Back to Basics. Now that the summer is over, no more vacation excuses for your diet. No more yo-yoing through the months up and down with weight gain and loss. With the start of September we officially have about 2 months before the holidays begin. Trying to lose weight during the holidays is ultimately setting you up for failure. Too many parties, too much food! A good goal for the holidays is to MAINTAIN. However we have a solid 2 months to get your weight loss goals on track. 8 weeks, at 1-2 lb a week is 8-16 lb you could lose! I want you to ask yourself these questions on how you can clean up your diet and possibly what is sabotaging yourself. Ultimately we all have 1 or 2 bad habits or guilty pleasures that we know is our down fall.
- Are your weeks good and weekends bad???
- You can easily intake and extra 3500 calories (1 lb) in 3 days, extra 1150 a day? That’s 1 fast food meal or 7 beers?
- What are your portion sizes like during the weekend compared to during the week?
- What are your weeks like?
- Do you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner?
- Do you have one protein, one starch, and fruits and/or veggies at each meal?
- What are your portions like?
- Do you eat the majority of calories at night?
- Where are you getting extra calories that you could easily cut out?
- Try and cut out 500 calories a day
- Mayo? Salad dressings? Nuts? Cheeses? Sweets?
- Liquid calories? Alcohol? Sweetened Beverages? Flavored Coffees?
- How much water are you drinking?
- Dehydration can affect you in many ways. Decrease performance, headaches, bad moods, and feeling the need to eat when you really need to hydrate.
- What are you hydrating with??
- EXERCISE!
- You can only cut out so many calories in your diet; you also have to do cardio.
- How many days of cardio are you doing?
- You should aim for 4-6 days of 45-60 min cardio each week.
- How hard are you pushing yourself?
Estelle L. Benoit, RDN, LDN