THE HEALTHY CHALLENGE UPDATE AT 5 MONTHS

Jill Fleming, MS, RD
Author of:
Thin People Don't Clean Their Plates: Simple Lifestyle Choices for Permanent Weight Loss.

Winter is long gone, spring is almost at an end, and summer is just about upon us. Five months ago we started the Challenge and now over 800 True Lemon® and True Lime™ customers are participating! Check out Jill Fleming’s answers to questions about where you could be after five months on the Challenge, how to continue to “work the program” and why it’s never to late to join us in our efforts to get healthy!

1.Where should I be after five months on the Healthy Challenge and how should I be feeling?

First, everyone should give themselves a pat on the back for making the effort to get healthy. Whether you have stuck to the Challenge perfectly or not is secondary to the fact that you have realized you want to be healthier and you are trying to meet that goal. Any weight you’ve lost, any healthy habit that you have incorporated into your life, any additional fruits and vegetables you’ve added to your diet is an accomplishment and you should really be proud of yourself for making that commitment to yourself.

And depending on how consistent you have been in maintaining the three healthy habits originally outlined (drinking more water, exercising at least 30 minutes 3 or 4 times a week and eating more fruits and vegetables), you could weigh up to 40 pounds less by the 5-month mark on the Healthy Challenge! The more excess weight you have to lose, the faster you will lose it. If you are struggling with those last five pounds, it may take awhile longer.

After 5 months with these healthy habits, you should also definitely be feeling healthier and more energetic. Increasing your water intake alone gave you this benefit. Adding the fruit and vegetables provided you with plenty of vitamins and minerals, which gives you extra energy if you were previously deficient. And, the extra fiber, plus fluid, has aided movement through your bowels, meaning that you are now much more “regular” than prior to starting this challenge.

If you had high cholesterol, high blood pressure or diabetes, you probably have seen an improvement in all of these numbers, even if your weight loss has been modest.

Finally, if you have a history of depression, you may notice that you are feeling better and may have even be working with your doctor to decrease prescription medication doses. This is a direct result of the exercise you have added (30-minutes most days of the week) to your life. The exercise releases the same chemicals and hormones as your medication. You will have an increase of epinephrine, nor-epinephrine, catecholamine and feel good hormones as a result of your regular activity.

2. How do I keep motivated after a stretch of time?

Track what you eat in a diary: It's easy to eat more than you plan. A daily food diary can make you more aware of exactly how much you are eating. I recommend the Thin Choices lifestyle diary (www.thinchoices.com), as it allows space for tracking each of your Healthy Challenge daily goals. Include everything, no matter how small or insignificant it seems. Small noshes and drinks of juice add up to real calories. My best predictor of who will be successful at losing weight permanently is record keeping. All of my weight loss clients who used the lifestyle diary consistently for eight weeks lost the greatest amount of weight. Some clients lost up to 25 pounds during this time and claimed to have only made small changes in their eating. Record keeping keeps you honest and accountable to yourself.

Get a weight loss partner: Research has shown that those who make behavior changes with accountability to another person are statistically more successful. Once your new choices become habits and you are seeing results, you will have sufficient accountability to yourself. Make walking-dates with this person and call each other daily or weekly to check progress. Having two or three daily goals to work toward is ideal.

Weigh yourself daily: Don’t fixate on the number, but be aware of daily and monthly changes. Weighing daily will help you catch five pounds before it becomes 10. When University of Minnesota researchers monitored the scale habits of 1,800 dieting adults, they found that those who weighed themselves daily lost an average of 12 pounds over two years as compared to weekly scale watchers who lost only six pounds. The once-a-day group also appeared less likely to regain lost weight. Weigh in the morning and then don’t step on the scale again until the next day. Water-retention always weighs heavy on the scale, and your weight may fluctuate up to five pounds during the course of the day. If you do feel bloated or puffy, avoid the scale and focus on drinking plenty of water.

Join an on-line support group: Find others you can talk/type to on a regular basis. They can help keep you focused when you get off track and you will be able to help motivate them when needed. Sign up for weight loss or motivational newsletters. The Thin Choices free monthly e-newsletter will keep you informed of new research and motivate you to reach your goal. Sign up at www.ThinChoices.com. There is also a small yahoo bulletin board support group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/making_thin_choices/ . Many other websites have online support groups too so you should definitetly be able to find one that suits you best.

Find success stories: You are not alone in your effort. Many have been here before you. Get motivated by reading about their stories. Shape Magazine always posts two to three success stories every month on their website. Also, many of the women’s and health magazines feature success stories every month. You will be amazed at the fact that those people who are successful at losing weight permanently are all doing the same things that you are doing now.

3. What if I haven't been successful to date in mastering the habits?

Keep working at it! You couldn’t ride a bike the first time you tried either. Forming new habits takes time. You will be more successful with every attempt. Don’t give up. You have learned too much to ever go back to all of your bad habits. Focus on how much you have improved.

4. If I’ve mastered the first four habits, what can I work on next?

Exercise: Congratulations on adding more activity to your day. Thirty minutes most days of the week is great. Now, get a pedometer. You will want to keep track of how many steps you actually take in a day for the first few days. If you work a desk-job, you may be surprised to find that you are taking less than 1,000 steps per day. Results from the National Weight Control Registry, found that 89% of these successful weight losers used a combination of diet and physical activity to lose weight. Most of them walked and they averaged between 11,000 and 12,000 steps per day. This is approximately 5 ½ to 6 miles covered per day. You may never get up to this level, but you can set your goal to increase your number of steps by 2,000 everyday. Wearing the pedometer will take your job, activity level and programmed exercise all into account. You will have fun trying to beat your previous day’s number.

Water: If your urine is very pale yellow and clear, not cloudy with absence of smell, you are doing great. If not, add another glass of water daily. Make sure to drink your first glass of water as soon as you wake up. This will help flush retained water from your cells and will increase your thirst all day long.

Fruit & Vegetables: Even if you are not getting all eight to ten servings of your fruits and vegetables into your body before the end of the day, chances are you have greatly increased your consumption. If your bowel movements are now floating, this means you are getting plenty of fiber. The bathroom is a great place to assess your progress with dietary changes. If you need to add more fruit and vegetables, make a smoothie by blending two cups of frozen fruit with a cup of milk. This will provide four servings of fruit.

Keep your body’s gas tank between ¼ - ¾ full all day long. A most important habit kept by thin people, which will keep your metabolism burning high, is to eat at the first sign of hunger and stop when you are satisfied or no longer hungry. Your stomach is approximately the size of your fist. Compare your fist to the volume of food on your plate at each meal and snack. You should eat one to three fists of food every three to four hours throughout the day. You will find that you are often satisfied well before you have eaten all of the food on your plate. That is ok. Remember that Thin People Don’t Clean Their Plates.

Additional goals:

• Eat something within the first hour of waking up.
• Stop eating three hours before going to bed.
• Limit your intake of saturated, hydrogenated and trans fats. Total intake should be ~30 grams for a woman and ~40 grams for a man.
  
  

For more goals go to www.ThinChoices.com.