Some words of wisdom for Lighten Up contestants

Jul 04, 2010

By: News-Herald Staff

By Laura Kessel
LKessel@News-Herald.com

As the contestants in The News-Herald’s “Lighten Up in 2010” gear up for their final weigh-in on July 31, area fitness and weight-loss experts share their advice on how to avoid a backslide as they move forward and their public dieting experience ends.
Look for the results of the last weigh-in on Aug. 8 when the winner of the six-month weight-loss contest will be announced.

The Real Trick: Making It Permanent
Dr. Barbara Berkeley,
Author, “Refuse to Regain: 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You’ve Earned”
For 20 years now I’ve been helping people lose weight. I’ve also had the unhappy experience of watching many successful dieters gain it all back….and then some.
Americans are actually very good at weight loss. They lose endless numbers of pounds yearly. But they are not skilled at maintaining the new size they achieve. Unfortunately, most books and diet articles continue to focus on losing rather than on how to get a handle on the permanent changes that must follow.
I‘ve worked with scores of successful maintainers and have had the chance to meet many more through the maintenance blog I write on the Internet. I have also learned a good deal by maintaining my own 20-pound weight loss for the past seven years. It’s a big topic, but if I had to sum it all up, these would be my top suggestions for avoiding regain:
Your weight loss diet must be the diet you continue to follow: Unless you’ve lost weight in some unhealthy way, the diet that allowed you to reduce successfully should be the one you continue, perhaps with some minor changes to add a few more calories. Most dieters don’t realize that their new, smaller bodies will need far fewer calories to run than their heavier bodies did. Returning to “moderate” forms of their original eating style almost always leads to disaster
Follow an “Eating Manifesto”: Before reaching maintenance, you should have a good idea of your beliefs about a healthy diet. In order to succeed permanently, you must have a true plan for eating and believe in it wholeheartedly. This is your Eating Manifesto, the rules of which will guide your eating choices. The eating style I recommend to patients is what I call a Primarian Diet. This is a diet that consists 90 percent of the time of foods that could have been eaten by our most ancient ancestors, including lean meats, poultry, fish, seafood, vegetables, eggs, fruits, nuts and berries. If you tolerate milk, you might also include low fat dairy products. Avoid or severely minimize grains, cereals, starchy foods (like potatoes, pasta and bread) and foods with sugars or other sweeteners. These “S” foods (starches and sugars) were unknown to our ancestors.
As a result, we don’t have the genetic equipment to deal with them over a lifetime. In short, these foods lead to modern diseases like obesity, diabetes, cholesterol, and high blood pressure.
Do not make exceptions: Common to almost all successful maintainers is the fact that they rarely stray from their Eating Manifestos. This is not so strange if you think about it. Vegetarians don’t eat pork chops just because they happen to be on the table, for example. They believe in the way they eat, so they stick to it. Similarly, maintainers with well-planned Eating Manifestos don’t depart from them just because there is a wedding, vacation, birthday or restaurant meal. This is very important. Keeping consistent allows maintainers to build habits. Once habits are formed, the desire to eat as most Americans do is greatly reduced.
Exercise as hard as you can on as many days as you can: Many studies show that exercise may not hasten weight loss as much as we’d like to think. On the other hand, exercise seems to be vital for weight maintenance. Do as much as your body will safely allow. If you are limited, look into chair exercise, yoga, water based exercise or walking.
Remember that weight loss is not really about losing pounds. It is really about losing a part of you that is unhealthy and revealing a new, purer body. Do everything you can to support that new structure. This includes eating whole, organic foods, and providing yourself plenty of physical activity, sleep and relaxation. Seek joy in your new body and you will never want to return to the old one.
Berkeley has a blog at www.refusetoregain.com

Friends who exercise together, stay together
Beth Horvath
Wellness director, Lake County YMCA Central Branch
One of the biggest challenges we face when incorporating an exercise routine in our busy lives is sticking with it. On average, half the people who begin an exercise program drop out within six months.
However, adherence improves if there is a social connection during exercise.
Studies have proven that people prefer to exercise with others in lieu of going at it alone.
There are benefits associated with exercising with a loved one or friend. It can enhance exercise commitment, motivation, self-confidence and enjoyment. If you know your friend is relying on you to meet them somewhere to exercise, you not only won’t want to let them down by not showing up, but you might even look forward to your workout.
Also, exercise partners will model positive health-minded attitudes and behaviors for one another.
Social interaction can provide distraction from physical exertion, while also making time seem to go by faster. You’ll probably find that you can walk longer, bike farther or work harder when accompanied by a friend. You might even enjoy exercising!
Working out with others provides opportunities to develop friendships. In fact, some people might even say that the social interactions they have during exercise are just as important (or more important) than the exercise itself!
The Y is especially good at fostering relationships with their members. We’ve learned over the last 175 years that relationships are paramount to our success as a health and wellness organization. In fact, fitness takes a backseat to relationships. Not that we are not a premier health and wellness organization. The Lake County YMCA is known nationally as a very successful Y. We pride ourselves on our programming and state-of-the-art equipment, but what keeps people coming here is they feel welcome and happy while they are here. We are a relationship-driven membership organization. That makes our new members more likely to keep up their exercise routines.
So, I invite you to come to the Y and see for yourself. And bring a friend.

Words to live by
Jaime Brenkus
Owner, Slim & Fit Personal Weight Loss and Fitness, Concord Township
Anyone who has been around Slim & Fit knows that sometimes I sneak in little phrases that express the situation at hand for our clients.
I truly believe that you can meld together a complete program with the following phrases that will keep you motivated and on track to succeed in any health, fitness and weight loss program.
•Success in life is not a matter of inches or pounds — success is when you start taking steps towards a reachable goal. Don’t be so preoccupied with those three numbers on the scale. When you start any fitness program that includes resistance training (a good thing) your body’s composition changes. You’re losing body fat, while gaining muscle tissue. However, the scale might not reflect a drop because muscle is more dense and takes up less space. Think of your long term goal of being fit, healthy and strong!
•Your fork and spoon are your best pieces of fitness equipment. Yes, we can do some damage with those two little utensils. Although I advocate exercise on a regular basis, your program will succeed or not succeed based on your calorie intake. For instance, a tablespoon of salad dressing is 120 calories. If you go out to a restaurant and pour one of those little cups over your salad (yes, we’re all guilty of that) it’s a whopping 500 calories — which would take you 90 minutes to burn off on a treadmill. Remember, it’s calories in versus calories out. I would rather have you not take in as many calories — so you don’t have to burn them off.
•He who has no time for his health today will have no health for his time tomorrow. You need to make you a priority. We all live hurried, hectic lifestyles, and the one thing that gets pushed aside is physical activity. We can think of a thousand things to do rather than go out and exercise. It comes down to the lack of TIME. Well, the good news is that the American College of Sports Medicine tells us that exercise is accumulative, it all adds up. A little here, a little there… Try to get in at least three 10 minute intervals daily, or on most days during the week.
•A slip is not a fall and a stumble is not a tumble. Let’s face it , there are going to be days when you’re not going to have a chance to be as healthy as you want. You have to give yourself a break and just say “So What.” It’s just one meal or one day. In the long run it really doesn’t make a difference (from a pure calorie count, 3,500 calories = 1 pound of fat). Just pick up your healthy lifestyle the next meal or the next day. We have a tendency to beat ourselves up. This is what we call a “diet” mentality. Deprivation is a sure way for failure.
Allow yourself a little break now and then. Think of your healthy attitude towards food and fitness for the long haul and you’ll ensure your success!
Good Luck. Bon appetit!

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