How many times have you heard someone say “I don’t have the willpower to lose weight”. You may even say this yourself. What you're really saying is that you think its hard to lose weight without some kind of help. If you are a woman over forty, this may be true because of the many changes that a woman goes through as she approaches menopause. However, there is a way to overcome this obstacle that doesn't require sheer willpower.
It is hard to lose weight, but not because you don’t have willpower. Willpower is one the biggest excuses for not losing weight, it’s the easy way out because it does take some effort to start seeing results. Society has even made not having willpower acceptable by promoting products and gimmicks (the magic pill) that say you can lose weight quickly and easily without changing your current diet and you don’t have to exercise. Everyone who has struggled to lose weight secretly yearns for that magic pill, or surgery to rid them of their excess weight becasue, lets face it, it does take willpower (???). We live in a fast paced society where we want unrealistic results in a very short time. We say who needs willpower when I can take this diet pill, get liposuction or gastric bypass surgery. Of course, there is always an exception in extreme circumstances. But, with these solutions, you never overcome willpower and soon the weight creeps back if you are not careful. This is where skill-power comes into play.
Unlike willpower wich is essentially an excuse not to try (for the most part), skill-power gives you a better than average chance of losing weight successfully. Skill-power is having the knowledge of healthy habits that turn on your fat-burning switches to help melt away excess fat in a systematic way that bypasses the notion of willpower. If you are equipped with skills that allow you to effortlessly incorporate healthy habits into your daily routine over a period of time, then there is no need for willpower. By switching to a healthy lifestyle rather than focusing on the latest fad diet, you give yourself a greater chance at maintaining a healthy weight.
Skill-Power For A Leaner Healthier You
Healthy skills can be learned by anyone at any age. The only way to achieve sustainable weight loss is to plan to lose weight long term. Too many times we follow the latest weight loss trend, see some results, lose 20 pounds but after the program is over we gain back more than 20 pounds. We only plan to lose weight for the program duration but do not plan for long term weight management. As the saying goes, “If you fail to plan, then plan to fail”. The failure to plan for long term weight loss and weight management is the best way to fail.
We plan everything else in our lives but we have unrealistic expectations for losing weight. We want to lose 10 pounds in two weeks before our vacation. These types of goals require lots of will power that only leads to failure because the goal is unattainable through normal diet and exercise. The average person can safely lose 2 pounds a week. Instead of focusing on short term weight loss goals you should plan on achieving long term results that require a little more planning. Long term weight loss allows you to acquire healthy eating habits that will benefit you both now and later.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to learn healthy skills that trigger your fat-burning switches. First you must decide on what your realistic ideal weight should be and then make a plan to reach that weight. If you have been following this
fitness project you are one step ahead. To start your plan, first determine how many calories you need to consume for that weight and then how many fat grams per day you should be consuming for that weight. Your target daily calories from fat consumed should be between 20% and 25% of your total calories. The optimal range is between 10-25% of calories from fat.
Here is how you can determine how many calories you should be consuming for your ideal weight. Pick what percentage of fat from calories you feel is reasonable between 10-25%, less is better. To calculate the amount of calories depends on your sex (male or female) and your fitness level (sedentary or active). For a sedentary woman (not active), you will multiply your ideal weight by 12 (a man by 14). For an active woman who is physically fit multiply your ideal weight by 18 (a man by 20). If you are moderately active multiply by 15 for a woman and 17 for a man. Next, multiply the calories by your fat percentage chosen. This gives you the amount of calories from fat you should be eating. Then divide that answer by 9 (which is the number of calories in a fat gram), giving you the total grams of fat per day. Here is the formula.
Total Grams of Fat Formula:
[[(Ideal weight X multiplier)] X (fat%)] / (9) = total grams of fat
Example: My ideal weight is 150lbs and I’m moderately active, I’ll shoot for 25% for my fat intake percentage
[(150X15=2250)X.25=562.5]/9=62.5g.
Therefore, I should be consuming 2250 calories a day if I want to be 150 pounds and consume less than 62.5 grams of fat from calories a day. This may seem counter intuitive because many weight loss programs restrict your calories to around 1400-1800 calories (this is good for rapid weight loss in a short period of time but not recommended for long term). This calculation takes into account your activity level. The more active and fit you are, the more calories your body needs for basic functions. In any case, check with your doctor to make sure this calculation is suitable for your special needs.
Here are nine skill-powers that help trigger your fat burning switches to help shed unwanted weight. This group of healthy skills are not new, we just don’t want to put them into practice because we’d rather have that magic pill. We still hold on to the notion that it takes willpower to lose weight, but in reality it takes a conscious informed effort to make the necessary changes required to acheive your goals.
Nine Skill-Power Switches
Skill-Power Switch #1: Quick Start Your Morning Metabolism
By turning up the lights, getting at least five minutes of easy physical activity and enjoy a great tasting low-fat breakfast, you can rev up your metabolism. Turning on the lights as soon as you wake up triggers an instantaneous alertness-booster in the brain that shifts physiology away from sleep and toward a new day filled with more energy and higher metabolism. Some research shows that exercising before breakfast helps burn off excess body fat and you are more likely to stick with an exercising program if done earlier in the day. Skipping breakfast triggers a fat-making response. So, eat a
hearty healthy breakfast for maximum fuel.
Master breakfast (Bircher-Benner Muesli):
½ cup slow cooking oats, uncooked
Just ripe fruit (apple, banana, orange, berries) or canned unsweetened fruit like peaches
Non-fat or 1% low-fat plain yogurt
1 tsp brown sugar
Cinnamon, vanilla or other natural flavorings
1). Place oats in bowl and add enough water to cover, then cover bowl an refrigerate overnight
2). In morning, slice the fruit, add the yogurt, brown sugar and flavoring to taste
3). Stir and eat
Skill-Power Switch #2: Eat Low-Fat, High Fiber Snacks
Reprogram your mind and your body into consuming 5-6 small meals. They tend to lower blood cholesterol levels, reduce body fat, enhance digestion, lessen the risk of heart disease and increase your metabolism. The idea of eating 5-6 small meals a day goes by the "The Low-Fat Living 3-plus-4 Eating Plan". This plan promotes a steadier production of sustained energy, promotes fat-burning and tends to promote a smaller, healthier insulin response. It is targeted to prevent the storage of needless excess body fat. By snacking on low-fat foods throughout the day, it has considerable weight loss advantages. By
eating low-fat snacks in mid-morning and mid-afternoon, you are less likely to stuff yourself at main meals or lapse into stress-related eating binges in the evening. Remember one of the golden rules is to never go more than 4 hours without eating, generally 2-3 hours in between meals is ideal.
The Low-Fat Living 3-plus-4 eating plan:
All meals are less than 500 calories, with a maximum of 20-25% of calories from fat, anything above 500 calories gets stored as excess fat. Whenever a meal is over 500 calories, the excess calories whether from nonfat, low-fat, or low calorie foods stimulates fat-forming and fat-storing. On the plan you still consume 3 main meals that are low fat (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Then treat yourself to 2-4 low-fat snacks that are lower in fat than your main meals and are 100-200 calories. You should eat your main meals and your snacks in 2-3 hour intervals.
Example:
7:00am BREAKFAST 250-300 calories
10:00am SNACK #1 100-200 calories
12:00noon LUNCH 400-500 calories
3:15pm SNACK #2 100-200 calories
5:30pm APPETIZER pre-dinner 100-150 calories
7:00pm DINNER 400-500 calories
8:45pm SNACK #3 100-150 calories
TOTAL CALORIES = 1450-2000
Skill-Power Switch #3: Drink Plenty of Water
Not many people know how easy it is to become dehydrated. A fluid loss of 1-2% of the body’s total water content can cause dehydration. Each day the average person loses at least 2 cups of water through breathing, another 2 cups through invisible perspiration and 6 cups through urination and bowel movements. That’s ten cups of fluid loss a day. Other factors that contribute to water loss includes caffeinated beverages, and sweat. This is why health professionals recommend
drinking at least 8 cups of water a day. You can replenish your fluids by eating water dense foods like watermelons and other sugar-free beverages or herb teas which can add up to about 3½ cups. The body does water recycling on its own about ½ cups every day. Therefore, you lose about 10 cups of water a day and only get about 4 cups from food and water recycling which means that you have to drink 6 cups of water just to break even. Dehydration can cause many different health problems that are misdiagnosed but, can be easily fixed by drinking enough water.
People actually mistake being thirsty as being hungry, therefore we tend to eat when we are actually just thirsty. One way to help determine if you are indeed hungry is to drink a glass of water first and then wait for a few minutes. If the hunger pang strikes again then go for your low-fat snack. Water adds volume in your stomach, making you feel fuller. It is good practice to drink a glass of water about 10-20 minutes before your meal, it gives you calorie free volume and helps you to eat less. Avoid caffeinated drinks, they cause you to feel more hungry and prepares your body for maximally storing, as body fat, whatever foods you eat. Refer to KHFP Week #10 Trade Up Your Drinks for healthier alternatives to caffeinated drinks.
Skill-Power Switch #4: Low-Intensity Aerobics
Just getting up off the couch, turning off the television and going outside for a stroll around the block can be very beneficial to your health. Increasing your cardiovascular activity even just a little will trigger your fat-burning switch. Health professionals suggest that you get at least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise a day to keep the body functioning properly and increase your cardiovascular strength. You can actually find many small ways to increase your aerobic activity that does not require you to join a gym or take up lots of your time. You can take the stairs instead of the elevator, park further away from the store, do some spring cleaning, ride a bike, take the dog for a walk and even march in place during commercials. Refer to
KHFP Week #3 Get Moving where I discuss the benefits of walking, an aerobics routine and how often you should exercise. Your fat-burning switch is activated for hours after any aerobics activity.
Skill-Power Switch #5: Have a Fat Fighting Lunch
Many times when we are pressed for time and don’t plan our lunch in advance, we don’t always eat a healthy power lunch. Failing to plan your lunch in advance can lead to eating whatever is available and convenient, which is usually a high-fat meal. These high-fat lunch choices actually cause fatigue, because during the long digestive process of the high-fat meal more blood is diverted to the stomach and intestines and away from the brain. That’s why most people are tired a few hours after eating lunch and their productivity suffers. Women should be especially careful consuming high fat animal products because the extra fat calories increase production of the pro-fat hormone estrogen. Low-fat meals that are high in fiber, whole grains and protein ten to trigger the fat-burning switch.
The challenge to eating a healthy low-fat lunch that doesn’t include animal products, is to find a good tasting alternative. There are plenty of tasty alternatives on the market today that you can try. To be successful, the lunch has to have vivid, distinct, tongue-tingling flavors but remain low in fat and relatively high in energizing protein. One good place to start is by referring back to
KHFP Week #7 Toss Up A Big Bowl of Salad. If you love burgers, you may want to try some of the veggie burgers (The Garden Burger) they now have that are loaded with flavor or try a good turkey burger recipe, but avoid the high fat sandwich spreads. Also, in KHFP Week #12 Abs Are Made In The Kitchen, there are quite a few good lunch choices to help you out.
Other good choices, are baked or broiled skinless chicken, turkey breast or fish (or suitable meatless option), a bean or lentil salad, soup or casserole, and cottage cheese with fruit then balance them with some complex carbohydrates like vegetables, whole-grain bread, rye crackers or a side dish of beans or lentils. Keep in mind to steer clear of the fat/sugar duo lunch like having a burger and fries with a diet cola. What happens is that the jolt from the sugar triggers the insulin response which is a pro-fat hormone that opens up the fat cells making them ready to store fat from the burger and fries. You can get this same effect when combing a high fat food with a food high on the
Glycemic Index or with a high
Glycemic load.
Skill-Power Switch #6: Quick and Easy Muscle-Toning
Muscle loss begins in your mid twenties, if you are not active you have been losing muscle at a rate of one pound a year since age 25. If your lean muscle mass steadily decreases so does your resting metabolism. The result is that your body needs fewer and fewer calories to function and the excess calories you consume are more easily stored as body fat. Lean muscles help burn fat therefore, they trigger the fat-burning switch. By toning your muscles you actually raise your metabolic rate so you burn more fat, even when resting. Muscle-making resistance exercises as discussed in
KHFP Week #9 Pump It UP, may be the single most effective health weapon you can employ if you are over 40 years old gaining weight and not active. This tends to be the case for most women over forty (the gaining weight). Strong well toned muscles keep your circulation high, draws in more oxygen, revs up calorie-burning and increases your overall metabolism by helping you to burn off stubborn layers of excess body fat. Always remember to use proper form, breathe properly and pay attention to acute pain signals in order to avoid injury. Every little bit counts.
Skill-Power Switch # 7: Reverse Your Dinner Habits
Make it early and get a fresh start on your evening. Many people’s dinner time occurs just as our metabolism is crashing. As night approaches our biology slows the fat-burning and speeds up the fat-forming and fat-storing processes. There are
seven simple and practical ways to reinvent your evening habits to increase fat-burning instead of fat storing.
1). Pay attention to the timing of your evening meal by making it early in the evening, before 7pm. If your heaviest meal is dinner, make it before 7pm giving your body time to digest the meal before the fat-storing kicks in. You can still have a snack before bed just make it light and low-fat.
2). Pay attention to the amount and proportions of carbohydrates, proteins and total calories in your evening meal. Begin to make your dinner smaller in portions and lower in fat. Your dinner should consist of more vegetables and grains and fewer protein-rich and fat-rich foods. Try and limit your dinner to around 500 calories. It is a good idea to keep a food diary to help you remember what you have already consumed. On average, those who kept accurate records lost the most weight. This process holds you accountable for knowing what you are putting in your body, when, and how much.
3). Consider how you begin your meal, like eating protein early in the meal. If you start your meal with an oil drenched salad, nacho chips, a hunk of parmesan garlic bread/roll you will plunge into physical fatigue rather than energy filled to get through the rest of the evening. Your meal can be more energizing by starting it with a few bites of low-fat, protein-rich food before eating the rest of the meal, therefore promoting feelings of alertness and energy for up to three hours. For instance, start the meal with a cup of tomato soup or lentil/bean soup or small lentil/bean salad.
4). Change the mood and pace of your eating with some small environmental adjustments that conspire to make you eat less and consume less fat. Some studies suggest that listening to soft, slow music tend to make you eat less and eat more slowly. Also, loud noises like in crowded noisy restaurants can increase the rate and amount of consumption. Slow down when you eat, instead of taking only 10 minutes to eat, try and increase that by at least 5 minutes. Slowing down makes you taste and savor your food allowing you to enjoy what you are eating.
5). Delay eating dessert, not consuming it immediately after dinner. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to have dessert after dinner, especially if your meal ends up being more than 500-600 calories. A good way to prevent this is to get up from the dinner table, ask for dessert to go or just ask for the check and skip dessert if dining out. A good rule of thumb is to wait for 1½ to 2 hours after dinner when you’ve had some brief post-dinner physical activity before grabbing a sweet treat. This also gives your dinner enough time to get digested before your last snack of the day.
6). Get up and moving. The first impulse after eating dinner is to watch television. This action promotes fat-forming, fatigue and grumpiness rather than a fat-burning response. The 15-30 minutes after dinner is crucial to setting your metabolism and it sets the stage for deeper sleep. A leisurely 10-15 minute walk after dinner helps turn on your fat-burner switches, you may burn 15% more calories than if you performed this walk on an empty stomach. It is a good idea to schedule your after dinner walk around the same time each night, giving you a much better chance to make it a habit you will keep and enjoy.
7). Finish up with a low-fat snack or dessert. After your post-dinner light physical activity, its time to enjoy a low-fat snack or dessert. Make sure to keep it under 300 calories and 3 grams of fat. Pay attention to serving size if it’s a store bought treat. Also, take your time and chew it slowly and savor the flavor. Once you are done, brush your teeth, this is a subconscious signal that eating time is over.
Skill-Power Switch #8: Get Deeper, High-Metabolism Sleep
Efficient fat loss and energy building require that your body get a chance to recover during sleep. Your body will burn significantly more calories each night if you sleep cool, because your natural thermostat kicks in and supplies natural body heat. The more heat your body has to provide, the more fat you’ll burn to provide that heat. Raising your body temperature through light physical activity or with a hot shower a couple of hours before bed can help deepen your sleep. Try to never go to bed hungry because going extremely long periods of time without eating turns on your fat storing switch. For instance, you may think that if you don’t eat after 5:00pm it will help you lose more weight, just the reverse actually happens so avoid this kind of fasting. So if you are up late and you get hungry, its ok to grab a low-fat, low-protein, high-carb snack like a few rye crackers and a piece of fruit.
Skill-Power Switch #9: Pay Attention To Your “I’m full” Signal
Slow down and enjoy eating your food, chew your food completely. Remember that if you pile food on your plate you will more than likely eat it all. Use the trick of putting your food onto a smaller plate to make it look like a lot of food. Once you’ve cleared your plate pause before going for second helpings and listen for that “I‘m full“ signal. If you wait a few minutes the signal will kick in. Lots of times when we eat, that signal is ignored because we might get distracted or be in a hurry. But if we just pause for a second or put the fork down, drink a glass of water or sip a cup of tea we might realize that we are satiated (not full). Remember that you will be eating something again in about 2 hours so don’t get too full at this meal. You may even start to anticipate having a low-fat dessert after dinner that won’t make you feel guilty or blow your diet. If you space your meals out strategically throughout the day, you won’t need willpower, your skill-power switches will kick in automatically.
Many of these skill-powers may sound familiar because you have been strategically introduced to them if following
Kandie’s Health and Fitness Project from week one until now, they should already be everyday healthy habits. Once again, the premise behind this project is to help develop positive healthy habits that do not require willpower but instead equip you with a healthy skill set to achieve real long term weight loss results. The best way to lose weight is not to wait until a few weeks before an important event and then try desperately to lose weight fast. Instead, plan ahead in advance several weeks in order to give yourself a better chance at success. Plan to succeed by utilizing these powerful skill-power switches. Stop looking for that magic pill or magic formula for weight loss and realize that you already know how to lose weight, you just need a successful strategy you can realistically follow that goes beyond the initial weight loss success and focuses on living a healthier lifestyle. If you equip yourself with the knowledge of these skill-power switches and utilize them daily, you will begin to see significant health benefits quicker than you think.
Assignment
This week’s assignment is for you to create an actual working plan for reaching your ideal weight (if you haven‘t by now). Calculate how many calories and fat you should be eating in order to lose weight. You have been making small weekly health tweaks for 4½ months, so making a more structured plan is not a stretch, you have all the tools you need for success. Use a combination of skill-power switches to help you out. Readjust your schedule and to-do list to make sure that eating healthy is a priority. This is the best way to win against willpower by utilizing skill-power.
Weekly Checklist (Weeks 1-18)
Drink 8 glasses of water every day
Eat a Hearty Healthy breakfast
Get movin’ by walking or aerobics
Eat an Apple or Pear everyday
Say no to your poison, ditch the junk food
Go a little nuts by eating a handful of nuts
Toss Up a Big Bowl of Salad
Take Your Vitamins
Pump It Up!!!
Trade Up Your Drinks
Sprinkle Some Flax on It
Abs are made in the kitchen
Trade Up Your Dairy
Grab a Superfood
Plan Your Healthy Day
Trade Up Your Oil
Eat Lower on The Glycemic Index
Whip Up A Power Smoothie
Willpower Versus Skill-power
References
“Low-fat Living; skill power not willpower” by Robert K. Cooper, Ph.D. with Leslie L. Cooper
