drinking Coke when I travel. Plus, from a medical standpoint, it has a similar number of electrolytes within it that a doctor uses to replace the electrolytes lost from diarrhea or dehydration. Coke is a good form of hydration when traveling.
One more personal Coca-Cola acknowledgment from a medical standpoint. In some of the more primitive locations I have visited as a physician, someone would be brought into the hospital severely dehydrated. These patients usually had been sick for a long period of time and had lost not only fluid but also essential electrolytes such as chloride, sodium, and potassium. Back home, I would start an IV in the large vein underneath their collarbone and give them replacement fluid that had plenty of these electrolytes plus sugar. However, at some bush hospitals, no such IV fluids are available. In most parts of the world you can get Coke in the middle of nowhere. Coke has similar electrolytes and sugar to the replacement IV I would give at home. I would get a Coke and have them begin sipping it, similar to an IV amount, until they became rehydrated with fluid plus electrolytes.
So, enough on Coke. Unless you’re regularly traveling to a third world country, if you want to lose weight, don’t take any calories from the liquids you drink. Don’t add sugar to your coffee or tea. Even if you live in the South, don’t order sweet tea.
7. Nothing Fried
Remember to think of fried foods as having about a third more calories than the same food not fried. But even more important than the calories, focus on the damaging saturated fat you are adding by frying whatever you are eating. Order baked potatoes rather than French fries. Order grilled rather than fried. You simply order or cook your meat grilled or sautéed in olive oil or canola oil if you want a change from simple grilling.
And don’t forget to make certain you instruct whoever is taking your order to leave off the cream or cheese sauces that are added to so many grilled foods.
8. No Appetizer
No appetizer before your meal. There is no reason to go to a restaurant and order an appetizer and a salad, plus a main course, followed by dessert. Those days of ordering should be over as your new eating lifestyle takes control.
The Moment of Decision
As you develop your eating lifestyle you will realize that the foundation of your eating strategy is fruits, vegetables, and salads. For your rule of thumb on salads, remember that you can add almost as many calories as an entrée to your salad if you add cheese or regular dressing, both of which can also be very high in saturated fat.
You will still eat fish and chicken, but you will eat less of them. They will become more supplemental than primary items of your diet. They will become secondary to your meal rather than the primary food.
Last come soups. They can be a satisfying addition to your noon or evening meal. There is only one rule to go by—no cream-based or cheese soups.
These secrets and easy steps help you in the decisions you’ll make as you work your Prescription for Life plan. The following is an encouragement from someone who took one of those decision moments and made something out of it.
Before dinner one evening, I was with someone I have known for years. He had a 70 percent blockage in one of his heart arteries and was significantly overweight. He was asking me about the secret of losing weight, and I went over some of the ideas in the Prescription for Life plan.
At the end of our discussion, I mentioned that there was no doubt he could lose his excess weight. I explained that he could lose it all in just a moment of time. In “the twinkling of an eye” is the shortest time period I know of, and I told him that in the twinkling of an eye he could decide in his heart that he was going to reach his ideal weight. All he had to do was make such a decision and add commitment to it—and it would happen.
I will never forget the look on his face. His black hair was brushed back as if a hairstylist had just been working on it. His eyebrows were slightly raised, and his eyes opened wider than normal. He looked like someone had taken a flash picture and frozen it momentarily. He stared, without speaking a word. I had no idea what he was thinking or getting ready to say. His face finally broke into a half smile as he told me, “The next time you see me, I will be fifty pounds lighter.” He concluded by telling me, “I really mean it.”
When the waitress took our order that evening, I was amused at what he ordered—a tossed salad. He instructed the waitress to make sure it had no cheese and also to bring him a fat-free dressing.
Once we finished ordering, I took out a napkin and wrote on it his commitment to lose fifty pounds and slid it over to him. He smiled and initialed the statement and reminded me that it was going to happen. He is another one who made the decision in his mind, plus the commitment in his heart.
He is one who wanted no shame for staying overweight—and he did something about it.
One morning, you will get up, look at the scale, and realize you are there. You have reached your ideal weight.
From that moment on, your eating strategy will change somewhat. The foods you will eat and the foods you will avoid do not change. That is the key difference in the Prescription for Life plan. You will have learned the foods that harm your arteries and will have developed many excellent eating habits that will never change again. There will be foods you used to crave, but now you will not care less whether you ever take another bite of them. You also will have developed a desire for certain foods that you never thought you would care for. You will continue eating very similarly to when you were losing your weight. You will go back to the weight-loss secrets and the easy steps for losing weight every time you realize you have gained a pound or two because your portions have been too large, or you have had too many snacks, or you haven’t exercised as your routine calls for.
Once there, the two biggest changes you will make are reversing your weight-loss secrets concerning no snacks and small portions. The transition will be slow. You will add snacks if you really get hungry but not just because you want something to taste. And you will center your snacks on nuts and fruits. You will still eat smaller portions than you used to, but you will find yourself adjusting according to your daily weight.
Here is the good part. You won’t change your regular eating strategy all that much from your weight-loss eating strategy. It will surprise you how food has become secondary in your thinking process. You won’t live to eat certain foods you used to crave. You will have beaten your addiction and will be thankful you have taken control of your eating habits—for the remainder of your life.