Tips to Keep Weight Off

by xine23

Since I have settled into boot camp and don’t have any new stories (yet), I thought I would share some tips I listened to on the John Tesh Radio Show. Yes, I do love him and his advice 🙂

Habits That Make Us Fat

  • Free food makes us fat. When you eat a free breadstick at the Olive Garden, or a free cheddar biscuit at Red Lobster , that’s an extra 150 calories added to your meal. Eat a bowl of tortilla chips at the Mexican place and that’s 450 extra calories. so save your waistline and ask the server not to bring you the free snacks while you wait for your dinner.
  • Drinking soda makes us fat. Studies have found that drinking only one or two sodas a day increases the risk of being overweight or obese by 33%. And the ugly truth? The average American drinks a gallon of pop a week!!
  • Skipping meals makes us over four times more likely to be fat. When you skip meals, like breakfast, it slows your metabolism and boosts your hunger hormones. And from my personal experience, you do not want to slow down your metabolism by not eating. It honestly was one of the first things I changed two years ago. Now I eat ALL the time and pack snacks with me everywhere I go.
  • The combo meal at fast food restaurants makes us fat. That’s because it’s almost always more food that we need – or would normally eat if we served ourselves. You’re better off ordering the burger, if that’s what you’re really hungry for, instead of simply getting the fries and the drink too, just because it’s part of a pricing scheme. Plus, in the combo, there is the dreaded pop, which we now know increases our chance of obesity if we drink it.
I am very good at not doing the things listed on this list. I was a major offender in point three–I would skip breakfast and lunch when I worked for Blockbuster, essentially destroying my metabolism. And it hasn’t fully recovered, if you want the honest truth. I am thankful I have been working out as much as I have been, because I can feel my metabolism kicking into gear, but it’s been a long 2-year struggle on this.
I will also admit that when I go out for a meal with Robert I will snack on the bread as we wait for the food. I will now not touch it! The thing that I would love to do is to ask them not to bring it to the table, but Robert loves his bread before the meal. This is going to be a work in progress.
What concerns me the most, and it has nothing to do with my body, is the ability pop has on making people obese. Robert drinks so much pop. He will go through a 2 litre bottle in two days if he could have his way. He will drink three glasses at night, minimum. And if we are out at a restaurant, he drinks at least three big glasses of it. I am very worried about him getting bigger as he gets older and his metabolism slows down. Because he has grown up in a culture where pop for breakfast was ok, it’s going to be a sloooow process.
I will let everyone know how it goes with the restaurant eating and if I can get Robert to calm down his Coke intake…