Cutting regular soda pop out of your diet (and replacing it with diet pop or water) can help immensely!
Switching to diet pop takes a bit of getting used to at first- but once you become accustom to it you may very well have saved yourself a few hundred to over 1000 calories a day depending on how much you drink!
One can of pop (355ml) usually has about 200 calories!
I was going to do a post entitled "Why We Overeat"- I'll go into much more detail later.
Suffice to say for now- our bodies require much less calories per day than we consume. It is verrrrry easy to go overboard. Especially when we snack in between meals on high calorie junk. Potato chips are one of the worst offenders.
Oh what the hell... Let's talk about it now!
This really is for those of us trying to lose weight- for the ones trying to gain weight, I'll post that advice another day.
What I'm about to post is my opinions, based partially on experience, and information I have picked up over the years.
Before I begin, for those who don't know I used to be very obese:
This was me back in 1986 (at 16 years of age) in what was easily the worst shape of my life. I was probably over 200lbs... but I was only 5' 3" in height (I probably should have been 120lbs).
I was like this from 13 to 19 years of age. I lost most of the weight by jogging for 9 months- then in 1990 I started weighlifting. Watching my diet has been a constant struggle ever since.
Two of the main (and worst) reasons we overeat-
1- We eat as a source of entertainment when we are bored.
2- We eat as a source of pleasure when we are upset.
There are many factors to overeating- As human begins we have a tendency to eat until there is no more food in front of us. In other words, we don't really know when to stop ourselves. This might partially be from our Parents insisting that we finish all of our food at the dinner table.
Have you ever found yourself at an "all you can eat" buffet- going back for a third or fourth helping even though you feel stuffed? This is because we have a tendency to give in to that pleasure center in our brains regardless of what our stomach is telling us.
About those potato chips- As I mentioned we tend to eat until the food is all gone. When we start eating a bag of potato chips... We will most likely keep eating until the bag is finished.
The insidious thing is potato chips are incredibly high in calories. Add chip dip and that little snack could easily be the amount of calories your body burns in a single day (somewhere in the 2000 to 3000 calorie range)!
So let's say you just can't give up potato chips just yet- what can we do to help ourselves not overeat?
First and foremost overeating is an
addiction. And the first step is admitting to having a problem. It sucks- but it's the cold hard truth.
One thing you can do is control the portions that you eat. Let's take the potato chips again as an example: Instead of taking the entire bag with you- pour a small amount into a bowl or zip lock bag.
When you are finished you must now make a conscious effort to go back for more. This is where your willpower must come in. You must assert yourself to
STOP. Trust me I know it is easier said than done- I've been there.
Another reason we overeat is that it takes about 20 minutes or so for the stomach to signal the brain that we are full. In the meantime if we don't make the effort to stop before this, we have overeaten beyond what we require. When you start "feeling full" you are actually well past how much food you actually should have eaten.
Some ways to combat this-
Eat smaller, more frequent meals. I eat about five times a day. A couple of those meals are quite small. This is not only about portion control-
When you eat supersized meals, your stomach grows (stretches) to accommodate the large amount of food. As a vicious cycle it in turn takes more food each time for you to feel full and no longer hungry.
Eating smaller meals will in time literally reduce the size of your stomach- as a result you feel full faster, having eaten less food. Again I have learned this through practice.
One thing we really have to overcome is using food as a source of pleasure or entertainment. Food is meant to nourish the body. It's been a long road- but over the years I have trained myself to treat food as a tool- just like a barbell. If it tastes good- that's a bonus.
Don't get me wrong- I have a sweettooth just like the rest of us, and some days it's a helluva lot harder not to give in. Especially when my wife keeps surrounding me with the effin' stuff!
But again- that's what we're here for: to support each other!