The "D" Word

Jun 21, 2012 article

Since people have found out how much weight I’ve lost, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about how I did it. So I’ll answer some of the most frequent ones here.

Q: What diet did you use?

A: None. I didn’t go on a “diet”… I changed my life!

I hate the “D” word! The very idea of a “diet” implies something temporary. Your brain instantly takes on the idea that you are going to deprive yourself until you reach a certain goal. When you hit that goal, you don’t have to do it any more. It doesn’t work.

IMHO, if you want to reach and maintain a healthy weight you have to change your life. I gained weight by not eating in a healthy, meaningful manner. I lost weight by returning to eating the right way.

Q: Don’t you miss sweets?

A: Nope! I eat sweet things. I eat pie and ice cream. I eat chocolate. I eat cookies. BUT… I eat them in moderation.

I usually have pie and ice cream once a week. I do have pie rules. The pie is home-made. (My husband wanted to learn how to make pies this year.) It has to have less sugar than you would get in a store-bought pie, and the sugar has to be dark brown, not white. (You can use vanilla extract to make things taste sweeter without adding more sugar!) It has to be fruit (no chocolate cream pies.) When DH bakes a 9" pie, it’s cut into 8 servings. We each eat one serving with a small amount of ice cream. The other six servings go into the freezer for a later time. We have pie when we have lighter calorie dinners, like salad.

I like pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. We make them ourselves around Thanksgiving. They contain pumpkin, pecans, raisins, dark chocolate chips, flour, vanilla, brown sugar and canola oil. They are about as healthy a cookie as you can find, high in fiber, and yummy! After they are baked and cooled, they go in the freezer. If I want one, I have to take it out and let it thaw on the counter a bit. I eat one when I feel like it. That can be as often as twice a week or as infrequent as one per month.

I eat chocolate. I eat Godiva chocolate! Here’s the deal… we both signed up for the Godiva rewards card. When you do that, you get a free piece of chocolate each month. When we go to the store, I usually spend a bit of my allowance and buy one other piece. I take it home, NEVER eat it where I bought it. I put it in the fridge. When I am craving chocolate, I cut a piece in half and eat one half. I actually don’t crave it that often, so this works for me.

I eat a lot of fruit. It is my “daily sweet”. I never used to eat that much fruit. It wasn’t something I budgeted for in my food shopping in the past. Once in a while I would buy a pineapple, strawberries or a watermelon for special occasions. Bananas and oranges we had more often, but not THAT often. Now that we get Bountiful Baskets, we have fruit around all the time. If we don’t eat it, DH will turn it into a pie! And I would rather just eat it as is, LOL! I’ve discovered that eating fruit daily takes care of most sweet cravings.

Note: In all fairness, sweet things has never really been a dietary problem for me. I don’t really like cake and things that other people crave. I never have. Learning to eat fruit was kind of a big deal for me!

Q: What was the hardest thing to give up?

A: Actually, it was diet Pepsi! I used to drink gallons of it. I stopped because I didn’t want to drink something that unhealthy. I switched over to iced tea. In all honesty, it wasn’t easy. It still isn’t. The other day DH bought Zevia Caffeine Free Cola (probably the safest cola drink if you’re going to indulge) to take to work. He forgot to take it with him! I had to shove it to the back of the refrigerator and put other stuff in front of it to hide it. I told him that night, he HAD to take it to work, or it wouldn’t BE there at the end of the next day. He took it to work. It’s gone now.

I can’t drink ANY cola soda yet. It’s an addiction for me, I know it, so I don’t normally allow it in the house.

Q: What do you miss the most?

A: Right now, it’s pizza! It’s not because I can’t have it… It’s because it’s too hot to make it this time of year! We are going to make pizza on the grill, soon. We just haven’t had time to try it. You see, I’m switching over to gluten-free, and we haven’t worked out the crust recipe yet! I did have pizza last Saturday. We have a restaurant, Picazzo’s Organic Italian Kitchen, in the general area that makes a great, yummy, healthy gluten-free pizza. We had pizza and salad there for DH’s Father’s Day celebration!

Next Thursday: The Great Food Swap Out!

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