Losing weight is difficult. To lose weight the behaviors that cause the weight to pile on must be changed, and change can be quite difficult. I was overweight for many years, nearly my entire adult life. I didn’t like the way I looked, I wasn’t happy when I left my already plus-size clothes behind, and I was worried about my health. But, the weight loss didn’t come off permanently until I stopped the behaviors that were making me overweight.
One of my favorite things to do with my kids is cooking. We especially love to bake together. I’ve kneaded several bowls of cookie dough with my kids. It’s fun, and when the hot cookies come out of the oven, yum! But, I don’t help ‘lick the bowl’ anymore. I tweak recipes to have healthy ingredients, and limit ourselves to a moderate portion of what we make.
Another habit I gave up was cleaning my kids’ plates. I think most of you moms know what I am talking about here. We can’t let that last bite or two go to waste, can we? Multiply your futile thinking by the number of kids whose plates you are cleaning. To me, that might be worth another whole meal! Waste is not desirable, but I’d rather have the chickens finish it all over my waistline than take the last two bites!
I had to start thinking about what I was drinking. Many beverages contain calories. I habitually drank flavored coffee throughout the day. I haven’t given it much thought yet. Then, I realized that each cup I was drinking had about 80 calories. That really adds up. Many diet drinks contain chemicals that I want to avoid. So, even though it may take some getting used to, water has become my beverage of choice throughout the day. I enjoy my afternoon cup of flavored coffee now, because I’m not absenting it all day.
I learned to recognize emotional eating, which usually happened when I wasn’t even hungry. The problem was, it didn’t matter what emotion I was experiencing; Food was the solution! Happy, excited, mad, sad were all reasons to have a little snack. Getting emotional eating under control was an important step in my weight loss.
I love cookbooks and I read them for fun. I had to stop doing this when I was losing weight. Eating and thinking about food made me crave it more, and it made it very difficult to switch to eating in moderation. Eventually, I was able to go back to my cookbook reading habit, but not until I lost the weight. I had to learn to cook and eat for health, not for fun.
To be successful in losing weight, I had to make some changes in my eating habits. Lots of small steps really do add up to one big leap towards fitness. The good thing about changing my habits is that by the time I lost the weight, my healthy habits had become second nature. The me of today hardly recognizes the overweight me of the past. it feels great.
2010 Julie Cazier
Source by Julie Cazier
