decreasing stress triggers

DECREASING STRESS TRIGGERS

As you start the weight loss program, you may notice that you can’t reach for the same stress relievers you normally relied on. You may have been using food as a source of comfort. Or, maybe you are used to unwinding by having an alcoholic beverage, which is now restricted from your diet. Many people use sweets and desserts to comfort themselves in times of hard stress. The same stress triggers you had before may still be there but the effect they have on your diet can be minimized.

The first thing you will need to do is be aware of your stress triggers. They are different for everyone. If you don’t know what triggers you, you won’t be able to replace a bad habit with a good one, because you will be on automatic pilot before you know it. So, evaluating your stress triggers before you start the diet can be a good way to plan ahead for those inevitable times when you will feel stressed. As you think over situations that have stressed you in the past, seek to reduce these types of situations in your life or affirm to start positive techniques of addressing your stress, instead of heading toward the pantry.

You may want to think of new strategies that are healthier to help you cope with the initial stage where deprivation may be a source of frustration. Think about other ways that you have used that work well to reduce stress: taking a hot bath, meditating, getting a massage, or even making love. All these methods of addressing stress levels can replace eating or drinking inappropriate things when you are stressed out. If you aren’t sure what kind of activities might help, take a look at what types of things you enjoy and use them. Music that calms the nerves can be useful.

The psychological aspects of dieting can include feelings of deprivation, frustration as well as mood alterations. You can get help to keep you

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Dieting… But Never Dared To Ask!- 25

motivated by dieting with a buddy or using a group plan like Weight Watchers for support when the going gets tough. Remember to be gentle with yourself and not beat yourself up for missing your target for a day. Take each day as a new opportunity to do the best job you can on your diet and forget about the past.

Don’t forget about positive stress triggers. Not all stress triggers are negative. If you’ve found you’ve lost more weight than your target goal for a week, don’t use that as a positive stress trigger to eat. If you get a promotion at your job, schedule something other than a congratulatory restaurant outing to celebrate. Keep in mind that you will want an excuse to get off your diet, at those times, you need to find other ways to either reward yourself or keep from falling off the diet.

Other forms of toning exercise can also help to relieve stress triggers. Yoga and Tai Chi can help to calm the mind of its neurotic cravings while toning the body. It increases flexibility and can help to stimulate the metabolism. This type of exercise has the added benefit of helping one to gradual increase the level of complexity, keeping the practice interesting while continuing to challenge us to increased fitness.

GOOD SHOPPING HABITS

The old adage “never go shopping on an empty stomach” is even truer when you are dieting. Schedule your shopping trips to be exercise sessions, not meals. Most supermarkets are laid out in the same type of format where the essentials are found on the perimeter of the store and specialty foods and products are placed in the center aisles. One can go into a store and avoid the center aisles, for the most part, and

still get all your shopping done. You will most likely avoid the processed foods, the snacks, and other sorts of prepackage high-calories foods.

If your diet is a health diet, you might end up shopping at an organic market or farmer’s market more than a regular grocery store. These places offer high quality vegetables and fruits. Organic markets carry produce that has no pesticides or harmful additives. If you are juicing with a home juicer, organic fruits will allow you to use the fruits and vegetables with the skin to get the most nutrients and none of the harmful chemicals in your diet.

You should have an idea, which markets carry the foods you need at a price you can afford. You should go through your menu planner and figure out what you need to buy and add that to your grocery list. Obviously, if you are using a diet that sells prepackaged foods that can be microwaved, then you won’t have to really think too hard about what ingredients you are buying.


However, the cost of following that type of diet plan is much higher than preparing your own meals.

If you are on a low-carbohydrate diet, you will need to get into the habit of reading the labels on your foods. Many foods appear to be low-carbohydrate but can be deceptive in that additives to them make them unsuitable for a low-carbohydrate diet. Popcorn, for instance, appears to be a low-calorie food until you look at the microwave popcorn labels and read the calories of some brands. They can be very high in calories.

If you are on the Atkins diet, you may need to go to a specialty food store that carries Atkins brands to be able to follow the diet. If you are on a gluten-free diet, even reading the labels may not be enough. You may have to find out if the gluten-free products were manufactured in a factory that also produces gluten-rich products. For that, you will have to do a little more legwork by calling the companies directly.

If you are keen on doing your own recipes, make sure to figure out substitutes for calorie rich ingredients. If you are used to using canned or frozen foods like vegetables or fruits, don’t assume they are low in calories because they are fruits or vegetables. Check the labels. Substitute low- calorie products and brands for high calorie ones. Many canned foods can contain additional sugars that you aren’t aware of until you read the label.

Depending on the diet you are on, you may end up getting lean cuts or meat or more fatty ones. Dairy products are also something that is restricted by different diets in different ways. Oils may be restricted for health diets based on the idea that some are high in monounsaturated fats and healthier for you. But, that again, will depend on the diet.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are a safe bet. Processed foods are usually not recommended unless they are approved by the diet in prepackaged meal plans that carefully regulate portions and ingredients. All this calorie counting and ingredient shopping can seem hard, but it will get easier the more you get familiar with the food that can safely be included in your diet plans. Schedule more time at the start of your diet to get yourself acquainted with the products and brands that can meet your diet’s requirements.

Grocery shopping can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. If your diet is planned well enough in advance, going to the grocery store or farmer’s market can be an opportunity for exercise and

not frustration. You may find that the diets with the prepackaged meals make more sense for you if you were never interested in cooking to begin with. If your lifestyle has been one of going to restaurants for most meals, simply choosing a diet with prepackaged meal plans can help you to lose weight.

If you are an avid cook, you try some of the more exotic fruits and vegetables to add variety to your diet. As long as they aren’t prohibited from


the diet due to high sugar content or carbohydrates, then you can start to choose some foods to add to help you keep an interest in what you are eating. Some diets offer a choice of different meal plans and you can mix and match them to suit your mood and help you stay motivated. This can make it harder to go grocery shopping, but it can also make the diet a fun, new experience in food shopping.


4 KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR GOALS

There are a number of different philosophies about how to keep track of your goals. Some diets would not have you check your weight frequently, others do. Some might have you check your body fat measurements. Others are more concerned with how many calories and your eating habits and journaling can then be a good tool. Or, if you want to get really scientific about it you can start tracking your progress in a spreadsheet.

If your diet doesn’t include techniques for keeping track of your weight loss, you may want to use some of the following suggestions to help you track your progress.

WEIGHING IN

There are a number of things to consider about the weigh in. The accuracy of the scale is important. The number of times you weigh yourself can be daily, weekly, or even monthly. If you are on a short-term diet and expect to lose a lot of weight, you will need to check your progress more frequently. The time of day that you weigh yourself is also important, as is the time of month for women. There is evidence that weighing yourself once a day is more motivating and contributes to weight loss more than weekly or monthly readings. However, some diets are very specific about how often one can weigh themselves and you should follow the diet that you’ve chosen closely.

Try to weigh yourself with minimal clothing in the morning before you eat breakfast. This will give you a good idea of how you are doing before you have the chance to add weight through meals. If you are a woman and you notice weight gain close to your menstrual period, it is probably due to water gain. Don’t let it discourage you from your diet. Remember that weight gain isn’t necessarily bad if you are also exercising. It can also indicate muscle gain.

Above all try to keep scale measurements in perspective. Everyone’s weight can fluctuate one to two pounds per day, whether they’re on a diet or not. Do weigh yourself and keep records, but realize that body mass is not the same thing as body fat. The scale does not take into account your body type,


how dense your bones are, and whether you have more muscle than fat. So, be kind to yourself and use the scale as just one indicator of progress, not to berate yourself.

MUSCLE GAIN AND BODY FAT MEASUREMENTS

The initial measurement of your body mass index (BMI) should have been given to you by your physician. After that you can also calculate your own BMI using a formula or a BMI calculator online. Make sure that you take into account your gender and age when doing your own BMI calculations. The body mass index doesn’t really tell you the percentage of body fat, but it will tell you whether you are approaching a normal weight for people within your age and gender grouping. The BMI formula can be done in a variety of units.

The calculation of BMI for U.S. units of measurement is:

BMI=703 X (WEIGHT in pounds/HEIGHT2 in inches2)

The calculation of BMI for U.K. units of measurement is:

BMI=6.35 X (WEIGHT in stones/HEIGHT2 in meters2)

The calculation of BMI for the metric system is:

BMI= (WEIGHT in kilograms/HEIGHT2 in meters2)

The BMI guidelines for adults are:

A value of 30.0 or above is obese. A value of 25.0 to 29.9 is overweight. A value of 18.5 to 24.9 is normal, and a value below 18.5 is underweight. These readings can change depending on age so it’s best to find a BMI calculator online that will take the age and gender into account too when determining the BMI. This will only tell you how close you are to a normal weight for your gender or age grouping, it will not give you any idea of body fat percentages.

For that you will actually have to either get a caliper test done to determine how much body fat you have. This can be done at your physician’s office, a gym, or even a university. You can also learn to use the caliper yourself to determine if you are gaining muscle while losing fat. This may make you heavier, but it will also be an indication that you are becoming healthier too. You can buy a caliper online, but you will most likely need to learn how to use it properly so that your measurements are accurate and consistent. If you don’t trust yourself to take good measurements, have someone at a gym do it for you to help you gauge your progress. At the very least, see if you


can get someone to show you the proper way to use a caliper to test for body fat.

Another effective home method of measuring body fat is scales specifically designed to do it using bioelectric impedance. The only thing to remember, if you want to use this method, is that these devices are sensitive to the water gain in your body and skin temperature. To take a good reading, don’t eat or drink for about four hours before taking this test. Also, you will want to wait twelve hours after you’ve exercised to use a body fat scale that uses bioelectric impedance principles. You will want to learn how to convert the reading to something meaningful but it is a great fitness tool, especially using it at home.

There are other types of special testing for body fat. Whether you want to have one done before and after the diet is a personal choice. They can be expensive and uncomfortable, but it may be in line with the goals you’ve chosen for the diet. One of these is hydrostatic weighing, which is essentially being weight underwater. You are dunked several times to try to determine the body fat, which is reflective of how much you float in the tank. Universities and some fitness places offer this type of testing, but it can be very uncomfortable and prices range from $25 to $50.

There are whole body scanners that use dual energy x-ray to read bone mass and versus soft tissue mass. It is painless even though it can take up to 30 minutes to complete. The cost is very high, upwards of $100, but the accuracy is very good. If you are losing weight and gaining muscle for personal reasons, this may be a bit extreme.

If your diet is to increase heart health, body fat measurements can be crucial. A higher percentage of fat in the body doesn’t just contribute to obesity, but it can affect health factors too. It increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis and gallstones. Even the risk of some cancers has been shown to be related to body fat percentages.

One of the advantages of tracking more than just weight, is that if you gain weight, you may still find a reduction in overall body fat. This can help maintain your determination to stay on the diet or continue exercising even though the scale may say you are heavier. If the heaviness is muscle than you will be able to notice a difference in the overall body shape, regardless of how much you weigh, which is visually pleasing. You might also notice that the clothing you are wearing is starting to hang looser on your body and the pants are less tight. These are all indications that a diet is working even when the weight scale may suggest otherwise.

Have a number of different factors to track to see if your diet is working. Obviously, if your diet is heart-healthy, you will need to track cholesterol levels. If your diet is to reduce blood sugar levels, you will need to track those. Not every diet is based on weight, even when weight is affected.


Weight is just one characteristic that can be used to determine if the dieter is successful. If you are following a diet, it may be wise to keep the numbers to yourself so that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking weight loss one day is equals long-term success, particularly if the goal is health or fitness.

DIET JOURNALING

You can track your diet in a spiral-bound notebook or you can go high-tech and get software programs to help you track your progress. The advantage to software programs is that they can often give you an idea of your nutrition goals, which are much harder to calculate by hand. Counting calories can also be much easier, but it may not be necessary if you are using a program like Weight Watchers that uses prepackaged foods with the calorie count system on the labels.

Hopefully, whatever you choose, you will journal not just about the foods you are eating, but also about exercise or activity levels, body fat, and weight loss. The advantage to doing the notebook approach is that you can take it with you and write down what you ate when you are doing it, rather than waiting until the end of the day. Otherwise, you may have to write it down and then type it back into a software program to get more information out of your day.

WRITING DOWN FOODS

If you’ve started the week out with menus, odds are you won’t have to write down the foods you ate unless it deviated from the menu. You will know ahead of time whether you stuck to the format or not. If later, you want nutritional assessment from a software program, you have to input that data accordingly. The only time you might need to journal for the foods, if you are following a strict diet plan is when you cheat. At that point, it’s important to note the behavior, not just to know how many calories you added to your diet for the day but also to get a feel for the patterns of behavior that you exhibit in times of stress. It can help you become more aware and keep you more on target later.

Be sure to have an idea of how many calories you are consuming daily and whether it meets the plan or not. If you are on a system that isn’t calorie- based just note the types of food you ate or any other relevant information that the diet tracks. Whatever the goal of the diet is that is what you need to track. If you are on a low-sugar diet, you need to track high sugar foods in your diet.


One of the other very important items to include when you are writing down your foods, is how you felt about that meal or cheating instance. Was it good? Was it filling? Would you continue to eat it? If you are buying diet packages, try to determine what works better for you and adjust the diet accordingly. This will help you stay on track with the diet even when it calls for a meal you don’t like. Substitute with something of equal value that you do like, if it happens to meet the diet’s requirements.

GIVE YOURSELF KUDOS FOR FITNESS

A diet journal shouldn’t just be a morose document of all your misdemeanors and sins. It should also contain information on what you did for fitness, even if it was just parking your car at the back of a lot and walking five minutes to the front of the store. In some instances, like the Weight Watchers diet, the fitness can even take away some of the extra calories you ingested that weren’t a part of that day’s allotment. This will help to promote balance in your diet and help to ease your conscience too.

If you are doing strength training to build muscles or endurance, you can put in the number of repetitions and weight used during your sessions. This is very important so that you can start building up the resistance, as you get stronger. Otherwise, you won’t remember and you won’t challenge yourself to increase the fitness, which is important as your metabolism adjusts to the changes in your diet and fitness program.

You can include entertainment as part of your fitness goals like skiing, dancing, or golf. These may be harder to track in terms of calorie busting, but they show that you are keeping to a level of activity that should increase your fitness. You may even find that you are doing more of one activity than another and that might clue you into other ways to modify your lifestyle to make it enjoyable and active.

In the fitness portion of the journal, be sure to track the body fat percentages too. This number is a better indication than weight gain as to how effective a fitness program or activity is for you. If you take frequent body fat readings and correlate it to specific fitness routines, you may find that one activity works much better for you than others. It may even be surprising if you find that yoga is more effective for your body type than running.

There are a number of online fitness journals you can find that can help you figure out how to best track your fitness goals. Part of tracking your fitness activities is also to be able to tell when the best times are for you to add activities and what sort of obstacles come up to stop you from exercising. Being more aware of how to best schedule your day to include fitness and


how to avoid obstacles can help you stop procrastinating and start getting healthier.

You will want some sort of format that can help you spot trends and patterns in your own behavior and help you to modify them when they interfere with the plan. If you notice that you’ve scheduled a 6 pm gym session that never gets done, then it’s time to change the time or pick a different activity. Doing some activity is better than doing none and whether an excuse is valid or not, where there is a will, there is a way.

TRACKING THE VITAL STATISTICS

As mentioned earlier, when you are on a low-sugar diet, you will need to track blood sugar levels. If you are on a diet to increase nutrition, you have to know how to track that. If you are on a diet to lose weight, you will want to include weight statistics. How often you take those measurements depends on how long the diet is and how important it is to track your progress.

At the very least, any diet, which includes fitness, should track:

• Your weight • Your body fat percentage

Other parameters, like health, cholesterol, and blood sugar level can also be tracked too. If you want to track trends and compare blood sugar levels to activity level or calories, you will need something more sophisticated than a spiral notebook.

DIET SPREADSHEETS AND PROGRAMS

To get a visual feel for your daily progress, you might want to either plug the numbers into a spreadsheet or a software program. There are Excel templates available for Microsoft Office that can track calories from protein, carbohydrates and fats. There are programs for almost every diet out there from the Atkins to the South Beach diet. They all track different elements of the diet from nutrition to calories. If you are doing a diet for something that is difficult to assess, like glycemic values, then you might want to get a diet program that can tell you these values and track them for you.

Most of these programs can produce visually interpretive graphs and estimate the number of pounds that might be lost based on calorie counting. Some programs compare the diet to the FDA’s food pyramid to see if the


nutrition levels are good. They can be used to create menus in advance and also to forecast weight loss based on menu selections. These programs can be highly motivating when you start but they also have to be adjusted as you actually go through the diet.

One of the nice things about getting a program is many come with the food values already in a database. You don’t have to keep looking up labels or trying to determine the values yourself. The computer

program does it for you. This can save a lot of time when you are doing a program that may allow a large number of foods and menus. Some people prefer to plan their own menus but then find that tracking the actual values of calories, fat, or protein to be very challenging. In that case, software programs can aide in having the best of both worlds: your own cooking and the right diet values.

decreasing stress triggers

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