I mentioned that I have lost 100 +  lbs, and a couple of people wanted to know how I did it. Here are the things that helped me lose weight, in no particular order (kinda):

One of the most important things to remember when working on losing weight is that you’re not on a diet⎯you’re making a lifestyle change. This requires a huge change in thinking⎯if your on a diet you’re either “on” or “off,” but if you’re making a lifestyle change, then you have room to play with things, find out what works best for you. You’re not trying to follow some diet in the latest fad book⎯you’re slowly changing your life, the way you eat, and this is how you will become successful. If you’re not willing to change your lifestyle, you won’t be able to sustain the weight loss you do have. But you don’t have to change everything all at once. Don’t be scared. This is a gradual process, not a quick fix diet. SO…

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Never, ever punish yourself. If you ate an extra large pizza at noon, then still have your afternoon snack, if you want to. If you start thinking “Well I’ll eat this now and then later I will just drink a lot of water” then eventually you're going to eat everything there is in the fridge! Stop the on/off way of thinking. To do this you MUST NOT punish yourself, ever. I have had weeks where I ate too much, but then have been able to get back with my program, because I didn’t punish myself.

Portion control: Oh I hated this one. Whenever I saw what “good” portion sizes were supposed to look like I wanted to jump out a window. What, that tiny amount? You’ve got to be kidding! But this last time I decided to lose weight I also decided that I didn’t want to feel deprived. So I very, very slowly cut down on my portion sizes. I mean, it took six months to get portion sizes down to where they’re supposed to be. (Meat the size of a deck of cards, ½ cup of veggies, 1/2 cup of starches, etc.) As I made my meals smaller, my stomach shrank. And as my stomach shrank, I found I could not eat a lot of food unless I wanted to feel horrible. (You know, that Thanksgiving Day kind of horrible?) Even when I went out to eat, I found myself ordering less food, because I couldn’t eat as much as I used to. If I did order a big dinner, I often took half of it home with me. So try to slowly reduce your portions sizes, OK? It’s alright if it takes you ages. The weight went on slowly, it will come off the same way.

Snacks:  Do have snacks. Have them 2 to 3 times a day, between meals, and even right before bed. Just make the snacks reasonable, and as healthy as you can. Believe it or not, 5 crackers with a little bit of cheese on them is a healthy snack, especially if you’re getting ready to  exercise. I try to make sure I hit as many food groups as possible in my snacks⎯covering protein, starches, fat, veggies or fruit. So I may have crackers and cheese with a little apple juice, or orange juice. Does that make sense? I may have a glass of milk and an apple. I may have yogurt and a banana.  (And sometimes I say the hell with it and have a couple of cookies and some chocolate milk. But more on that later.) Snacks help you stay on the path to a better lifestyle. They help take the edge off your hunger, so you don’t overeat at your next meal. And they help you blood sugar stay constant throughout the day. Don’t forget snacks!

This is also important: When you FIRST start to feel hungry, EAT. Don’t wait until you’re starving. Part of changing your lifestyle is learning to figure out when you’re hungry, and when you’re eating because you’re bored or nervous. You need to learn to do other things when you’re bored or nervous, but I’ll get back to that. So if you feel hungry, then eat something. If it’s near mealtime eat your meal. If it’s not quite time to eat⎯drink a little milk or juice, just enough to take the edge off. But mostly⎯try to feed yourself by YOUR schedule. This may mean negotiating meals with your family, but it’s worth doing. First off, when you eat when you first get hungry you don’t eat as much. You don’t have that ravenous feeling inside, so a smaller meal is OK. And about the time you start to get hungry again, it’s snack time. Then it’s meal time again. And so on.

Eat breakfast. Now, I don’t like to eat breakfast that much unless I’m eating out, so I keep food that’s easy to get at and eat around the house.  I eat breakfast bars that have protein in them, and drink juice, or eat a piece of fruit. I may also have yogurt and fruit⎯just make sure you get some protein in, and some carbs and fruit. Then you’re set for the day. You want to eat a nice healthy breakfast. This can include an egg! Poached or boiled is best, but if you must have them fried, try to do it with some spray cooking oil and as little butter⎯whatever⎯as possible. But an egg on a piece of toast, with a glass of fruit juice (get real fruit juice, check the package) is a good breakfast. Sometimes I throw caution to the wind and have an omelet. And I use real eggs, because Eggbeaters makes for sad omelets. The point is, I don’t do omelets every day.

More on that last thought: Once a week I let myself eat whatever the hell I want. This is usually enchiladas, but sometimes it’s a cheese/green chile omelet. Yum. With toast. I pick a meal⎯breakfast, lunch or dinner⎯and I enjoy myself as much as I can. Yeah, some times I make the enchiladas with 2% cheese, and I nuke the tortilla instead of frying them, but the point is I make sure I LOVE the taste of what I’m eating. Yes, food is fuel and all that, but it is also a conduit to social interaction. We usually eat with people, or maybe just a husband or wife. (BTW, if you are single⎯this lifestyle change is easier to make! No one to haggle with.) So eat something fun once a week, go wild and enjoy. Maybe it’s a stack of pancakes. You will find, however, that as you decrease your portions, you will not be able to eat as much.

When you’re eating, eat slowly, and savor your food. It goes without saying⎯or maybe it doesn’t⎯that you want to eat GOOD food as much as possible. Get into cookbooks⎯there are many that have wonderful low fat recipes in them. Cook with fresh spices as much as you can (if you can’t afford them⎯grow them!), work on becoming the best cook you can be⎯maybe even take a class. Cook mouth-watering meals. Remember⎯you don’t want to feel deprived. You’re not (eventually) going to be eating nearly as much, so you can pretty much eat what you want. Of course, if you learn to cook low fat meals that are delicious, you will have more success. I have noticed that low fat cookbooks always have some kind of trick to infuse more flavor into the food. If you get different cookbooks, you’ll learn lots of tricks for cutting down fat and infusing flavor and eventually you will be able to convert your favorite recipes to low fat recipes. This has really worked for me. There are TONS of low fat cookbooks out there⎯if you can’t afford to buy them, then get them from the library and copy the recipes you like. The point is, EXPLORE. Learn new ways of cooking. This way you will always enjoy your food. In other words, obsess about food, but in a healthy manner!

I said it before, but I’ll say it again: Eat slowly. It takes about 20-30 minutes for your stomach to signal your brain that it’s full. If you’re eating fast, you will miss this signal. Yes, sometimes I’m in a hurry and I have to wolf down meals, but for the most part I have learned to eat slowly. Some people say to put your fork down between each bite. Use whatever works for you. That’s the point of all of this⎯finding what works for you. So savor your food. If it gets cold, nuke it, or put in the stove for a few minutes. You will find, though, that food will stay warm for at least 20 minutes⎯so this works out quite well. Take at least 20 minutes to eat a meal, do your best to do that.

Another important thing: Learn to find out when you are full, and when you are hungry, and don’t take either one to extremes. You don’t need to be so full that you feel sick, but you don’t want to be hungry, either. So think about it, journal about it if you want to. Stop and ask yourself every now and then if you’re hungry. Not bored, or nervous⎯hungry. Empty gut. Learn how this feels. When you are hungry, again⎯EAT. Maybe not the entire fridge, but a little something. If you manage to get in your snacks you’ll find that your body will adjust to eating three meals and two to three snacks a day, and you’ll be OK. Basically, at any point you’re only two to three hours from eating something!  So practice listening to your body to learn what it feels like to be hungry. A little hungry, not a lot. Like I said before, if you wait until you’re starving, you will overeat. It’s just that simple.

OK, Here’s the hard part: Learning not to eat when you’re bored or nervous or depressed or whatever. First, if you have a craving, see if you are really hungry or if you want to eat for another reason. If you’re nervous⎯what can you do to stop being nervous? Maybe you need a med to help you⎯so call your doc and talk to him/her. Maybe you can get out some paper and a pen and write down your feelings⎯what are you nervous or upset about? And if the answer is “I don’t know,” then write that down. But look around you. What is bothering you? How can you fix it? Talk to your therapist (if you have one) about this stuff. Really delve into yourself to try and find out what is triggering the hunger, or the thought that you need to eat. I am a nervous eater. I really have to watch out for that. And I have to say that CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) has helped me immensely with my nervous eating, I highly recommend it. If you eat because you’re anxious, then get a CBT workbook on anxiety, and go to town. If you’re depressed, get a workbook on depression. Cruise the net and find what you can find about CBT. There’s a lot out there to learn.

Really try hard to get in 5 or 6 servings of veggies and fruit a day. I know, this is hard. But juice can make this easier. Try a glass of V-8 juice at lunch. At dinner, have two veggies. There, that’s your veggies for the day! Eat an apple in the morning and an orange in the afternoon. Incorporate fruit into your snacks⎯I’ve found this is the best way to get fruit in. Like everything else, this may take time to get down. If you haven’t eaten a lot of veggies or fruit in the past, work up to it. First add a veggie to dinner. (The fresher the better.)  Then add an apple to breakfast. Go from there.)

Eating can be a way of coping with stress. So, if you realize that you are not hungry, but are really stressed, what to do? There are so many answers to that question, Basically what I am saying here is you need to find something else you can do to comfort yourself besides eating. Maybe exercise is the answer. Maybe writing is. Maybe you need to get out and take a walk, or turn on the TV, or read or call someone. Get online and chat. Just DO something else besides eating. At first this is really hard to do. Your stomach will complain. But remember⎯if you are really hungry⎯eat. You don’t have to go without. You just need to learn when your hunger is real hunger, and not anxiety or something else. This is a trial and error process. If you keep at it, you will figure it out. It may take you a year, but once you figure this out, you will have much more success in your weight loss.

Also, make sure that you do not suffer from an ulcer or gastritis. You may need to see a doctor if you feel hollow often, but you’re eating right for you. I have an extremely acidy stomach, and have reflux, so I take Nexium everyday. This has helped me in the search for how to lose weight so much; I don’t have that hollow hunger or burning inside me all the time, so I don’t need to eat to quench it. This is really important to find out. If you drink a lot of coffee, you may find out that you feel more hungry because caffeine can make the stomach more active, acidy. So look out for that. Some people have trouble differentiating between a hungry stomach and an acidy one. Make sure you are not suffering from reflux or too much acid. And if you are⎯get help. You can get Prilosec over the counter now. But it’s best to have a doctor’s diagnosis.

I left the worst for last: exercise. We all hate it at first. It’s miserable to get into shape. But did you know that people who exercise just 30 minutes 3 times a week literally have the chromosomes of someone 10 years younger? Exercise will prolong your life, help prevent illness, make you feel and look better.

But it’s still a bitch, isn’t it? Well, here’s an idea. Make a playlist of songs that you really love, crank ‘em up, and dance. Vary the songs, slow, then fast, so you don’t overdo it. If you can hardly move make it 30 minutes of slow music. Just move. Step around. Bring your arms up over your head. Research has proven that even 10 to 15 minutes of moving about helps. We can all find two 10 to 15 minutes spots in our day to move, can’t we? You say you have no time to exercis--you HAVE to find the time. Give something up, if necessary. Because if you don’t you will get sick, and you will miss work; not exercising can have dire consequences. So start with something easy and fun! Maybe only dance for 5 minutes at first. Maybe you like to swim, or fence (I like to fence!), or play baseball or shoot hoops--it doesn’t matter. Just get moving. As you build up strength, you will want to think about adding resistance training into your exercise routine. You can do this at home with little equipment. For example, soup cans weigh about a pound. They will stand in you barbells in a pinch. I am currently working on a way to do all my weight training at home without one of those gyms--no room for on--so if you want to know more about this let me know and I’ll tell you what I’m doing. In a nutshell I’m getting a bench, some hand weights, and tubes with handles. But it’s important to do resistance training right, so email me or look for a book--I’m looking for a good book too. When I find one, I will post about it.

I know I am leaving stuff out⎯maybe I’ll think of it later.

But finally⎯what do you do when you reach your target weight? Well, reverse the process. Make your portions a little bigger, slowly. Keep an eye on your weight. If you start to gain, then reduce your portion a little. Play with this back and forth until you find the right amount of food for you. I used to try and count calories, fat grams⎯all that stuff⎯and found it to be really hard to do. What has worked has been reducing the portion size. So when you’re done reducing, and you’re a healthy size for you (get your doc to help you figure out what that is, or go online and check weight charts) then start eating a little more all through the day. Not much more. Just a little. If you still lose weight, eat a little more. Just do this until you find how much you can eat and maintain the weight. Again, this is a process, not a formula. It’s not “1200 calories to lose and 1700 to maintain.” It’s what works for YOU. Everyone is different. Remember⎯lifestyle change. It’s going to take a while. You will screw up a lot. That’s OK. Just keep trying, and you’ll get there.

(A word about weight charts--I am 6'2". VERy tall. I found one weight chart that said I shouls weigh between 135 and 150. I am anorexic at those weights! So I looked around some more, and found that the average chart said I should weigh between 155 and 195. My goal is 170, sort of in between, I have about 12 pounnds to go. When I get to 170, I will re-evaluate. Am I too thin? Should I take a bit more off? My answer will depend on how I feel, not how I look.)

I decided to throw in one more thing (writing this part now), When I weighed 186 pounds I hurt. My ankles hurt and my knees and hips hurt and sometimes it was hard to breathe, I was really uncomfortable at the best of times and in pain most of the time. Losing weight has reduced my pain levels 80 to 90%, and I am not kidding here.So maybe that can also help as an incentive--less pain is always a good motivator for me. If you're young and heavy, you might feel as much pain, but please know that as you age you will definitely feel the effects of the extra weight on your body. I used to have to take oxycontin for my pain, it was that bad. Now, on a rough day I take tylenol. If you need pain killers, then thank God for them--but if your weight is causing your pain, taking it off is the only way to go.

Ah, another "one more thing." When I was heavy I used to look at myself in the mirror and thing "you fat pig," or something worse. I despised my body. Then I read a book called Minding the Body (great book, btw), a collection of essays from women writers abuot their bodies, and this helpe me a lot. I realized that my body housed me, was me, and I should stop dissing me. I had to accept myself the way I was, admit to all the flaws, but still accept them as me. This was not easy, as you can imagine. But it was after I did this that I started losing weight. And I think it was because I realized that I needed to be kinder to me, to not diss myself at every opportunity, to give myself a healthier body to live in. Think about this. I know it's hard to love your body when it is not perfect--but who among us is? Hell even supermodels are Photoshopped into existence. None of us are perfect, and perfect is boring anyways. Celebrate your uniqueness. Even now, if you are heavier than you should be. Think about how you would treat an overweight friend. You would hate them for being overweight. You might be concerned about their health, but that's a love thing. Turn the Golden Rule on its head, and treat yourself the way you would treat others. This does not mean complacency. This means loving yourself enough to do what's right for you.

AND NEVER PUNISH YOURSELF.

(In case you had forgotten.)

Cherish yourself. Feed yourself good food. Lose weight, feel better, have more energy, look better (gravy). I hope this helps someone. And if I think of anything else that has helped me, I’ll post it.

  Love y'all.