My first baby step is carrying my lunch instead of buying it. I've got two casseroles I've made (Tuna and noodles, and Porcupine Meatballs) and I freeze let the leftovers and I put enough in the fridge for lunch.
My lunch is 1 portion of casserole and a huge portion of salad (BTW You can dress 4 cups of salad with two capfuls of vinagrette). The first week I did this, I lost 5 lbs really quickly. The next week I didn't do it, and I gained it back and then some - although some of that could have been hormonal . Last week I carreid again, and my weight went back down. So this week I am back to carrying full time.
Added bonus, my pocketbook doesn't suffer from overspending.
I had some really gross kitchen utensils. I bought a really nice, $10 vegetable peeler and threw away my disgusting rusty one. I sometimes collected my rewards in advance because I knew that a nice, new shiny peeler that I really enjoyed using was going to HELP me stay on track and help me meet my goal of 5 veggies/fruits a day.
I did the same with exercise music. I was on the elliptical machine for 10 mins one time. I literally thought about quitting 40 times and every 15 seconds I said, “Just 15 seconds more! You can do this!” I did my 10 minutes and got off the machine and immediately got on-line and bought $40 worth of music. $40 is kind of a big reward for 10 mins of work… haha!... but that music has carried me thru hundreds of 30 minute workouts and was worth every penny!
And sometimes you HAVE to pre-ward your self! Don’t risk injuring yourself by walking in worn out sneaks. Get a good pair of walking shoes with the understanding that you deserve them and you are making a commitment to use them and get healthy and you WILL get your money’s worth!
Try a walking program that starts small. I used this book: 90 Day Fitness Walking Program It is out of print but many copies are available online at the various used book outlets.
There is also a beginning walking program at about.com
My first official KD baby step was to follow the 5 point plan. Each day give yourself one point for each of the following:
1. Make one good, better, best choice (example: if you are going to have potato chips a good choice would be to measure out one serving and put the bag away, a better choice would be to choose baked chips and the best choice might be to have baby carrots (or some other veggie) instead.)
2. Exercise (any exercise counted when I first began)
3. Drink more water (if you aren't drinking any water, getting a cup/meal will be a great place to start)
4. Take 15 minutes for yourself (many of us have to practice caring for ourselves. Take 15 minutes to rejuvenate however works for you)
5. Accountability (food journal, reporting to a buddy, posting day's food in the What's For Dinner folder or whatever you want to do as long as you are recording or being accountable in some fashion)
I would set goals for things like 30 points in a week and set myself up for a reward when I reached it. Later when these baby steps were firmly entrenched I changed them or made them more challenging. Exercise became exercise for 30 min or more. Good, better, best choices became fruit/veggie servings. You can totally customize this for yourself. This is where I go back to when I am struggling. It's simple, it's easily attainable and I find myself back on track within a day or two.
PLAN!! Take 5 mins each evening and write out your food plan (snacks, too) for the next day.
Take 10 mins and write out 4 nights of dinner menus before you go to the grocery store. (Make a plan that is SENSIBLE and DOABLE! Don't devise some crazy plan of deprivation and restriction!)
OK, I'll admit planning takes all the fun and spontaneity out of dinner. No more family conversations in the car at 5:30pm… “Kids, what shall we have for dinner tonight? Wendy’s? Burger King? McDonald’s? Taco Bell?”
But if you follow thru and keep to your plan, you WILL lose weight.
DITCH ALL OR NOTHING THINKING - PLAN FOR THE DAY THAT YOU FALL OFF THE WAGON
If you drop 1 egg on the floor, do you smash the other 11 onto the linoleum, too?
If you fall of the wagon and have a bad meal or a bad day… don’t let it continue and let it turn it into a bad weekend, week or month. Don't say to yourself, "Well, I've blown it now. I've had two brownies. Might as well eat the rest of the pan and start again on Monday."
EVERYBODY falls of the wagon from time to time. You can either jump on the very next wagon to come along… or you can lay in the wagon ruts and let the rest of the wagon train go bumpity-bumpity-bump over your chocolate and cookie crumb covered body.
Don’t go on some kind of crazy deprivation diet to make up for going off your plan. For a great article on Falling off the Wagon
Keep a food diary. Log both the food and the amount. Studies show that people that keep a food log lose more weight. (See page 114 of the book "Eating Thin For Life" by Anne Fletcher, M.S., R.D.)
I REALLY resisted this for a long time and when I got really serious about logging my food and calories, the weight came off.
C) Go low tech and go back to the basic note pad. Turn your food journal into a coloring book. Use colored pencils for different food groups. Use green markers for the 8 health guidelines. Draw a pair of scissors next to foods you are trying to cut down on. Make a column and write “Worth the calories!” or “So NOT worth the calories!”
D) I keep a log of the food groups on the fridge door and if I eat half a serving of dairy I put an / and I put a X for a whole serving. I usually end up with a log that looks like: Grains - XXXXX / Vegs - XXXX Fruits - XXXX Nonfat or lowfat dairy - XX / Meats, poultry, fish - X Oils - XX Nuts, seeds / Beans - X Sweets - 0
E) Take pictures of your food. One guy did this and actually had it published into a book. Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth
I think NSVs fit very well with Denise's last post so, while they are also explained over in the Help for Newbies thread, I'll talk about them here too.
NSV = Non-scale victory: Something you achieve which is related to your health, body, strength, endurance or behavior which may not be reflected on the scale. Some examples:
Today, I ran farther than I ever have before.
Today, I saw muscle definition in my arms that wasn't there before.
Today, I could see/feel my collarbone when I couldn't before.
Today, I chose to leave half my lunch behind when I ate out.
Today, I was able to lift more weight than I could before.
Today, I tried on my skinny jeans and they fit!
Today, I made the decision that I will no longer beat myself up when I make a choice that I know isn't the best for me.
I lowered my cholesterol 20 points from my last blood test!
Sometimes, when we are trying to lose weight, we get obsessed about that number on the scale. As Denise said, we can't control the scale. I have hypothyroidism, which can make it not only more difficult to lose weight but to maintain a loss. So, after I'd worked hard to lose 35 pounds, I stopped losing weight, even though I was continuing to do the same things I did to lose the weight. Sometimes these things happen.
If you are totally focused on that number on the scale, and you get into a plateau and stop losing weight, you are going to freak out. But if you shift your attitude to NSVs, you can keep achieving great things for your body and health even when there is no change in that number on the scale.
Trust me, it can make a HUGE difference in your mental attitude and, in the end, will help you toward your goal!
Goals: 1. Exercise-Cardio: 2-3 walking or DVD cardio workouts per week. 2. Exercise-Weights/Toning: 1-2 weight plus 1 toning workout per week. 3. Food: Increase veggie servings back to where they were. 4. Behavior: Reduce sweets.
Posts: 7239 | Location: Rehoboth Beach, DE | Registered: March 12, 2004
MAKE BEHAVIOR GOALS I stopped making scale/size number goals in 2003. I stopped saying, "I will lose ten pounds this month" or "I will weigh 150 by June" or "I will wear a size 10 next Christmas".
If I "only" lost 3 lbs in a month, did that mean I had failed? Plus, I NEVER met my weight goals and was miserable.
I started making behavior goals and had my most successful weight loss year ever. "I will eat at home 5 days this week and only have McDonalds on Saturday for breakfast" or "I will exercise before typing on the computer 4 days this week". “I will eat 1 serving of fruit/veg at every meal and snack today.”
You can't control the scale. You can control your own behavior.
“When I practice SHELF control… I don’t need as much SELF control.”
“Resist it at the grocery store, I only have to resist it once. Bring it home, and I have to resist it every waking hour of the day.”
Keeping my pantry and freezer “clean” has been a REALLY important baby step. I’ve been losing/maintaining for 5+ years now and I still can’t keep a bag of peanut m&m’s or a whole half gallon of ice cream in the house and eat them with something resembling “moderation”.
I also don’t buy food and pretend that it is “for the kids”. The kids eat the same foods and snacks that I do.
We still eat candy and ice cream. I didn’t ban it from our lives. But I buy “just enough”. My family of 3 doesn’t need 16 servings of ice cream sitting in the freezer 24/7.
My first baby step was to start drinking water. Lots of it. I realized I almost never remember to drink. Some days all I drank was one latte and a glass of something with my meals. That wasn't much.
Currently I drink so much water it seems that's all I do, but I feel a lot better for doing it. I still have to work on not drinking so much before bedtime though.
****************** “The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then, your body and your fat are really good friends.”
My first food baby step was to measure out the high fat/high calorie foods. I kept (and still keep) measuring spoons by my oil and the food scale right below it by the stove. Weighing and measuring really helped me get a grip on my portion sizes.
Out of our beliefs are born deeds; out of our deeds we form habits; out of our habits grows our character; and on our character we build our destiny.
Changing my habits in regard to eating out was a huge baby step for me as well. I went from eating lunch out in a restaurant EVERY DAY at work to eating out only once per week and bringing a healthy home-made lunch the other days. That made a huge difference right away. My cholesterol dropped so drastically (69 points) and so quickly (2-3 months) that my doctor was nearly speechless.
Another important step was changing from "whites" to "browns"--i.e., changing from white bread, tortillas, English muffins, white rice, and white sugar to whole wheat bread/tortillas/muffins, brown rice and raw sugar. It took me a year to change white pasta to whole wheat because I'd heard that some brands of ww pasta tasted like cardboard and I was "askaird"! But once I tried the 365 brand (Whole Foods' store brand), I realized there was almost no difference in taste and texture and I have been using it ever since.
I have read that hypothyroids have less tolerance for the white stuff and I find that to be true for me. I used to have a white bagel every single day for breakfast and many days, esp. at home, I would pass out in a sugar coma within an hour of eating a white bagel (sometimes pass right out in my chair watching TV an hour or two after I'd just had a full night's sleep!).
I stopped eating bagels entirely for a long time but have returned to eating wheat ones now and then. I don't find that the brown products put me in sugar coma like the white ones--I still get a sugar coma now and then, but it is rare.
Goals: 1. Exercise-Cardio: 2-3 walking or DVD cardio workouts per week. 2. Exercise-Weights/Toning: 1-2 weight plus 1 toning workout per week. 3. Food: Increase veggie servings back to where they were. 4. Behavior: Reduce sweets.
Posts: 7239 | Location: Rehoboth Beach, DE | Registered: March 12, 2004
I guess my first baby steps were to switch out my diet cokes for water & quit eating out so much. I did not stop the diet cokes all at once either, I baby stepped that baby step . I used to have a diet coke in hand at all times but now I generally only have one when I eat out. Most of the time (but not 100%) at home I have water with my meals. The baby steps to eating out less started with switching from fast food to real food at restaurants & then to cooking more at home.
My exercise is still in the baby step phase. I walk & do some simple hand weights (2lb) and leg lifts on the bed (I have trouble getting up & down on the floor).
"Live your life so that you are not afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip."
Posts: 3986 | Location: NE Atlanta (Chamblee, Doraville, Norcross, Duluth) | Registered: March 15, 2004
This may sound strange, but my first baby step was to get my kitchen functional.
My kitchen often looked like a bomb went off. There were lots and lot of times when the dishes were piled up past the faucet and getting a drink of water was a challenge (not to mention that there were no clean glasses or cups).
It was impossible to cook there… so I didn’t. And we ended up eating a LOT of fast food.
www.FlyLady.net helped a lot. Things are not exactly perfect all the time, now, but I can make meals at home, rather than EVERY bowl in house being dirty… and going out for the #3 McBreakfast meal “just this once”.
I know that I’m not alone in the overwhelming messy kitchen. Here are some kitchen BEFORE (Before #1, Before #2, Before #3) pictures. And AFTER (After #1, After #2) pictures.
(Although, honestly my kitchen is not this nice, THIS morning… but is WAY, WAY better than it used to be and I am able to make a bowl of oatmeal.)
Right now my goals are to get at least 3 fruits or veggies into my diet during the day and to move at least 20 minutes a day doing some sort of aerobic activity.
My babystep was logging any and all exercises I do. I spent a day looking trough the exercise books I have and going through them to see which ones I could do in a few minites. Like plie'? at the dressing table after I fix my hair. Can't fit in exercise today- park my car farther away. I found some you can do while sitting down and such. It is fun trying to see where I can slip them in then log them in a little notebook daily. I can see when I get behind and my improvements.
. Last week I carreid again, and my weight went back down. So this week I am back to carrying full time. 
