The 17 Day Diet (34 page)

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Be prepared to respond to saboteurs.

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Negotiate the presence of junk food in the house with your spouse and other family members.

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Take charge of your kitchen and learn how to cook healthy meals that everyone in your family will love.

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Invite your spouse or partner to join you in your effort to get more fit.

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Build a support group of other fitness-minded people.

MISTER M.D., CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME

I live alone and sometimes it’s hard to stay on a diet.
What suggestions do you have for me?

Single-person households have grown from 7 percent in the sixties to 27 percent of the total today. Many single diners are deficient in calcium, iron and other important vitamins and minerals because they skip meals, snack for dinner or open the freezer and prepare whatever falls out. Research shows that people who live alone are more likely to have vitamin and mineral deficiencies Eating alone can be a pleasurable and healthy activity, if you plan your life around it. Some suggestions:

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Stock your kitchen with a variety of staples with a long shelf-life, such as brown rice, oatmeal and other whole grains.

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Keep on hand pre-chopped broccoli, bagged lettuce, and yogurt, so you don’t use time as an excuse not to prepare foods.

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Make single dish meals with all the components—grains, meat, vegetables such as in casseroles and soups. Prepare them ahead of time and freeze them so you don’t have to cook a lot. Also, you can make the whole recipe but portion it into individual bags.

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Take advantage of supermarket salad bars. They’re a boon to single people who may have avoided fresh fruits and vegetables they couldn’t use fast enough. Skip the mayonnaise-based salads and high-fat dressings, but load up on fresh vegetables and fruits. At home you can add some lowfat meat or cheese, tuna or kidney beans, and your own favorite low-fat dressing.

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Never underestimate the uses of your freezer and microwave. Bags of frozen vegetables can be a great alternative when fresh produce is not available. Rice and pasta leftovers are particularly good candidates for freezing and later use. Use your microwave for defrosting, reheating or to speed preparation of almost any meal. Microwave dishes often can be prepared with less fat, too, by adding bouillon, wine or broth.

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Dinner should be pleasant, and atmosphere does contribute to a more enjoyable meal. Set the table with linens, attractive dinnerware and a centerpiece. Make a lovely meal with fresh ingredients and enjoy it with a little wine, some jazz on the stereo and a couple of candles. Sit at the table; don’t just eat hanging over the sink.

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If you’re single, try to get together with friends on a regular schedule. Set up a Thursday night supper club and rotate homes or try a new restaurant once a month.

Start a cooking club. Or have a standing date to eat potluck with friends once a week or month.

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Get together with a friend who likes to cook, and make a whole week’s worth of good food that you split.

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Use the 17 Day Diet delivery service and get single serving meals delivered directly to your home.

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Don’t be afraid to eat out alone. I eat out most meals and love experimenting. I’m quite oblivious to other diners so I don’t mind being stared at. I simply open my iPad and scribble, which grabs the attention of the waiters, who think I’m a food critic.

11
Surviving Holidays

T
he holidays.
It’s the time of year when the zipper on your dress and the springs in your bathroom scale start getting really nervous.

That’s because, for a lot of dieters, packing on pounds can be a holiday tradition. Statistics on weight gain throughout the holiday season assert that you might gain five pounds if you don’t keep your hands off the pumpkin pie and figgy pudding.

I started thinking about this: A five-pound weight gain is a lot of food, if you consider that it takes 3,500 calories to gain a pound. This means you’d have to have major pig-outs on a daily basis or eat several reindeer at a buffet. You’d also have to spend the entire holiday season on the couch.

Still, it’s easy to gain weight over the holidays, if you figure that the traditional holiday dinner with appetizers can weigh in at more than 3,000 calories!

How about this year we change that tradition? Commit to a holiday in which you manage not to gain any weight back before it’s time to resolve to lose all that weight (and so much more) yet again.

Incidentally, by “holiday,” I’m talking about everything that happens from Thanksgiving to Easter, and everything in between including the sweetheart of all weight-gaining holidays, Valentine’s Day. Holidays, however, do not include 99-cent Big-Mac Mondays.

Okay, with all the office parties, cocktail receptions, and dinner celebrations, can you eat, drink, be merry, stay fit and still follow the 17 Day Diet?

Answer: Absolutely—by adhering to my easy-to-follow holiday strategies. If you do, there will be no need to make a get-fit New Year’s resolution, ever again. You’ll start every year in super shape.

“Pre-Diet” before the Holidays Hit

To prevent packing on holiday pounds, go on the offense with “pre-dieting.” It works like this: Use the Accelerate or Activate Cycles to start trimming off a few pounds of fat before the holidays get in full swing. You can do this easily with what you’ve already learned from the 17 Day Diet.

Pre-dieting has been shown in clinical trials to offset holiday weight gain. Obesity researchers in Sweden studied the effect of eating during the Christmas holidays on 46 obese patients in a weight-maintenance program. Those dieters who had lost more than 6.6 pounds by pre-dieting during the six months prior to Christmas gained less weight (from 0.4 pounds to 4.8 pounds) between Christmas and Epiphany (a religious festival celebrated on January 6) than those who didn’t pre-diet. By contrast, the patients who gained more than 6.6 pounds during the six months prior to Christmas put on an additional 5 pounds on average during the holidays. The message is clear: Pre-dieting clearly keeps the holiday pounds from piling on.

Don’t resort to any type of crash dieting, however, in which you fast or slash calories down to 700 or less a day. This can result in a loss of muscle, decreased strength and power, low energy, moodiness or irritability and compromised immunity. Stick to the Accelerate or Activate Cycles for best results.

Party Plans

The hardest part, I think, is all those parties and dinners.

During the holidays, food is everywhere. Office parties, tins packed with homemade cookies, and holiday fruitcake offer little escape. Not only is there more food, but it’s often rich in calories, sugar and fat.

Here’s what I advise for enjoying yourself, without packing on any extra pounds.

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Continue the good habit of eating breakfast during the holidays to help control cravings later on. (Sorry, eggnog isn’t considered a good egg substitute.)

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Have healthy snacks on hand. Go for them before you treat yourself to the splurge stuff.

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Eat a healthy dinner before you go to a holiday party. (Also, try not to eat an unhealthy dinner when you’re at the party.)

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Prepare and take your own safe, low-calorie and low-fat foods to parties. That way you have at least one healthy alternative.

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Choose two or three of the healthiest appetizers you can find (a little shrimp, some veggies or fruit, etc.) and put them on a small plate or napkin, then walk away from the table. (Keep in mind this should be two or three pieces of food, not two or three napkins or plates loaded with food.)

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Be smart at the buffet table. Fill three-fourths of your plate with vegetables and fruits, the rest with protein. (Pumpkin pie and chocolate-covered strawberries don’t count as the veggies or fruit. Stacking things as high as you can is not an acceptable method for filling your plate.) Do not circle the food table like a vulture. Serve yourself, and then go sit down somewhere to eat.

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Avoid temptation. Just say “no” to packaged holiday candies and cakes! Re-gift them to someone who’s not dieting.

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Stay away from places where snacks and goodies are offered or stored—like the break room at work or the pantry at home.

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Give yourself permission to enjoy a little of everything that is usually only available during the holidays, but to do it in moderation. Indulging in small amounts of holiday treats (fruitcake being the exception) might not help you lose 20 pounds over the holidays, but it might help you from raiding the Christmas tree for edible ornaments in the middle of the night.

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Bank your calories. Accumulate a deposit of uneaten calories on the days when you know that you will be attending parties or enjoying holiday feasts. Eat a light breakfast and lunch to save calories for later. If you’re careful, the large “withdrawal” of calories at a big dinner or event later on won’t break the bank.

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Be extra good on non-party days.

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Understand the reason for the season. The holiday season is a time to celebrate good times with family and friends. Try to make the focus more on socializing, and less on eating.

Fill Up on Fiber

There’s an incredibly easy, no-willpower way to stay lean during the holidays, something that most of us should be doing all year but aren’t: eating more fiber. Increasing your fiber intake will help to transform your holiday dieting efforts into something simple and automatic. You’ll be able to keep your weight under control without working at it or driving yourself crazy.

Fiber makes you feel full, so you’re less likely to stuff yourself on high-calorie foods. What’s more, the fibers found in foods such as bran, whole-wheat products and oats naturally bind to the fats you eat and help to escort them from the body. The net effect is a reduction in the number of calories left behind that can be stored as body fat.

So fill up on legumes, fruits and vegetables.

Manage Alcohol Consumption

At holidays, alcohol flows like lava. Keep in mind that beer, wine and hard liquor are high in calories, however. In fact, each gram of alcohol has 7 calories, compared to 4 calories per gram for other carbs. Alcohol also stimulates your appetite. Remember too, when there’s alcohol in your system, the liver has to work overtime to process it, so it doesn’t have adequate time to process fat. A study conducted at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland found that the addition of only 3 oz. of alcohol per day to the diet resulted in about one-third less fat being processed.

SCIENCE SAYS:
Log What You Eat, Lop Off Pounds

D
uring the holidays, keep track of what you eat and how many calories you consume daily by writing the information down in a food journal. Technically referred to as “self-monitoring,” this practice has been shown in research to promote weight loss, even during the holidays.

In one study, 38 dieters (32 women and six men) recorded their food and calorie intake during Thanksgiving, Christmas or Hanukkah and New Year’s Eve. The researchers categorized the dieters into groups according to how consistently they kept track of their food and calorie consumption. Weight loss was recorded as well. The best and most consistent self-monitors lost an average of 10 pounds more than the persons who had a low level of compliance with the monitoring program.

You can avoid drinking alcohol and still remain social by sipping on seltzers, club soda or sparkling mineral water on the rocks with a citrus twist. Or opt for nonalcoholic beer or wine. But don’t overdo it, because most of these products are high in sugar.