New Year’s Weight Loss Plans Start Today

Fran Buckley, 62, a Jupiter, Florida, real estate agent, realized last fall that she wasn’t leading the life she wanted to lead, and she blamed it on her weight.

She wasn’t golfing because her stomach made it awkward, she says. She wasn’t visiting family or old friends because she didn’t want them to see how much she had gained. And she wasn’t wearing the clothing styles she liked.

She knew she had to lose weight soon or “I was going to be a fat person until I died.”

So she started following an eating plan and walking program designed especially for this year’s seventh annual USA TODAY Weight-Loss Challenge, which starts today. And since late September, Buckley, who is 5-foot-4, has lost 28 pounds, dropping from 226 to 198. She hopes to lose 50 more on the program.

The challenge was created in 2004 to offer nutrition and fitness guidance. The goal of this year’s plan: Lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks.

One reason it’s hard to trim down more and keep it off is that there’s a cascade of biological responses designed to return dieters to their pre-diet levels. A hunger hormone called ghrelin increases, and a fullness hormone called leptin decreases, research shows.

“Regardless of these hormone shifts, it is still possible to lose some weight and keep it off,” says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian in Chicago. “You just need to focus on making realistic diet and exercise changes.”

Blatner created the eating plan. She has helped thousands of people lose weight and has found that dieters are most likely to succeed if they have flexible meal plans that include foods they enjoy. Her meals are designed to help people limit calories while eating a diet high in fiber, moderate in satisfying protein and low in saturated (animal) fat.

To follow this plan, it’s crucial that dieters figure out how many calories they can consume to lose weight.

That’s determined by several factors, but generally, a sedentary woman can lose weight consuming about 1,500 calories a day; a sedentary man can consume about 1,800 calories a day, Blatner says. Use trial and error to figure out how much you can eat and lose weight, she advises.

If you aren’t shedding pounds on 1,800 calories a day, try trimming a couple of hundred more. Some people may need to cut back to 1,200 calories a day.

To lose a pound a week, you have to burn 3,500 calories more than you consume. So you must increase your physical activity and decrease calories to create a deficit of 500 calories a day.

Blatner created mix-and-match menus so that all the breakfasts are about 300 calories, lunches about 400, dinners about 500 and snacks about 150 calories. The plan includes simple recipes you can make at home and meals you can order when you’re dining out at restaurants or fast-food places.

“We are offering lots of choices, but you may want to pick a couple of your favorite breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks and repeat them,” Blatner says. “Many people find that eating less variety is actually helpful when they are trying to lose weight. It makes the program more automatic, and it makes it easier to cook and grocery shop.”

Buckley has adhered closely to the program over the past three months. The way she’s eating now is a far cry from her former habits. She blames her weight gain over the years on “binging, overeating, no portion control and not planning my meals. I am lucky I didn’t weigh more than 226 pounds.”

‘I can do that’

In retrospect, she wonders why she didn’t stop gaining sooner. “Where was I when I got to 160, 170 and then 175? Was I not weighing myself? Was I not looking in the mirror? I just kept buying bigger clothes.”

The weight-loss challenge came at a perfect time for her. She was fed up and wanted to change, and she liked the fact that the plan was simple and that the goal of trying to lose a pound a week for 10 weeks seemed achievable. “I thought: ‘I can do that,’ ” she says.

Buckley read through the menus, cleared her house of junk food and started to plan and prepare her meals.

To keep things simple, she has the same thing daily for breakfast (high-fiber cereal, fruit and skim milk) and lunch (turkey sandwich, small salad), but she varies dinner. Usually she prepares a dinner from one of the recipes in the eating plan, but occasionally she eats out, relying on the dining-out suggestions in the program. Her calories have dropped dramatically from “several thousand a day” to 1,500 to 1,550.

She has learned that she has control over what she eats. “At luncheons and dinners out, when other people have a roll and butter, I don’t. When people eat desserts, I pass.”

But she says she doesn’t feel deprived and rarely feels hungry.

And she has made great strides with exercise. She and her sister, Jonna Convery, 54, walk 3 miles every morning, and Buckley walks another mile in the evening. “The 3-mile walk was taking us 50 minutes, and now it’s taking us 41 minutes. We’re doing a mile in less than 15 minutes. That’s mega,” she says.

Another person who responded to USA TODAY’s request for people to try the program was André Gratton, 43, of Cherryville, N.C. When it comes to losing weight, Gratton has the diet deck stacked against him. He travels frequently for his job, sits almost all day in meetings, airports and airplanes, and has a difficult time fitting exercise into his busy schedule. On top of all that, he’s a gourmet cook, and he adores ice cream and bread pudding.

“I love to cook and eat. For my job, I eat out all the time and eat at the best restaurants all over the country, so it’s tough to stick to a diet plan,” says Gratton, who manages a national staff that installs computer programs for Choice Hotels.

But despite these daily challenges, Gratton has cut calories dramatically and exercised regularly for the past few months and has lost 40 pounds. At 5-foot-9½, he weighs 270, down from a high of 310. “I knew when I committed to the challenge that the weight would come off fast, and so far, it has,” he says. He intends to lose 50 more pounds.

He estimates he was consuming about 6,000 calories a day before he started the program, and now he’s down to 2,000. He has made several changes that contributed to the dramatic cut in calories, including:

•Cutting way back on desserts and ice cream.

•Carefully reviewing restaurant menus and choosing foods that contain a reasonable number of calories.

•Drinking his coffee black instead of with cream. He has two to four cups a day. “I thought it was going to be really hard, but I eliminated cream the first day and haven’t looked back. Just this morning, I thought how good my coffee tastes.”

•Exercising regularly. He alternates weight training one day and working out on the elliptical for 15 minutes the next.

Gratton, a single dad, says he knew he was making progress with his weight loss when his 16-year-old daughter, Katie, told him she was proud of how good he looked. He asked her how she could tell he had lost weight. Her response: “Your stomach no longer touches the steering wheel when you drive.”

As for Buckley, she says now that she has started down the weight-loss path, she doesn’t plan to get off it until she has reached her goal. “I am changing a little bit daily and have given myself a goal to reach a healthy weight within a year.”

Anita Stone is a Fitness Instructor and Certified Sports Nutrition Consultant in Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas. She teaches weight loss and fitness through audios, videos, podcasts, and live Wellness Events. Anita is a co-author of "Wake Up Moments of Inspiration," from the best-selling series "Wake Up Live the Life You Love," published in 2009.
~ Home Page: http://www.VideoFitnessCoach.com ~ Contact Anita Stone ~

5 BEST FATS FOR WEIGHT LOSS

By Whitney Provost

You might think that to lose weight you need to cut the fat out of your meals. After all, fat is higher in calories than protein and carbs, and low-fat diets have been very popular since the Senate Nutrition Committee first recommended them in the late 1970s. But research shows that a moderate-fat diet (with about 35 percent of calories consumed coming from fat) will help you drop pounds permanently, feel full longer, and avoid bingeing. The trick is to eat the right kind of fat to increase satisfaction and boost weight loss. Here’s why it’s important to eat fat—and we offer five of the best fat sources to add to your diet.

How eating fat will help you lose fat

In 2008, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel found that people who followed low-fat diets lost less weight than people who followed low-carb or moderate-fat diets. The low-fat group lost an average of 6.5 pounds over 2 years, but the low-carb and moderate-fat groups lost about 10 pounds. Women did especially well on the moderate-fat diet, losing an average of 13 pounds during the study.

For weight loss, fat is important for several reasons:

• Fat helps your body control blood sugar and insulin spikes after eating carbohydrates. Better sugar metabolism means less fat storage.
• Fat slows down digestion and aids nutrient absorption. You’ll stay fuller longer and get more health benefits from the food you eat.
• Essential fatty acids (such as omega-3s) may boost your metabolic rate and increase fat burning.
• Fat tastes good. It also provides a “mouthfeel” that is satisfying, which can help you be happy with less food.

Eating more fat may also help you stick to your diet longer. In a study conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, participants got either 20 percent of their calories from fat or 35 percent of their calories from fat. Both groups lost weight after 6 months. But after 18 months, only 20 percent of the people in the low-fat group were still following the diet, compared with 54 percent of the people in the moderate-fat group. Likewise, the subjects in the moderate-fat group maintained their weight loss, while the low-fat group participants gained most of the weight back.

If you reach for a box of low-fat or fat-free crackers or cookies when you want to lose weight, you may actually be sabotaging your diet. Manufacturers frequently replace fat with sugar in packaged food items to make them taste better. You think you’re making a good decision by eating fat-free products, but the excess sugar and refined flour can lead to fatigue, cravings, mood swings, and weight gain caused by the overproduction of insulin, the fat-storage hormone. As a snack, an apple and peanut butter or a salad with oil and vinegar dressing would be a better weight loss choice. The complex carbs and healthy fats will maintain your blood sugar levels, boost your energy, and keep you satisfied longer.

What kind of fat should you eat?

To get lean, you need to eat the right kind of fat. Avoid saturated and trans fats (which are found in red meat, full-fat dairy products, and many packaged foods), and instead choose monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Here are some of the best sources of fat to help you reach your weight goal.

1. Fish. Fish such as salmon, albacore tuna, herring, mackerel, and sardines contain beneficial amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. Most experts agree that eating two servings of fatty fish per week is safe for people who are worried about mercury or other toxins. (Pregnant women should consult with their doctors about consuming fish.) If you don’t like fish, a quality supplement such as Core Omega-3™ will give you the benefits without the taste.
2. Olive oil. Heart-healthy oils such as olive, canola, and peanut are excellent sources of fat for dieters. They have also been shown to lower bad cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. Use them sparingly when sautéing, or drizzle them over your favorite salad vegetables with a little vinegar and herbs to maximize the absorption of nutrients. Moderation is important: You really only need about a teaspoon of oil to get all its benefits. Using more will add significant calories.
3. Avocados. Eat a spinach and carrot salad with a little avocado, and you’ll not only get a dose of good fat, but you’ll also absorb more phytonutrients like lutein and beta-carotene. Scientists at Ohio State University in Columbus found that more antioxidants were absorbed when people ate a salad containing avocados than when they ate a salad without this tasty fruit. One-quarter of an avocado will add flavor with about 75 calories.
4. Nuts. Almonds, walnuts, pecans, and peanuts are powerhouses of good nutrition—full of antioxidants, minerals, and monounsaturated fat. The Nurses Health Study, where more than 86,000 nurses were followed for 14 years, found that those who ate nuts regularly (about an ounce per day) tended to weigh less than those who didn’t. The protein, fat, and fiber make nuts more filling, which helps dieters stay on track. There’s an added psychological bonus to eating nuts: Because they’re rich and satisfying, you probably won’t feel like you’re on a diet.
5. Flaxseeds. Packing a wallop of fat, protein, and fiber, flaxseeds are a delicious and healthful addition to any diet. You can grind them up and add them to oatmeal, yogurt, salads, or vegetables, or pretty much anywhere you want a nutty crunch. They’re a plant source of omega-3 fatty acids, making them a good choice for vegetarians or people who don’t like fish. Ground flaxseeds also have 3 grams of fiber per tablespoon that will help slow digestion and keep your blood sugar stable.

Making room for fat

Fat might be considered a health food, but that’s not a cue to overindulge. At 9 calories per gram, fat is a more concentrated energy source than protein and carbohydrates (each has 4 calories per gram). You need to be mindful of your overall caloric intake if you want to eat more fat and lose weight. But you’ll probably find it a bit easier to manage your calories when you feel full and satisfied after eating the right kinds of fat.

Anita Stone is a Fitness Instructor and Certified Sports Nutrition Consultant in Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas. She teaches weight loss and fitness through audios, videos, podcasts, and live Wellness Events. Anita is a co-author of "Wake Up Moments of Inspiration," from the best-selling series "Wake Up Live the Life You Love," published in 2009.
~ Home Page: http://www.VideoFitnessCoach.com ~ Contact Anita Stone ~

YOU CAN LOWER YOUR BLOOD SUGAR WITH DIET

Anita Stone is a Fitness Instructor and Certified Sports Nutrition Consultant in Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas. She teaches weight loss and fitness through audios, videos, podcasts, and live Wellness Events. Anita is a co-author of "Wake Up Moments of Inspiration," from the best-selling series "Wake Up Live the Life You Love," published in 2009.
~ Home Page: http://www.VideoFitnessCoach.com ~ Contact Anita Stone ~