Stuff I Like Better Than Being Thin

At the age of 47, I've reached that delightful time of life when making zero changes to the way I eat and exercise results in a steady creeping-up of the needle on the scale. I still take in the same number of calories, but my metabolism has changed such that the same level of activity doesn't burn them off the way they used to.

For a while, I fought against it. I tried eating less carbs and more vegetables, I tried eating smaller meals throughout the day, I tried cutting out treats, I even tried cutting back on my alcohol consumption. I tried hitting the treadmill daily. But the result of all those changes was that a) I lost minimal weight, and b) I was miserable.

I'm not particularly overweight, but I do have a few health concerns that mean my body is affected by even a few extra pounds. My rheumatoid arthritis means any extra weight forces my joints to work harder; my high blood pressure means the additional work my body has to do for even those few added pounds puts more stress on my heart. So I don't want to keep any more of these extra pounds than I have to.

But I also have to look at the flip side: What extra emotional stress am I putting on myself if I give up a lot of things that I love? What are some of the things that I like better than being thin?

I like going out for ice cream with my kids. I like having to grab their cones and lick the melty parts before they make a mess. I like getting to finish off the last few bites when they run out of appetite. I like taking turns to taste everyone else's flavors. I like the memories it brings up of my own family going out for ice cream cones in the summer.

I like sitting by the pool after the kids have gone to bed and enjoying a relaxing cocktail with my husband. I like trying new cocktail combinations, and flavoring my concoctions with fresh herbs from my garden. I like experimenting to find the perfect recipe for bourbon basil lemonade or rosemary-infused gin or mint juleps.

I like going out to dinner with my family and enjoying an extended, multi-course, well-prepared meal with a complementary glass of wine. I love spending the time teaching my children to use their "company manners" and encouraging them to try new foods. I love enjoying time with them away from home and being able to focus on them instead of on getting the meal ready, served, and cleared myself.

I like going for walks with my kids and stopping to look at everything around us instead of simply charging along for exercise. I like pausing to talk about the flowers and vegetables growing in the neighbors' gardens and the kinds of animals and birds that we see. I like challenging them to walk slowly and look for something that starts with a particular letter, or something that is a specific color. I like simply strolling and chatting when we're all focused on each other instead of paying attention to computers and toys and books.

I like teaching my kids that food is to be enjoyed. I like watching them look forward to a promised treat, and hearing them remind each other about "sometimes foods" and discussing their choices of treats. I like seeing them gradually learning to control their own thoughts and feelings about food. I want to give them a healthy outlook on food and not see it as an enemy to be controlled or fought against. I want them to see me enjoying many different foods in moderation.

I like letting my children see my imperfect body and my acceptance of it. I like hearing them tell me I'm beautiful and knowing that that word for them is not only associated with a lean, athletic, disciplined body with perfect hair and skin, but also with a muffin-topped, scarred, frizzy-haired, crooked-toothed, blemished body. I want to teach them that they are lovable and beautiful even if they don't look like society's image of a beautiful person.

Those things are all much more important to me having a happy and healthy life than shedding a few pounds.

Does that mean I'll just let myself go and not worry about that creeping scale needle? Of course not. I'll keep an eye on it and do what I have do to force it, however slowly, back in the other direction. But I won't spend my time focusing on it and stressing out about it. Because life is too short for that.

Beat Those Cravings!

One of the hardest things for me when I’m trying to diet is finding satisfying snacks. I don’t like fruits or vegetables, so crunching on a carrot stick or munching on frozen grapes is not going to do it for me. I have discovered a number of snacks that do satisfy me when I’m craving something unhealthy, so here are my top five suggestions for beating the munchies!

Craving crunchy?

I’m not much of a sweets snacker; I’m not even really a salty snacker much of the time. What I crave is something with a satisfying, crunchy mouth feel. For most people, a crisp apple or some celery would be a good substitute. For me, a handful of Kix cereal meets that need for crunch without adding lots of calories, fat, or sugar. At 110 calories for 1-1/4 cups, I can make a bowl last a long time by eating each faintly sweet, deliciously crunchy nugget one happy little sphere at a time. It takes long enough that by the time I eat the last one, my stomach has registered that I’ve eaten and I’m satisfied and content.

Craving sweet?

Although I’m not generally a sweets eater, every now and then I do get a craving for something sweet – particularly now, when my house is still full of my kids’ Halloween candy. And here’s where built-in portion control comes into play: A tiny Dum Dum lollipop is just enough to soothe that craving for sweet. As long as you can force yourself to lick it or suck on it instead of chewing it off the stick, the sweetness lasts a surprisingly long time. And at 25 calories a pop, you can even have two if that first one didn’t quite do the trick.

Craving salty?

Don’t just grab whatever variety of popcorn you have in your pantry, but if you look for light-butter varieties of microwave popcorn, you can eat a ridiculous amount of popcorn for not a lot of calories. Pop Secret Light Butter has 100 calories in FIVE CUPS. FIVE CUPS, people!! It does still have 4 grams of fat, so don’t go crazy with it – but personally, two cups of popcorn is plenty to satisfy my salty cravings. One package makes about 12 cups, so portion it out into 2-cup packages in zip-lok baggies and tuck the extras away for next time. Zap it for just a few seconds in the microwave to freshen it up and get that satisfying popcorn smell going on. And, like the Kix, don’t just cram handfuls of it into your mouth. Eat it one single kernel at a time and really savor each salty, crunchy, delicious bite.

Craving spicy?

Salsa verde has only 10 calories in 2 tablespoons! And unless you have a REALLY high tolerance for heat, 2 tablespoons goes a really long way. The difficulty, of course, is figuring out what to dip in the salsa verde that doesn’t add hundreds of calories. A 4” pita is 75 calories; slice it into two circles and pop into the toaster to make pita chips, or cut it into wedges for dipping. If there are a few veggies you don’t mind (especially when hidden under a layer of spicy salsa), a single red bell pepper is about 15-24 calories, an entire head of cauliflower is under 150 calories, and a cup of cucumber slices is only 16 calories, so those are pretty generous amounts of snack.

Craving chocolate?

This is a tough one. If it’s a pretty mild craving, you might be able to get past it with a glass of chocolate milk (about 200 calories in one cup, so go easy) or hot cocoa (under 150 calories – BUT NO MARSHMALLOWS OR WHIPPED CREAM!!!), or you can munch on an entire cup of Cocoa Puffs cereal for 120 calories. But if what you’re dying for is real chocolate, nothing else will do. So the trick here is portion control. 28 M&Ms are 142 calories; Hershey’s Kisses are 22 calories each; ¼ cup of chocolate chips is 200 calories. Don’t just open the bag and start munching – get out those zip-lok baggies again and portion out your servings ahead of time. One more trick – keep the chocolate in the freezer. Chocolate tastes much better at room temperature, so it’s easier to force yourself to wait a bit before digging in. Either your craving will subside and you can convince yourself to throw them back in the freezer, or they’ll taste that much better for having had to wait.

And one more bonus craving:

Craving a cocktail? 

This is a tough one for me. What I like about cocktails is not so much the alcohol, but the interesting flavors and flavor combinations. So I find that I’m not satisfied by ordinary flavored seltzers, like cranberry-lime or mandarin orange – but Polar has just come out with a line of seasonal seltzers in unusual flavors like fudge cheesecake, butter rum, and champagne strawberry, that are interesting and unusual enough to fill the cocktail void. I find the hint of sweetness with a hint of bitter in the background very satisfying in small servings – although at zero calories, I can drink the entire bottle if I need to. And the added benefit is that the liquid fills me up and takes the edge of my hunger, so it’s a perfect pre-meal treat to help curb my appetite and keep me happy with healthier portions of my meal.

And the best part of all of these snacks is that if you go to them instead of the “real thing” often enough, every now and then you get to splurge with the ACTUAL “real thing”!!!

Well, within reason, of course. 

Diet Tips from a Diet-Hatin', Carb-Lovin' Mom

I hate dieting. I’ve always hated dieting. You know why? Because I love food. Especially unhealthy food. I love carbs, I love fat, I love sugar. Give me a piece of nutrition-free white bread slathered with real butter, sprinkled with overly-processed white sugar, and topped with bacon and I am a happy camper.

But I also hate not fitting into my pants. I hate having a visible pantyhose line at my waist when I wear a jersey dress. I hate having to decide whether to hike the top of my underwear over my muffin top or whether to let my muffin top hang over the top of my underwear. I hate thigh chafing. I hate the 20 pounds that have crept up on me since I hit my mid-40s.

And so, hello diet.

Diets are hard for me because I don’t like a lot of healthy foods. I dislike nearly every kind of fruit and vegetable. Snacking on carrot sticks and celery is cruel and unusual punishment for me. Serving myself a larger portion of vegetables and a smaller portion of starch at dinner is completely unsatisfying. But after much trial and error, I’ve come up with a few ways that help me to watch what I’m eating and to eat healthier. Hopefully they might be helpful to some of you, too!

Watch your portion size

I am a typical American in that I eat much more of everything than I should. For lunch, I’ll often have a bowl of soup. By which I mean a can of soup. By which I mean roughly 2.5 servings of soup. And it never occurred to me before that I’m eating nearly three times what I should! So before I serve myself, I think about what the “correct” portion size is. If I’m eating some kind of prepared food, I read the label, and if the package is 2 servings, I only eat half. It also helps to calculate the calories – that can of “healthy” soup touts itself as 100 calories per serving, but if I eat the whole thing I’m getting 250 calories!!

Watch portion sizes on side dishes, too. That big scoop of mashed potatoes or rice is definitely larger than a single serving, and three pieces of bread is three times what you should be eating.

Use side dishes as appetizers

My husband works late hours, so I’ll often feed the kids early and then he and I will have supper after they go to bed. But I’ll usually make us an appetizer to tide us over – often something not terribly healthy, like a plate of nachos or a bowl of lobster bisque. But having an appetizer wouldn’t change what we ate for dinner, it just added on those extra calories. So now, if I’m hungry before dinner, I’ll try to eat one of my dinner side dishes as an appetizer and then just leave it off my dinner plate. If the dinner menu is salmon, rice pilaf, and peas, for example, I’ll heat up one serving of peas and eat it early, then I’ll have just the salmon and rice at supper time. Or if we’re having spaghetti and meatballs with salad, I’ll eat my salad early, or maybe I’ll have a couple of meatballs and then have plain pasta at supper. That way I’m not adding extra calories, I’m just spreading them out.

Eat treats sparingly every now and then

Nothing makes me binge like feeling totally deprived of the “good stuff,” so I allow myself a treat every now and then. I just try to be very reasonable about it. On Halloween night, I picked out one of my favorite (snack size!) candy bars from the kids’ bags and let myself enjoy it. On my son’s birthday, I took a very small piece of cake and savored it. Once or twice a week I’ll let myself have a small cocktail or glass of wine. Don't let yourself feel guilty about it, though.

Write down everything you eat for a week

A good way to start a diet program is to be aware of what – and when – you’re eating. You may feel like you’re not overeating at all, but when you write down every single thing you put in your mouth for a week, you may realize where those sneaky little calories are creeping in. You take one piece of candy from the receptionist’s candy dish twice a day – not much, but when you add it up, that’s 2,000 calories a week!! You grab a small Dunkin Donuts coffee with cream and sugar every day on the way to work – at 120 calories a pop, you’ve just added 600 calories a week, and that’s not counting the 200-calorie Starbucks Coffee Frappuccino you “splurge” with on Saturday morning.

Weigh yourself once a week ONLY – and write it down

If you’re like me, your weight fluctuates a couple of pounds on a regular basis. So don’t weigh yourself every single day – you’ll drive yourself nuts. Pick a day of the week and weigh yourself first thing in the morning on that day, every week. And write it down. Make a graph, even. Gaining back a pound or two every once in a while is a lot less frustrating when you can see the general downward trend.

Use snack tricks

When you’re DYING for a snack – absolutely MUST eat something, RIGHT NOW – make yourself wait five minutes. Set a timer. And while you’re waiting, drink a big glass of water. If, at the end of that five minutes, you’re still dying for a snack? Go ahead and have a small, sensible snack. Try to go for fruit and veggies if that will satisfy you. Even a small glass of milk can be a satisfying snack. If you must, go for sweet or salty snacks – but don’t ever snack right from the bag. Prepare ahead of time – get some snack-sized Ziploc bags and fill them with small snacks: four Ritz crackers, a handful of roasted peanuts, a single Oreo, a couple of cheese cubes, half a dozen M&Ms. Don’t stuff it in your mouth, either. Nibble it, savor it, make it last.

Put the good stuff on top

This is actually a trick I learned from Oprah – I saw an interview with her personal chef one day and she suggested using unhealthy but delicious foods like cheese and nuts and bacon by putting them sparingly on top of a dish instead of mixing them in – you can use much less but taste it more. So sprinkle a tiny bit of shredded cheese on top of your mashed potatoes instead of baking the cheese inside, top your salad with a couple of crumbles of feta and a few pecans instead of stirring in a big bunch, bake a chicken breast with just a sprinkle of panko and parmesan instead of coating the whole thing, crumble up half a piece of bacon on top of your scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Dieting still isn’t fun, and it isn’t easy, but these tips help make it a little more manageable for me, and I hope they help you, too. Happy dieting!