Preparing Yourself for a Successful Weight-Loss Program
▶ Recognizing the power of positive, reason-driven thinking
▶ Discovering how to set realistic and practical goals
▶ Keeping a food journal to better understand your eating habits
▶ Knowing what you’re in for with a low-glycemic weight-loss plan
So, you’re ready to get started with your new low-glycemic plan for weight loss. Congratulations! Before you jump in, though, you need to take some time to prepare yourself mentally, set some realistic goals, and make sure you know what you’re in for. That’s precisely what this chapter helps you do.
You may be tempted to skip this chapter. After all, you’re excited and want to get started on this diet right away, right? Please resist that temptation! The strategies in this chapter can significantly increase your weight-loss success and keep you motivated for the long haul. Without them, you may find your- self floundering down the road.
Getting and Staying in the Right Mindset
People who lose weight and keep it off have one important thing in common: They have a positive mindset. They love the way they feel, enjoy food more, possess new stress-management tools, and have activities that make them feel great.
Although you may be starting this new journey excited and motivated, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll probably realize that you’re still thinking some negative thoughts like
✓ I’m going to have to give up foods I love.
✓ I’ll try it, but I don’t know if it’ll work.
✓ I’m going to have to exercise — and I hate exercising.
If you don’t get these negative thoughts in check, self-sabotage can rear its ugly head. It turns obstacles and challenges into reasons to give up. These saboteurs show up as
✓ Decreased focus on absorbing new information
✓ Feeling defeated with normal challenges
✓ Letting other areas of your life always take priority
✓ Having no time for finding out about and trying new changes
Okay, so you get that you need a positive mindset to stay on track, but how exactly do you do that? Follow these three simple steps:
1. Create a vision.
2. Turn that vision into an affirmation.
3. Focus on using positive language in all situations.
The following sections cover each of these steps in more detail to help you put them together to create your own positive mindset about your new low- glycemic lifestyle.
Creating your vision
The first step to creating a positive mindset is to come up with your long- term goal, which I like to call your vision. Your vision is how you see the big picture, your plan that always serves to motivate you. Visions motivate because they’re your ultimate desires of how you want to see your life play out. After all, you have to know where you’re going before you can take the first steps to get there.
To create your vision, first think of some internal reasons why you want to lose weight and why you want to follow a low-glycemic diet in particular.
Internal reasons are things that are life changing, such as improved health or becoming more active with your family and friends. Your internal goal calls on you to live your best life.
Even though weight loss is the top priority in your mind, when your goals are simply to lose weight or fit into a certain size, they aren’t meaningful enough to help you through challenges. How the weight loss changes your life, not your waistline, is what’s meaningful.
So instead of thinking about your ideal body weight, think about what you want your ideal body to be. Other than sizes and numbers on the scale, what types of changes do you want to see by following a low-glycemic diet? Perhaps you’ll increase your energy throughout the day, or maybe your new diet will help you feel strong and vital and keep you healthy and vibrant. Many people choose a low-glycemic diet because of specific health issues, so perhaps you expect a low-glycemic diet to help you get your blood sugar under control, decrease inflammation, or even aid with fertility (depending on your personal circumstances).
Take some time to create your vision. The more excited you are about your inner picture, the more of an active role you’ll take toward your weight-loss goals. Here’s a sample that illustrates how you can weave your internal reasons into your vision:
My vision is to lose enough weight so I can lower my blood pressure and be able to have the endurance and energy to join my family members on their annual backpacking trip so I can experience new adventures in my life. I want to feel comfortable, fit, and energetic.
To overcome the day-to-day obstacles, your vision must be greater than your challenges. These obstacles mask themselves as “no time,” “the kids,” “my job,” and the like. They’re all the “yeah, buts . . .” that come up for every single person. That doesn’t mean these obstacles aren’t real. On the contrary, they’re very real. But when you have an inspiring vision, it’s powerful enough to motivate you to get around these obstacles. People who’ve lost weight and kept it off have at least one strong internal reason for losing weight — and that reason drives their vision.
Turning your vision into an affirmation
Changing your vision into a positive affirmation adds even more power to your mindset. A positive affirmation is a statement that highlights your strengths, talents, and skills.
Powerful visions can keep you motivated
Ann is a client of mine who has a fairly hectic life: full-time working mother of two children and primary bread winner in her family (on a 100-percent-commisision job, no less). Health- wise, she has high cholesterol, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and is always struggling to lose 20 pounds. Life simply gets in the way, causing her food choices to become less conscious and her exercise to decline.
Ann always wanted to lose weight, but she consistently focused on the number on the scale or the size of her clothes rather than an internal reason. Consequently, she’d do great for a few weeks and then slide back into her old habits when challenges arose. That was the pattern until Ann set a vision to do a major hike/climb with her husband, who often took these trips with his male friends. Ann felt like she missed out on seeing some amazing things simply because the climb seemed too physically challenging for her.
Instead of focusing on losing weight, Ann began to focus on training for her trip, which made for a big shift in her motivation. Ann became very lean and muscular and lowered her cholesterol to normal limits. Her vision also helped her find ways around her various obstacles. Instead of running through a fast-food restaurant while taking the kids to their various sports, she found quick meals they could eat before getting in the car. Instead of skipping breakfast in the morning, she brought all the fixings to work so she could make it there. She even began to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get in her exercise because there was no other time of day that she could do it. The moral of Ann’s story? When you have a powerful vision, it helps you stay motivated and enables you to find solutions for the obstacles that come up in daily life.
When creating your affirmation, make sure it’s in the present tense. There are two reasons for this:
✓ Your natural thoughts, positive or negative, occur in the present tense.
For example, “I struggle with exercise,” “I love eating salads,” “I enjoy cooking new foods.”
✓ By taking the first steps, you’re presently making changes, not making them way off in the future. You’re actively changing your life right now.
Focusing on the present helps make your affirmation more powerful. Take a look at this example to see what I mean:
I’m able to change my old habits. I’m willing and able to focus my diet on low-glycemic foods and create change that helps me lose weight, lower my blood pressure, and build my endurance and energy. I’m motivated to join my family’s annual backpacking trip feeling comfortable, fit, and energetic.
Write down your vision using affirmative statements and keep that inner pic- ture of what you’re working toward around you at all times. Make several copies and keep one near your computer, your calendar, your refrigerator, and/or in your wallet. You may also benefit by reading your affirmation each night before bed or first thing in the morning.
Using positive language
No matter how positive your mindset about following the glycemic index diet, it’s still possible for negative thoughts to creep in because you’re going to experience some challenges along the way. Having some doubt and hesitation is natural, but don’t let that sway you from your internal reasons for wanting to lose weight. Pay attention to your language and try to keep it as positive as possible.
Changing a negative statement into a positive one helps you come up with solutions instead of staying stuck. For instance, perhaps you’re having difficulties giving up rice at meals, but you also enjoy some of the new recipes you’ve tried. Your language may become negative along the lines of “I don’t have time to cook these recipes” or “I don’t like thinking of things to cook with my chicken entrees.” Instead of taking a Negative Nelly approach, use positive language, such as “I really enjoy some of the new recipes I’ve tried.” Then focus your energy on how to make those new changes work with your busy schedule and find some grains that will fit in with chicken as easily as rice does.
Positive statements also help you move forward. Instead of stating, “I don’t love vegetables,” you can say, “I know there are five low-glycemic vegetables I really enjoy.” When you put it that way, your mind automatically begins thinking of ways to incorporate those vegetables you like.
Setting Goals You Can Actually Achieve
You may be fed up with circumstances in your life and want to approach weight loss with gusto, changing everything about your day-to-day at once. Don’t. Instead, focus on setting small weekly goals. These goals — which should be realistic, practical, and attainable — become the building blocks of your weight-loss program. You achieve greater success by creating goals you can keep, which is why I show you how to develop achievable goals in the following sections.
Being realistic
Set yourself up for success by making sure your goals are realistic. Start small so you can achieve your goals and then build on them. You don’t want to set a goal of making a new low-glycemic recipe five nights a week if you currently don’t cook at all. This goal may be unattainable and may make you feel like a failure if you don’t reach it. Instead, set a goal to try one new recipe a week and find low-glycemic convenience foods to create some other meals.
Yes, fast results are far more appealing, but research shows that making changes too quickly almost always ends up with the dieter regaining the weight later. It’s better to make small changes that you can truly live with long term, master them, and then set new goals. Setting small, realistic goals is the difference between losing 24 pounds in three months only to regain it all and losing 24 pounds in six months to a year and keeping it off for a lifetime.
With a realistic and safe approach to weight loss, you can expect to see little or no weight loss the first three weeks while you’re getting used to adding low-glycemic foods to your diet. After that, you should aim for 1- to 2-pound weight loss per week. This pace indicates you’re losing fat, not muscle or mere water weight.
Making your goals practical
Your goals must fit into your lifestyle; otherwise you won’t be able to accomplish them. For instance, if your day is scheduled around traveling from place to place, setting a goal of eating lunch at home likely isn’t practical. Why not make a goal to bring your lunch or have a low-glycemic deli sandwich and salad instead? If you travel for work, setting a goal to go to the gym may not work regularly, so you may want to plan on walking or finding a workout you can do in your hotel room.
The only way to make changes work long term is to be sure they make sense in your particular lifestyle.
Choosing “want to” rather than “have to” goals
If you choose a goal because you “want to,” not because you “have to,” you’re more likely to be successful. For instance, if you enjoy eating ice cream at night and you decide to eliminate it because you “have to,” you probably won’t stay on course for long. The “have to’s” bring up negative emotions and lead to guilt when you do indulge. They also lead to resistance. People resist what they “have to” do and look forward to what they “want to” do. That’s just human nature.
So instead of saying, “I have to give up my nightly dish of ice cream to lose weight,” think of a way to convert that statement into a “want to” statement, such as, “I want to decrease my ice cream intake to half of what I typically eat as one way to reduce my glycemic load for the day.”
Strengthening your goals
Have you ever set a goal that you quickly forgot about a week later? When a goal is weak and not grounded with your internal vision, you’re more likely to push it aside and not work toward it. Use these simple steps to help strengthen your goals so you can get the results you’re looking for:
✓ Write or type out your goals in detail. Getting your goals on paper is one of the best ways to give them clarity and specificity. Having your goals in writing helps lock them into your memory and increases your focus.
✓ Place your goals where you can review them daily. The particular spot doesn’t really matter so long as you’re guaranteed to see the goals each day. Seeing your goals each day helps keep you motivated so that you stay in forward motion even when life gets hectic.
✓ Tell some supportive friends and family about your goals. Make sure these individuals want to help you succeed and provide a good support system for you.
Focusing Your Choices with a Food Journal
Some people find they need help holding themselves accountable to their goals. If you’re among them, I suggest you start a food journal — a daily record of everything you eat and drink, how active you are, how you’re feeling about your food intake, and any emotions or challenges you experience regarding eating.
A food journal can be extremely helpful in making long-term changes to your eating habits. Case in point: A study published in 2008 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed that those who kept a record of their food and beverage intake had roughly double the weight loss of those who hadn’t kept any records.
Often people think they’re making healthy choices, but their lives get so busy that they don’t realize when they’re engaging in mindless eating. Using a food journal decreases unconscious eating, which is often the culprit in eating the wrong foods too often or too much food altogether. A food journal can also serve as a source of encouragement as you follow your progress and track your activity. Keeping one as you begin a low-glycemic lifestyle can show you what’s working well, what parts of the diet are more challenging for you, and whether you tend to lean toward your old comfort foods when you’re stressed or busy.
You can start using a food journal immediately by buying a small notebook, jotting notes in your planner or smartphone, or creating a chart on your computer. The form your food journal takes (handwritten or electronic) all depends on your own personal style and what works best for you. For instance, I keep a daily Post-It on my computer screen to remind me to keep track of my food intake.
Following are some sample topics to record in your food journal:
✓ Date
✓ Time
✓ Food item consumed
✓ Amount consumed (cups, tablespoons, and so on)
✓ Emotions/challenges/sugar cravings
✓ Physical activity (cardio, strength training, and stretching)
Note: You may find that these topics morph as you discover what works for you and what you find beneficial to note as you become more used to a low- glycemic lifestyle. For example, if you’re a detail-oriented person, you may also enjoy counting calories or grams of fiber. If you’re more emotionally driven, you may find a few lines at the bottom of the page for daily reflection/ analysis. Figure 6-1 shows a sample template for a food journal. Use it as a reference, but take the time to experiment and figure out what format works best for you.
What to Expect When Starting Your Journey
Knowing what you’re in for can you help you avoid some common weight- loss pitfalls and empower you to keep moving forward. Because I want you to succeed in and enjoy your new low-glycemic lifestyle, I use the following sections to share what you can expect as you embark on your journey.
A shift in priorities
Prioritizing may seem like a no-brainer, but it can be one of the biggest saboteurs you encounter when starting a low-glycemic diet. Making any new change requires a little focus in the beginning before it eventually becomes autopilot. However, life always manages to get busy, and focus often becomes the first casualty. After all, many people have a natural order of things in their lives — children, work, school, social life, the list goes on and on. If you ever stop to look at your life, you may find that diet and exercise often take a back seat to all the rest.
You don’t have to make diet and exercise your top priority, but you should move them up to a more prominent position in your life. Following are some ideas to help you prioritize your time to accommodate your new low-glycemic lifestyle:
✓ Make a weekly grocery list using your newfound low-glycemic foods.
Save a general list so you can reuse it during busy weeks and not feel like you have to turn to your old standbys. Also check out Chapter 10, which has tips for safely navigating the grocery store on a low-glycemic diet.
✓ Plan your meals. Meal planning can help make your week go by much easier, even if you have a lot going on. You don’t need to plan elaborate breakfasts and lunches. Just keep some basic low-glycemic standbys on hand and double your dinner recipes so you have a few nights of leftovers.
✓ Keep low-glycemic convenience foods stocked. Doing so allows you to make meals in a pinch if necessary. You can find out more about this strategy in Chapter 10.
✓ Treat your exercise time as important as your haircut appointment. A haircut appointment is pretty tough to miss, but exercise is easy to put off until another day. Set your exercise date and time and treat it like an appointment that can only be missed for emergencies. (The premiere of the latest hit TV show doesn’t count. You can always do a little exercise while watching it.)
Shopping and cooking with low-glycemic foods may take more focus on choices, but it doesn’t necessarily take more time. For example, making grilled chicken with spaghetti (a low-glycemic grain) as opposed to grilled chicken over rice (a high-glycemic grain) doesn’t take more time to shop for or cook up. You just have to make a priority of doing it.
An adventure with new foods
Believe it or not, eating a low-glycemic diet opens you up to a whole new world of food opportunities. You don’t have to learn how to be a top chef, nor do you have to make complicated meals. But you do need to be prepared to explore some delicious new foods. Why? Because some of your staples (some varieties of rice, pasta, fruits, and vegetables) may be high-glycemic foods.
If you keep an open mind and take some time in the beginning to try new low- glycemic foods, you may be pleasantly surprised at the types of foods you discover. Start slow by selecting one section of the grocery store to explore more thoroughly. For example, you can spend some time in the rice and grain section. Amidst the hundreds of varieties of rice you’ll find quinoa, a wonderful, chewy, and low-glycemic grain. (Check out Chapter 18 for a great stir-fry recipe that calls for quinoa.)
Not only can this food adventure allow you to discover tasty low-glycemic foods but it’s also a great way to add more variety to your meals so food doesn’t become routine or boring. (When it does, that’s when you’re likely to stray from your food goals.)
New habits
Experiencing long-term weight loss on a low-glycemic diet means creating some new dietary habits. That’s right, habits. Try not to look at this diet as a temporary plan; if you do, be prepared for weight regain down the road. Seek out ways to make a low-glycemic diet work in your lifestyle. After the new changes become habits, maintaining your weight loss becomes much easier.
Changing habits takes three ingredients:
✓ Time: The old thought was that it takes 30 days to form a new habit, but new research shows it can take up to three months. Keep this fact in mind as you begin making changes. It may take some time to feel that these new changes have become habits. However, you know your low- glycemic diet is a habit when your eating choices are on autopilot and
you don’t need to put as much focus on memorizing lists of low-glycemic foods.
✓ Consistency: This is the most important part of making new habits. If you start creating some changes, go back to your old habits for two weeks, and then try some new changes again, it’ll be a l-o-n-g time before your new diet feels like a natural part of your life. You won’t be perfect, but try not to let setbacks turn into weeks so that you’re practicing your goals consistently. (See Chapter 20 for some advice on dealing with set- backs.)
✓ Patience: Beating yourself up when you face setbacks and challenges is easy, but please try not to give in to the temptation. After all, you’re adopting a new lifestyle that (just like any other new change) takes some time to master.
You don’t have to love every change you try. The trick is to find the changes you do like and put your focus there so they become habits. You can find many strategies to make a low-glycemic diet work in your unique lifestyle. For example, most people feel that finding low-glycemic rice and pastas that work in their lifestyle is a bit challenging. On the flip side, they may find it simple to add in low-glycemic fruits and vegetables because a wider amount of options exist. Focusing on the positive changes helps you feel accomplished, which in turn helps you achieve your goals.
Feeling out of your comfort zone at first
Changing habits is critical for long-term weight loss, but it comes with one large challenge — stepping out of your comfort zone. Anytime you do some- thing new that’s different from your prior conditioning, your habitual brain tells you to stop and return to your old habits because this change feels different and uncomfortable. You naturally feel tension when changing habits, which in return forces you to act. You either slip into default mode and go back to your old, comfortable habits, or you stick to your decision and move forward to create new habits.
Maybe you’re starting a new job that requires you to be in the office at 8:00 am. Now you have to get up at 6:00 am when you’re used to getting up at 7:30 am. Pretty uncomfortable, huh? You’re tired, it’s dark outside, and your body clock feels completely off. Can’t you just feel your body pulling you back to bed? Well, you have two choices: You can get up, despite how uncomfortable you feel, and go into work on time, or you can choose to go back to your old habits and stay in bed, accepting the consequences of losing your new job.
Eating a low-glycemic diet works the same way. If you go back to your old habits to avoid the temporary discomfort of change, you’ll be accepting the undesired consequences (in this case, not losing weight, not feeling better, and not developing a healthier lifestyle). Developing a new habit is really only uncomfortable for the first couple weeks or so. After that, you’re in a new, better-for-you comfort zone.
After you start consistently incorporating low-glycemic foods in your diet, you’ll feel more comfortable. Just be prepared for a brief period of being out of your comfort zone first.
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