Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul

by Jack Canfield

  Jessica Blaire

  7 Hints for Navigating Your Local Supermarket

  First, the good news: you finally made a commitment to eating healthily. And the bad news? Those old temptations haven’t gone anywhere. How in the world can you make grocery shopping a kinder, gentler experience for your waistline? As someone who recently reached her own personal weight-loss goal, here are my tips for surviving and thriving while doing food shopping.

  Try incorporating even just a few of these tips and pretty soon the grocery store will be your friend again, and not your weight-loss foe. Happy, healthy shopping!

  Know where you’re going. Focus your efforts in these areas: dairy, produce, deli/meat and frozen food. Choose low-fat options when possible, and avoid preprepared foods, which tend to be fried or laden with extra salt and/or heavy sauces. Stock up on fruits and veggies, and go for the pre-packaged varieties if it will help you get your daily allotment.

  Proceed to other aisles with caution. Don’t go up and down each and every one. Just hit the ones you need. Or to put it another way, if cookies call your name, steer clear of them.

  Size matters. Can you just eat one? If not, that megasized container may spell disaster for your waistline no matter how much money you might save. If you can’t trust yourself to control portions, let someone else do the work for you. Many supermarket items come in single-serving packages to make portion control simpler. Just remember to only eat one portion at a sitting—not the whole box.

  Just say no . . . to samples. Mindless eating inevitably leads to weight gain. How many of those mini-corn dogs did you have anyway? Was it three or was it four? And what exactly was in those things anyway? If you’re committed to watching your calories, then just pass up those freebies. This leads us to the cardinal rule. . . .

  Don’t shop when you’re hungry. I would also stretch this rule to say don’t go food shopping when you’re stressed or upset either. I’m no Pollyanna, so I know that isn’t always possible. If you think you might be feeling munchy, have something to eat before you leave home or keep a healthy snack available to tide you over. Don’t rely on food to soothe you either. Plan another way to “reward” yourself, whether it’s a bubble bath, a walk or just listening to your favorite music. Maybe those cookies or chips will temporarily make you feel better, but how will you feel when your clothes are tight once again?

  Go fishing for condiments. Being virtuous and eating healthy is hard, not to mention sometimes boring. So load up on healthy dips. Three great choices are salsa, hummus and bean dip. My personal favorite is adding fat-free whipped topping to fruit, especially berries. If you want a little heat, try adding salsa, hot sauce, horseradish and specialty mustards to your food. Don’t forget that lower-fat sour cream, salad dressings and yogurts can all be the starting points for some fabulous dips. Go a step further and make spices your friend. From mild to wild, they make foods from veggies to breads to meats more fun.

  Don’t pull the “trigger.” In my family, carbs are our trigger foods—bread, potatoes, pasta, we love ’em all. Decide whether you just have to give them up totally or if you can benefit by small changes. For example, if you love french fries, you could decide that you will only have them as a special treat, or maybe you can substitute healthier versions, such as baked ones from the frozen food section, or make your own using sweet potatoes. If that doesn’t work, try avoiding the trigger food for two weeks. You could pretend that your grocery store is all out of them and the next shipment won’t arrive until then. After fourteen days, reassess. You might surprise yourself and find you’ve lost the craving for it completely.

  Tricia Finch

  Monday Morning Blues

  Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.

  Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

  My right hand dug deeper into the bag of chocolates, again! There I was, first thing Monday morning, breaking the promise I’d made the night before. I’d promised myself there’d be no more drowning my woes in a pound of chocolates or an entire loaf of hot, crusty bread. But by midmorning I’d consumed half of the bag of chocolates and had begun to devour a loaf of hot sourdough French bread, one slice after another, thickly spread with pure creamery butter.

  It was amazing how I rationalized my behavior. I blamed it all on stress. After all, a large conglomerate had gobbled up my employer of twenty years, there’d been a reduction in salary and benefits, and I was subjected to longer work hours. And I continued to overindulge in food, which at the end of the day only made me fatter, not happier.

  After six months of helping make the merger a smooth transition, I announced my retirement. After a magnificent retirement send-off, my husband and I purchased a condo where we’d always planned to retire, the central coast of California. Although I was retiring ten years earlier than planned, my husband assured me I had made the right decision. “You can finally do what you’ve always wanted to do, live near the ocean and write full-time.”

  I settled into the new community and made many new friends, most of them writers like myself. I thrived on being among my peers. I was overjoyed at the writing opportunities that came my way. Life was good. In the back of my mind lingered the nagging question: why was I still gorging myself with food? I even ignored my doctor’s concern about my weight and reasons for lowering my cholesterol.

  I was eating when I was glad and when I was sad; I was running out of excuses. I could no longer zip my favorite black slacks, and to my dismay they did not come in any larger size. That very Sunday evening I vowed to seek help on Monday morning. I’d follow my doctor’s advice and sign up for weight counseling.

  My knees shook when I approached the counter to register for weight counseling, but I felt at ease when a gentleman with a smiling face greeted me, “Welcome, I’m one of the weight counselors here. My name is Frank.”

  I fought back the tears as I introduced myself and confessed to him how desperate I felt. As I filled out the paperwork, Frank uttered softly, “As of today, desperation and self-loathing are banished from your vocabulary.”

  Next, it was time to step on the scales. I didn’t want to look, but I had to face the awful truth; I had gained forty pounds. I felt my cheeks grow hot, I closed my eyes, but that didn’t stop the tears from trickling down my red face.

  “You have to think of this as a lifestyle change, not a diet,” Frank said, as he handed me a tissue. “This program is not a quick fix. Once you lose the weight you cannot go back to your old habits, and you won’t want to.”

  My lifestyle change entailed banishing my two addictions, chocolate and white bread, from the house. Breakfast would no longer consist of chocolate candy and a cup of coffee. Actually, I’d forgotten I really liked cereal with fresh strawberries for breakfast.

  The first week I lost three pounds. “So, during your first week did you have any problems getting used to eating healthy again?” Frank asked. I grumbled that keeping a journal of every morsel I put in my mouth was time-consuming. Frank chuckled and replied, “When you nibble, you gotta scribble. It’s the only way I’ve been able to keep my eighty pounds off for the past fifteen years.”

  I never complained again and faithfully wrote in my journal every day. I continued to lose weight, but it was a slow process. Frank's words kept me from getting discouraged. “Remember, set your goal weight at something you can live with. When you look at the weight range for your age, be realistic; don’t beat yourself up because you can’t fit into the size you wore when you were a teenager.”

  I learned how to eat healthy; I was no longer a member of the clean-your-plate club. My exercise of choice was walking, and it worked. At the end of six months, I will never forget hearing Frank’s exclamation, “Congratulations! You’ve lost 42.6 pounds! You’ve reached your goal!”

  It has been two and a half years, and I am still under my goal weight. I will admit there are days that I struggle, but food is no longer my security blanket. I’ve kept my promise—no more Monday morning blues for
me!

  Georgia A. Hubley

  Roasted Summer Squash Combo

  MAKES 4 SERVINGS EACH SERVING: 0 GRAMS SATURATED FAT

  2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

  1 tablespoon crushed garlic

  1 teaspoon dried rosemary

  2 medium zucchini, cut lengthwise into ½-inch-thick slices

  2 medium yellow summer squash, cut lengthwise into ½-inch-thick slices

  2 red onions, cut crosswise into 1.2-inch-thick slices

  Salt, to taste

  White pepper, to taste

  ¼ cup balsamic vinegar, or less, to taste

  Preheat oven to 450°. In a small bowl, stir together the olive oil, crushed garlic and rosemary.

  Line a large cookie sheet with aluminum foil and arrange vegetables evenly on the foil. Drizzle the oil over the vegetables and toss to coat. Season vegetables to taste with salt and white pepper. Transfer vegetables to the oven and roast for 20 minutes.

  Remove vegetables from the oven and drizzle with balsamic vinegar to taste. Serve immediately or at room temperature.

  Reprinted from Fitter, Firmer, Faster. ©2006 Andrew Larson, M.D., Ivy Ingram Larson. Health Communications, Inc.

  My Last Twenty Pounds

  Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.

  Jean de la Bruyère

  My last twenty pounds and I have a part-time relationship. Ten of those pounds are a group of homebodies. They wave off their more mobile relatives and stay firmly put. The other ten leave for the summer, but as winter approaches they must think of the family they left on my belly because they come back home for the holidays. I watch their comings and goings confident that, when all of us are ready, we’ll never see each other again.

  I’ve lost another forty pounds permanently. It took two years for them to go, but we parted as friends. It wasn’t always easy giving up the protection they provided.

  For most of my life I have been embarrassed by emotions. I thought that there was a difference between how I felt and how I was supposed to feel. Good people, I thought, didn’t get so angry, unhappy or whatever this new feeling cute boys inspired was. By my early teens I was twenty pounds overweight, to buffer the space between my embarrassment and the world of slow dancing and kissing.

  That buffer was not enough as my feelings became complicated with artistic passion, real romantic desires, a sense of dissatisfaction and a mysterious inadequacy in the face of love. The more complex and unfathomable my feelings became, the more I sought to numb them.

  As adulthood progressed, I numbed my emotions by strengthening my five physical senses. Here was a wealth of experience I could understand through eating. The visual changes in the patina of crust as dough bakes into bread. The aromatic bouquet of red wine as it breathes. There was also the musical sizzle of butter browning in the pan. And taste. Everything has one taste as it crosses the lips, another on the tongue as it is transferred to the teeth for chewing and still another as it travels down the throat. Perhaps surprisingly, since I had gained another twenty pounds, this was also a highly sexual time in my life. The satisfaction my senses brought me through food, drink and sex replaced the shame of dealing with depths of feeling and the realities of intimate connection.

  The world of the senses did not protect me. My so-called romances brought disruption. I developed a fear of being alone. I was worried I would be seen as a stereotypical fat girl, unworthy of love or acceptance. There were loud arguments that I knew would turn violent if I didn’t stop them through some gesture of self-abasement. During this time, I abandoned my sensuality and sought the comforts of fullness. I did not care what I ate. I did not care how it was prepared or if it was quality food. During this great emptiness, I gained twenty more pounds.

  Then I got smart. Suddenly, I started talking to people about what I was feeling. I realized I had to take care of my emotions and the information they were giving me. To learn to feel, I discovered, was to learn to communicate and to make lasting connections. I did not join a gym and find true love there. I did not discover a magic formula to erase years of poor eating habits and a tendency to overindulge. I did not become an ascetic subsisting on leaves and water.

  Instead, I discovered there was some essence in me that I shared with every other human being on the planet. Sharing my own feelings with the people I met and listening to their experiences was enlightening. I began to live with my sensuality rather than for sensual experience. I no longer believed that I was fundamentally different, and I stopped being embarrassed by my own emotions. I believe that the first twenty pounds came off through the release of that heavy burden.

  The second twenty pounds were a practical and methodical loss. The many options of lifestyle change were often overwhelming when I needed to focus on coming out of numbness. Simplicity worked for me. I learned that frozen vegetables are the working person’s best friends in the kitchen. They are inexpensive, quickly prepared, and come in a huge variety of flavors and colors. I learned to exercise every day, even if it is only ten minutes of stretching. It helps to ease stress and frustration. I stopped watching television after 9:00 PM. It made me feel inadequate with my physical imperfections and then tempted me with fast-food commercials.

  The last twenty pounds and I are still figuring things out. They make their occasional forays out into the world, and I learn gently how to experience life without them. It’s a new emotion, but I’m finally open to feeling it.

  Kate Baggott

  Setting Goals and Reaping Rewards

  When I talk about my weight loss to people who have never had a significant weight problem, I tell them that I did not see reality in the mirror. Sure, I knew what the scale said and what size I wore, but before losing seventy-five pounds, I only saw what I thought were my positive attributes when I saw my reflection. I saw fabulous hair, expressive eyes, youthful skin and a pretty face. I didn’t see what 225 pounds really looked like on a 5’2” frame. My brain, in denial, didn’t let me see my fat.

  I realized I was truly obese when I overheard another therapist at the clinic where I teach children with learning disabilities tell a parent, “Your son’s teacher will be the heavyset woman in the staff picture.” I had taken a picture with several colleagues, and the picture was framed and put in the lobby where I worked. There were four fit women, and then there was me. On a day when I thought I looked my best, I photographed as a fat, frumpy, middle-aged woman. I was devastated.

  Having never been successful with a diet because I never truly thought I needed one, I didn’t know where to start, so I just stopped eating. For a month, I lived on salad, diet soda and anything with zero calories, especially zero-calorie gum and hard candies. I bought a scale and saw “225” staring back at me, but with this semistarvation diet, I saw no change. I told a friend about my diet and the frustration of not losing. Her reaction was, “That’s because your body is in starvation mode. You have to eat or it stores fat.” She said she ate five or six small meals a day, was never hungry, and unless she binged, she kept her weight down.

  It’s often difficult to take diet advice from a thin person, but I knew my friend understood nutrition. Knowing my eating habits, she suggested Atkins. I bought the book and my husband and I decided we could be happy with this change of eating for the long term. We decided that this couldn’t just be a quick diet and then back to bad habits; we would have to change our eating habits forever. Atkins was not a difficult diet to follow, and within days of starting a low-carbohydrate lifestyle, we began to see the scale move downward.

  As an educational therapist, I had the added advantage of knowing what setting goals and receiving rewards does for children who see what appear to be insurmountable problems. I have often used goal setting and rewards to help them achieve more than they thought they could. I decided I needed the same motivation to keep me on track. I kept a chart for myself and my husband and posted it on the mirror in our bathroom. On it, we wrote our weight and measure
ments. On mine, I also listed my goals and the rewards. Crossing off each one was also a reward in itself.

  My goals were very simple and fun. When I lost ten pounds, I made my hair lighter. When I lost ten more, I got my ears pierced. When I was down thirty pounds, I added more holes in my ears. I told my coworkers, friends and family about these, and when I had something new, such as a third hole in each ear, the reaction was a positive, “How much have you lost? I see you rewarded yourself!” There were additional goals. I had a red suede jacket that I had bought years earlier and quickly grew out of. When I fit into it again, I went out and bought a smaller black suede jacket for a lot less money because I didn’t have to buy it in a specialty store for large women.

  I had set up goals like weighing less than my husband and fitting into a pair of tight white jeans like the ones I was wearing when I met him. As with most weight loss, the early pounds are the easiest. As time goes on, there is still loss, but the amounts tend to be less. Getting rewards for goals made the potential frustration seem more attainable. Throughout the last year, I’ve mentioned to people that when I lost seventy-five pounds, I was going to cut my hair short. For years, I hid behind a long mane of hair, which I thought hid my size. In fact, it was a security blanket of sorts. It hid nothing.

  Several weeks ago, I had it all chopped off. Snip. Snip. Snip. Over two feet of hair fell to the floor. The reaction from almost everyone was that I looked great and YOUNGER. When I got on the scale after my haircut, I weighed two pounds less, too! Of course, I lost two pounds of hair! I’ve even dyed my hair back to its natural color, knowing now that I need no more disguises or security blankets.

  I also no longer need rewards. I have another twenty-five pounds to go, and the reward now is the weight loss and the knowledge of how much control I have taken of my body, my life and myself. That’s the greatest reward of all.