Topics:
Stop Dieting!  Start Living Thin
Learning Thin Behavior
Making Love to Food...
Learning to Binge... Learning to Stop.
Who's in charge of your life?
Coping with Other People

Stop Dieting!  Start Living Thin

Once upon a time, as I sat working in my office at the New York Health & Racquet Club in Manhattan, a member popped her head through my office door and asked me for a diet plan. She was a woman in her early forties, and judging by her attire she was on her way to an exercise class. "I don't have an appointment," she said. "I don't really need one. I know about nutrition. I just need a diet plan."

"I don't have a diet plan to give you," I told her.

She looked somewhat puzzled. "But aren't you a nutritionist? Who ever heard of a nutritionist without a diet plan."

"I don't believe in putting people on diets. Diets don't work."

"But, how can I lose weight if I don't go on a diet?"

"Look. You're already on a diet. If the diet you're on isn't working, change it."

"I'm not on a diet," she protested.

"Oh, yes you are. Your diet is what you eat every day. The word comes from the Greek word dieta. It refers to a way of life rather than to a weight loss plan. Now, the diet you're on may not be a good one, and it may not be conducive to you weighing what you want to weigh. And if that's the case, fix it. Some people need more exercise, or smaller portions, or they need to change their pattern of eating. The bottom-line? The permanent solution to any weight control problem is not a diet, it's change."

The woman stared at me in silence. Finally, she said, "Look, I just need help getting the weight off. Once I get it off, I'll be fine. I know I can keep it off."

"If that's true," I said, "prove it. Start keeping the weight off now. Pretend that you've already lost the weight, and do everything that you would do if you were already at your ideal weight. Start right now, this minute, living thin instead of trying to lose weight, and an interesting thing will happen. You'll reach your ideal weight and without going on a diet."

Again, the woman stared at me in silence. Then she sat down in the chair next to my desk. "Perhaps I do need an appointment," she said.

I have been a nutritionist for the better part of thirty years. Early in my career I discovered that the way to help people with weight problems is not to put them on a diet, but to teach them the art of living thin. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with cues to eat. Not only do our social activities revolve around food, but everywhere we turn there's someone selling hot dogs, ice cream, or candy bars.   Magazines flash cover photos of luscious desserts, and TV commercials for fast food establishments taunt us with 2 for 1 specials, and offers about supersizing our meals for a mere 39 cents. Add in the fact that most of us were taught in childhood to eat for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger, and, frankly, it doesn't surprise me that a lot of us have weight problems. What amazes me is that we don't all weigh 500 pounds!

Habits...

Changing your body from fat to thin requires a change in lifestyle. This means more than just cutting calories. It means changing your behavior and breaking old habits. But what are habits anyway? According to my dictionary, habits are those "acts or practices so frequently repeated as to become relatively fixed in character and almost automatic in performance." So, habits are those behaviors that have been learned through repetition. For the most part they are mindless bits of business which require no conscious thought. The how-to-do-it information has become programmed into the brain, relieving us of the need to pay attention to what we're doing. Putting on the right slipper before the left (or vice versa) when we get dressed in the morning requires no thought. It's a habit. Some of us get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and go to work all on automatic pilot. Never once do we need to make a decision to do any of the necessary maneuvers to get there. It's all habit.

People eat as they do out of habit. What one eats, as well as when, where, why, and how depends on which habits one has acquired. "But," I hear some of you protesting, "there's no pattern to my eating at all. It's totally erratic. I have no habits!" Ah, but you do. If you have no regular pattern of eating, you have a pattern of irregular eating, and that's a habit.

Regardless of what your normal eating habits are, to reach your ideal weight and stay there, you've got to change normal. A thinner version of you will weigh less, and will require fewer calories .... forever! There is no such thing as being able to diet off some excess fat and then return to your pre-dieting habits. If you do, you'll rapidly return to your pre-dieting weight.

Getting started: Pay Attention!

The first step towards change is awareness. You need to find out what you are currently doing, and you need to take your behavior out of the realm of habit and make it conscious.

Your first assignment is to start keeping a food diary. You are going to stand back and objectively observe your own behavior and make a note of your observations. What do you eat? How much? Where do you eat? When? (What time of day?) Why? (What is the cue to put food in your mouth?) How do you eat? (Fast, slow? Standing? Sitting?) With whom do you eat?

Did a negative thought just cross your mind? Did you just think, "Oh, good grief! That's too much trouble. What good is it going to do?" Stop! Don't let a negative attitude keep you from being successful. Remember, Living Thin is a behavioral approach. It's based on things that you do. If you don't do any of the assignments, nothing will happen. The method only works if you work the method. For now, suspend your disbelief and your skepticism and act-as-if you believe that keeping a food journal will help. Pretend. In time, you will come to believe that the process works, and that you will be successful, even if you have failed on a thousand different diet plans.

Take a sheet of paper, and write down the following headings across the top:

Now, write down everything you've eaten in the last 24 hours.

Time? What time did you eat breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? What time(s) did you snack?

Did you know... that many overweight people don't eat very much during the day? They skip breakfast and/or lunch, and take in most of their calories at night. Not eating during the day causes metabolism to slow down to compensate for the lack of food. Then when food is finally consumed, the body overstores to make up for the preceding famine. In other words, skipping meals is fattening.

Food & Amount? What did you have? How much of each item? Not sure of the quantities? Give it your best guess. Be specific and be honest! Don't just say "chicken and potato." Was it one chicken breast or the whole chicken? Was it skinless and grilled? Or deep-fat fried, skin and all? Was that a little potato, plain? Or a 3-cup mountain of mashed potato with cream and butter? Pay attention to condiments, sauces, gravies, dressings, etc.

Place? Where were you? Kitchen, living room, sitting at your desk?

With Whom? Were you alone or with someone?

Did you know ...? Some of us only overeat when we are alone, and some of us overeat primarily in social situations. People who feel guilty about their weight will tend to sneak food when no one else is around. In general, however, other people are fattening. The greater the number of people in any given situation, the greater the amount of food consumed.

Associated Activity? What else were you doing? Reading, working, talking, watching TV, talking on the phone, walking down the street, driving in the car?

Cue? Why were you eating? Were you hungry? Was it time to eat? Did you see the food? Did someone offer it to you? Did you need a treat because you had a rotten day?

Hungry? For each of your meals and snacks, rate your hunger on a scale of 0 to 10. Zero = not hungry at all Ten = ready to kill

Did you know...? While hunger is a factor in food consumption, few of us overeat because we are hungry. Most frequently, we eat food because we see it, or we eat out of self-pity. "Woe is me. Other people have more than I do. It's not fair." ("More" could refer to money, success, beauty, happiness, love, thinness, or whatever.) "I deserve some pleasure, so I'll just go ahead and eat this bag of cookies..."

Now that you know how to keep your food records, make a commitment. Commit yourself to keeping a food diary for the next 7 days. People often ask if they should attempt to change their food intake the first week, or if they should just go about their business, eating as usual and writing it down. Truthfully, you will be unable to eat as usual. You see it is not usual for you to observe and record your behavior. Normal has already begun to change. Make as many changes as you wish, as long as they involve living thin and not dieting.

One final piece of advice. Whatever happens this week, write it down. Don’t just keep track of those times when you are "good" and refuse to record those meals or snacks you don’t approve of. If you go on the greatest binge of your life, (a) enjoy it, and (b) write it down. After you've kept a food log for a week, paste it into an email and send it to me, and I'll tell you what to do next.  Have a great week! And if you have questions, be in touch.

Learning thin behavior...

When I tell people to act thin, they often have no idea what I’m talking about. Many people believe -- mistakenly -- that thin people are able to stuff themselves with everything in sight. Not true. Granted, a few of us have faster metabolisms, and are able to eat more as a result, but these same variations in metabolism occur in overweight individuals as well. (Meaning, some overweight people eat more than others.)

Most body weight differences have less to do with metabolism, and more to do with behavior. Take exercise as an example. Take a look at the bodies in any class room at any health club in America. Guess what? They’re all thin! I’ve had overweight clients in my office peeking through the window at an exercise class in progress, observing all the thin bodies and growling in disgust, "Why are they here? They don’t need to be here. They’re thin!"

"Sorry," I tell them, "You’ve got it backwards. They aren’t here (at the health club) because they are thin. They are thin because they are here."

The reality is that thin people are more active physically than their heavier counterparts. If you want to be leaner than you are, don’t tell yourself that you’ll start an exercise program as soon as you lose some weight. Do what you would do if you were already at your ideal weight. Do what thin people do. Exercise.

Note: Fat and thin are relative terms, and I use them generically. "Fat" is where you are starting from -- whether you desire to lose 10 pounds or 200 pounds -- and "thin" is where you want to end up. It's your goal. The principle that there is a difference in behavior between fat and thin holds true regardless of the numbers involved.

Let’s take a look at some other differences between fat and thin behavior:

What do you need to change?

You've kept a diary for a week. Now what? Good question. Take a look at your diary and try to answer the following question: What's the difference between what you are doing now (or what you did this past week) and what you would be doing if you were already at your ideal weight?

Make a list of changes you want to make. Pick one. Then, translate that change into a behavioral goal.

A behavioral goal specifies what you are going to do and it is short term. Suppose, for example, that you have observed that your diet is unbalanced, and you want to increase your fruit intake. You might write a behavioral goal such as the following:

Now you know exactly what you have to do to be successful, and seven days from now you can look back at what you've done and know whether or not you have succeeded.

Not sure of what to change? Then let me help. Here's an exercise for you.

For the next seven days, when you eat at home, make eating a pure experience. Eat in only one place (such as the kitchen or dining room table,) eat only while sitting down, and don’t engage in other activities while eating. (No reading, no watching tv, no talking on the phone.) Eat as slowly as possible, enjoying what you are having with all of your senses.

Note: This is an exercise designed to help you deprogram from some of your habitual eating behavior. I'm not asking for a lifetime commitment. Just a week. Questions? Contact me.

Making Love to Food...

Danielle had a thing about brownies. She gobbled them down lickety-split, six at a time, and then wallowed in an overdose of guilt. The mere sight of a bakery would trigger the thought "brownie," and that thought triggered a chain of behaviors which inevitably ended in brownie consumption.

Danielle was a participant in a Living Thin Workshop I was leading. "How was your week," I asked, when she arrived for the second session.

"Terrible!" she replied, "I ate a whole bag of brownies."

"Did you enjoy them?"

Danielle appeared stunned. "No, I didn’t enjoy them. I’m not supposed to be eating brownies. I’m supposed to be on a diet."

I reminded her that she wasn’t on a diet – Living Thin is a behavior modification program – and technically she was free to eat any thing she chose. "If you ate a bag of brownies and didn’t enjoy them... what a waste! Think of all the fun you’re missing. Eating a brownie is a sensual experience. The dark rich color, the smell, the taste, the texture. The way it feels when you roll it around in your mouth. If you’re going to eat a brownie, enjoy every mouthful to the fullest. Otherwise, why bother? You’re wasting all those calories without any of the pleasure.

"Sometime this week I’d like you to go buy a brownie, – just one – put it on a piece of your finest china, sit down at the table, and pay attention.

"What color is it? Do you enjoy it visually? How does it look on the plate? Is it heavy and moist, or dry and crumbly? What does it smell like? Can you smell the chocolate? The nuts? Break off a little piece and place it on the tip of your tongue. Roll it around in your mouth. What does it feel like? Is there a change in taste sensation as it moves to different parts of your tongue? Don’t just eat the brownie Danielle, make love to it."

"But, I’ll get fat!" she protested.

"No, you won’t. That’s not logical. Besides, I’m asking you to eat one brownie, and you’ve been devouring them six at a time."

Danielle took my advice. She brought a brownie, and she even bought a special plate to put it on.

The following week when Danielle arrived for class, I asked her what had happened."

"I threw most of it out," she told me.

"Why?"

"It really wasn’t a quality brownie."

The above story is true. When Danielle "tried not to eat brownies" she ate them compulsively. When I told her to eat a brownie, she was able to stop. Not only did she stop overeating, she also developed a discriminating palate.

The moral of this story? Actually, there are several.

1.) Don’t place foods off limits. Anything forbidden becomes highly desirable.

2.) Never "try not to eat." That’s like "trying not to think of pink elephants." You can’t do it. The harder you try not to do something, the more you end up doing it.

3.) Focus on a positive. Focus on what you are going to do, rather than what you are not going to do.

4.) Give yourself permission to eat. And then give yourself permission to stop.

5.)    If you make a choice to eat a particular food, eat it consciously, and with all of your senses. Don’t do anything else while you eat. And if you don’t enjoy what you are eating, stop! Throw it out. Why waste calories on foods you don’t enjoy?

Learning to binge.... Leaning to stop.

Dan showed up for the second week of the Living Thin workshop he was in.

"How was your week?" I asked him

"Terrible!" He snapped back. " I ate a whole gallon of ice cream."

"Did you enjoy it?" I asked.

His eyes widened. "No, I didn’t enjoy it. I’m not supposed to be eating ice cream. I’m supposed to be on a diet."

I reminded Dan that I hadn’t put him on a diet. In fact, I had told him – and the rest of his group – that they could eat anything they wanted. The only homework I had given everyone was to start keeping a diary. "If you eat it, write it down. Objectively observe your behavior and record it."

I had a strong feeling that Dan’s binge behavior had its roots in physiology. (Meaning, he had probably overeaten because he was too hungry.)

"When did you binge?" I asked him.

"I was fine until Wednesday night, and then I snapped. I bought a gallon of ice cream and ate the whole thing."

"Tell me what you ate during those first three days before your binge."

"I had an egg for breakfast. Some lettuce and tomato salad for lunch, with just vinegar. For dinner I had a piece of broiled chicken and some string beans. I ate the same thing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday."

On the backboard I calculated Dan’s calorie intake. He had consumed about 400 calories each day. Now, Dan was over 6 feet tall, with a large muscular frame, so his ideal body weight would have been around 200 pounds. His need for calories was closer to 2000 a day than to 200.

Follow me here....

If you need 2000 calories... and only consume 400... at the end of the day you will have an energy deficit of 1600 calories. And you will be hungry.

By the end of day two you will have an energy deficit of 3200 calories, and you will be hungrier than you were on day one.

By the end of day three, your energy deficit has climbed to 4800 calories. Your body is screaming for food and will do everything possible to get you to eat. Visions of rich, creamy, fatty foods will dance in your mind.

At the end of day three, Dan had consumed a gallon of ice cream. Guess how many calories are in a gallon of ice cream? 4800. The exact number of calories his body needed to compensate for his three-day deficit of 4800. All he had done was take in the calories he needed to maintain the status quo.

The moral of this story?

Starving leads to stuffing. The roots of binge behavior are physical. If your body feels threatened it will do everything possible to get you to eat. Cut back on food, don’t try to cut it out altogether.

I explained to Dan that his binge had been triggered by starvation. "From now on," eat a minimum of 1600 calories per day, and if you are exercising regularly you will even lose weight at 2000 calories per day."

Dan’s story has a happy ending. He went on to lose 40 pounds, and he stopped bingeing and purging. His self-esteem soared as he realized that he wasn’t weak-willed, or a glutton. He learned to respect his body and to take care of it.

Tip: If you have been struggling with bingeing and purging, stop dieting, and start eating at regular intervals. Eat regularly, whether you are hungry or not. Never go for more than 5 hours without eating something. If you skip breakfast, because you aren’t hungry, or because you overate last night, you are setting yourself up to go on another binge.

Need help with compulsive or binge eating? Contact me.

Who's in charge of your life?

In a perfect world we would eat when we are hungry, and stop when the hunger goes away. Alas, we frequently eat in response to the environment, including the people in the environment. Have you ever heard that we are all on a seafood diet? Meaning: We see food. We eat it.

You open the refrigerator door to get the container of milk for your tea, and spot the package of cheese on the shelf. So you have a few slices of cheese, rationalizing that you need the snack. You have the cheese, not because your body sent you a message saying it was hungry, but because you saw the cheese.

You stop off at the deli to pick up an item you need, and you spot a box of chocolate covered donuts. You buy the box of donuts on impulse, promising yourself you'll only have one. Can you guess how the story ends? Later, you'll no doubt berate yourself for lack of will power.

A co-worker walks past your desk with a box of chocolates, and offers you some. You take the chocolates, telling yourself "It's not polite to refuse."

Stop! Who's in charge of your life? When you eat what you see, or what people offer to you, you are allowing the environment to dictate your behavior. You are allowing the environment to decide for you what you will eat, and ultimately, what you will weigh. You are turning the control of your life over to someone or something outside of yourself. It's time to put yourself back in charge.

Keep in mind this is not about donuts, or chocolates. It's about you being in charge. You have absolute control of your eating habits. When you feel out of control, the reality is that you've let go of control. That's the choice that you've made at that moment. It may not be the choice that you approve of, but that's a different issue. There is no force from Mars that puts a gun to your head and forces you to eat.

It's okay to eat, and it's okay to make room in your life for foods that are special or favorites. But you need to decide when and what you will eat. Don't let the rest of the world decide for you.

Homework: For the next 7 days, if you get an urge to eat something that wasn't part of your plan at the moment...  wait 10 minutes before making a decision one way or the other.

Note: This is a delaying strategy. This is not about waiting 10 minutes to eat. It's about waiting 10 minutes before you make a decision .  Typically, the urge to eat will pass, whether you eat or not.

Coping With Other People...

We are the sum total of our experiences. We are constantly being shaped, changed and manipulated by our environment, and that environment includes people.

Much of our daily behavior -- including our thinking behavior, and our eating behavior -- occurs in direct response to what another person says or does. We are continually receiving comments, questions, praise, criticism, and advice, from other people. Other people affect what we eat, as well as where, when, why, how, and even how much.

Did you know, for example, that the larger the number of people you are with, when you eat, the more you will eat? Other people are definitely fattening.

Other people affect our self-image, and they are rarely supportive of our efforts to change. Suppose, for example, that someone sees you eating cottage cheese. Inevitably they make a sarcastic comment, like, "Still on your diet, I see. When are you going to quit?" And if they see you eating ice cream? "Fell off your diet again, huh? What's your excuse this time?" It's a case of Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. You can't win.

Sadly, we have a double standard for people based on body weight. If we see a skinny person eating ice cream we think, "Isn't she lucky." And if we see an obese person eating ice cream we think, "Isn't that disgusting!" Our thinking isn't rational, and it's not fair. Ice cream doesn't become a good or bad food based on the size of the person eating it.

Let's look at a social situation. Suppose you go to a party, and attempt to pass on the chocolate cake in an effort to save some calories. "No thanks," you assert, "I'm on a diet." (Bad move. Don't ever tell anyone you're on a diet.)

"Oh, for heavens sake," says your hostess, "One little piece won't hurt. You can go back on your diet tomorrow. Besides, you don't need to lose weight. You're big boned."

If you continue to refuse, your hostess will continue to insist, three, four, five times. Finally, you give in to be polite. You have just taught this person that you give in on the sixth request, which means that the next time they want to get you to eat, they have to ask you six times. (And they will!)

Did you know that almost no one wants you to be successful at losing weight? Your thin friends don't want you to be successful because they want to have something you don't have. It gives them a position of power, and a feeling of superiority over you. Your fat friends don't want you to be successful, because (a) they will probably lose an eating partner, and (b) they feel guilty about their own excess weight.

And don't expect support from your family. Women often drop five pounds only to have their husbands buy them a five pound box of chocolates as a reward. Sadly, husbands don't typically want their wives to be successful at weight loss. The reason? Insecurity. If the wife gets too attractive she may start getting attention from other men, and they will have competition.

In general, family members are far more apt to criticize our eating habits that to praise them. One woman was telling me how supportive her family was. "Last night my son saw me cutting a piece of cake, and he said 'Hey, you're not supposed to be doing that. You're on a diet!'"

Alas, that's not support. It's criticism. It rarely helps us get thinner. In fact, it usually backfires, and makes us angry and resentful. When someone disapproves of what we are eating, it doesn't teach us not to eat, it teaches us not to get caught. We become sneak eaters. When no one is looking we stuff the piece of cake in our mouths, and then feel guilty about it. Thinking we've blown the day, we sneak another piece of cake, vowing to start fresh tomorrow.

One young woman, Sandy, described to me what usually happened in her house on a daily basis. "It's time for dessert to be served, and my father is cutting the pie, or the cake, or whatever. He cuts a piece for everyone at the table, then he looks at me and says, 'You don't want any do you Sandy?' I say 'no' but I don't mean it. I end up locking myself in the bathroom and crying my eyes out. Later, I sneak out of the house, buy two or three candy bars and eat them on the way home."

Another woman, whose parents were totally obsessed with her weight, made absolutely no progress until she realized that their nagging was hurting rather than helping. Unconsciously, she was sabotaging her own efforts to change in order to be in charge of her own life.

Jeanne also sabotaged her own efforts, but for a different reason. She kept candy bars stashed in the kitchen drawer and nibbled on them secretively while she was cooking or washing dishes. Knowing that Jeanne went to business during the day, and that she had a husband, I asked, "Do you and your husband take turns with cooking and cleaning?"

"Oh, no," she replied. "He works all day. I do all the chores. He likes a hot meal on the table when he gets home from work."

"But you work all day too. Why should you be the servant of the house? That doesn't seem fair."

It wasn't fair, and Jeanne knew it, but rather than assert herself and ask her husband to share the responsibility for the housework, she got back at him in a different way. Jeanne knew that her husband hated her excess weight, so she kept herself fat to make him angry. In front of him she ate like a bird. Behind his back she stuffed her face.

Prepare yourself for the fact that some of your relationships may change as you lose weight. You may even find that there are certain friendships you have to let go of, because you no longer have anything in common with these individuals. Eating will no longer be the social glue that cements your relationships together. Don't be afraid to move on to the next chapter in your life. Don't hang on to the status quo just because it's what you are used to.

Survival Tips:

Avoid food-related and diet-related topics of conversation. Don't tell anyone that you are in the process of losing weight. Not only will they try to sabotage you, but they will also be hanging over your shoulder checking out every little tidbit you put in your mouth. You don't want that kind of attention, trust me. On the subject of weight loss everybody's an expert. Everybody knows what you should or shouldn't do, and they will jump at the chance to give you an unwanted earful.

Prepare yourself for the day when someone asks, "Have you lost weight?" Don't answer yes or no. Just say, "Wow! That's the nicest question anyone's asked me all day. Thank you." And then walk away.

If they persist, "No, really, have you lost weight?" Say, "Do I look thinner? That's good to hear."

If they still persist, "Are you on a diet?" Answer, "No, I don't believe in dieting," and go on about your business.

Technically, this is the truth. Remember, the Living Thin method is not about dieting. It is about changing behavior.  Your goal, ultimately, is to change your behavior to what it would be if you didn't have a weight problem