Please help me 'babystep' my way to a healthy diet

Cafe Society
1

(I was torn between CS and IMHO for this post – please move if inappropriate)
I’d like to be eating a really healthy diet, as in, enough protein, not too much fat, not too much salt. Mostly home cooked, some meals out, very little fast food. Lots of vegetables and fruit and whole grain, not so much ‘white’ carbs, especially sugar. Hardly any salty snacks or sugar-bombed desserts/snacks.

The thing is, you’d have to pretty much reverse all of those specifications to find how I’m eating currently. :frowning:
Knowing myself, going whole hog on a new regimen will only fail. No will power, that’s me. What I’m going to try is to ease my way into healthier eating one ‘baby step’ at a time. That is, each week (or every other week maybe, we’ll see) I’ll add a new ‘rule’ to my regime while continuing to follow all the old ones.

What I need is a whole bunch of ‘baby step’ rules. A baby step being something that is a single SMALL change. Like, oh, “replace white bread with whole grain bread” rather than “stop eating bread.”

Here are some I’ve thought of already:

Replace white bread with whole grain.

Replace white rice with brown rice.

Don’t drink any calories. (that is, instead of a glass of oj, I’d eat an orange in the a.m.)

Switch from regular cottage cheese to low-fat.

Switch from 2% milk to 1 %. (And then to skim later on.) Yeah, milk has calories, but it’s got other benefits.

Don’t ever buy snacks in quantity. (As in, if I want a candy bar, just buy one candy bar. Not a ten pack or bag of mini ones or whatever to save money, because…that no will power thing. If I have ten candy bars in the house, I will somehow manage to crave one every day until they’re gone.)

Eat an apple before bed each night (to add more fruit AND to replace ‘worse’ evening snacks.)

Make a large salad w/lots of extra veggies for dinner once each week.

Use ground turkey in place of hamburger.

Brownbag lunch at least two days a week. (Step up frequency later on. Switch from sandwiches to healthier stuff – leftovers?-- later on.)

As you can see, I need a lot more suggestions if I’m to add a baby step a week for a whole year. Oh, I should say that losing weight is not the main goal. I wouldn’t object to being 10 pounds or so lighter, but mainly I’m worried about other aspects. Like not having as much energy as I think I should. Like avoiding diabetes and high blood pressure and high cholesterol. None of which I have yet, but they run heavily in my family.

Thanks for any help!

2

Those sound like some good ideas. I’ve done that, gradually, over the past few months, and my husband’s health has improved (he’s also at super-high-risk for diabetes, and has somewhat high cholesterol).

I’ll also suggest using light or low-fat versions of condiments, like salad dressing or mayo or cream cheese, if you like them. I love the Kraft Free salad dressings, as well as the Light Done Right versions, and I don’t notice a difference between light and regular mayo or cream cheese. (I will say, fat-free mayo or cream cheese or sour cream is disgusting, and not worth eating.)

You might try sea salt instead of table salt, because you get more flavor for less sodium.

Keep raw veggies in the fridge for when you want a crunchy snack. Carrots, celery, peppers, broccoli, even radishes if you’re in the mood for something a little spicy. Dip in low-fat salad dressing, or salsa, if you like.

Make wraps with whole-wheat tortillas instead of making sandwiches.

That’s all I can think of, right now, but I’m sure there are more changes I’ve made and not even noticed.

3

Hey - I pretty much did this in 2004. Completely made over the way I ate, switching from venti caramel lattes and muffins for breakfast to oatmeal with 1/4 cup dried blueberries (for instance). I used to eat a lot of fast food, lots of baked goods, M&Ms, taco bell, pizza, nachos. Now I eat about 95% “good” - I do treat myself at least once a week to a GREAT meal in a restaurant.

The biggest thing I had to change was budgeting my time. I have found it is nearly impossible to eat healthy by accident. We all know that an apple is a great snack - that’s easy, but actually having the apple on hand when you’re hungry for a snack - that’s hard.

So, I menu plan on Sundays. I plan out breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks for the week. I use the internet to find great recipes, I make a shopping list and I ONLY BUY what’s on the list (unless some staple I normally buy is on sale). I spend Sunday evenings making lunches for the week and doing any other prep to make life easier. It sounds like a chore, but I can see the TV from the kitchen, so I normally turn something on and I’m done with everything in an hour. I eat home cooked meals almost every night, but I like cooking and generally make large amounts that last several days, so it’s not such a chore.

I made a lot of the same changes you mentioned:

  • I try to eat foods that are nutritionally powerful and avoid foods with little nutritional benefit. That means I eat mostly brown rice (although I eat white rice at Chipotle and white rice in sushi), whole wheat pastas, whole wheat tortillas, sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes.
  • I try not to drink calories - although I do have the occasional non fat sugar free latte, I severely limit booze now that I’m maintaining and didn’t drink any at all when I was losing
  • I eat tons of produce
  • I try to eat mostly low fat dairy, lean protein, healthy fats
  • I don’t eat - fried foods, fast foods, sugary soda, packaged baked goods, cream-based sauces

Other difficult aspects of trying to eat well most of the time:

1 - We live in a “grab and go” convenience culture and it’s very hard not to be tempted by fast food and ready made packaged foods and all the other “not so good for you” aspects of eating in the US.
2. Food is so much more than just food. It is celebration “you got a promotion? let’s go out and get nachos!” It is comfort “I had a bad day, I should get an ice cream cone.” It is family “I always eat my mom’s meatloaf!” and it is love. Gracefully saying no to the office cake pusher is a real skill. Saying no to your mom’s meatloaf is even tougher.
3. It’s hard to be “different.” It really sucks being the coworker that doesn’t want to go to the Burger Place or the friend that doesn’t want cake at a baby shower or the family member that passed up the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so doom and gloom. Most of the time, my healthy eating lifestyle is no problem - like today - I had a business meeting, drove 2 hours with coworkers. I brought healthy snacks (dried no sugar pineapple rings and a Cliff Nectar bar) but the company ordered in pizza for lunch. 2 pieces of pizza won’t kill me, but it sure wasn’t the healthy lunch I would have chosen.

I did lose weight - over 70 lbs (at 5’7" I went from a tight ladies size 18 to a size 6, nearly 10 inches off my waist) and have managed to keep it off for over 3 years. I also feel absolutely incredible, at my last health screening my doctor raved about my excellent blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides - eating well has changed my life in almost imaginable way.

It was both the easiest thing I have ever done (eat an apple, not an apple danish) and the hardest thing I have ever done (wow, it takes a lot of keep healthy food at my fingertips and to be less tempted by all the junk surrounding us), good luck! It is SO worth it.

4

Hey, Glory just reminded me of something… when you do get fast food, get a kid’s meal. You get your little cheeseburger fix, and at many places, you can get apple slices or oranges instead of fries, but it’s not the triple-double bacon cheeseburger that is so unhealthy. It’s just a little unhealthy, in a reasonable amount. And skip the pop in favor of water or diet pop.

5

You’ve already mentioned cutting out processed white flour and white sugar, but to get more specific: cut out high fructose corn syrup*. It is in a LOT of things, including so-called “healthy” whole wheat breads (such as those from Brownberry).

I find that just the act of reading food labels to see if they contain HFCS will get you in the habit of eating healthy; you will start noticing other “unhealthy” ingredients, or in the very least get in the habit of comparing one label to another.

*The health effects of HFCS are pretty controversial, but just using HFCS as a “baby step” towards reading food labels is a positive start.

6

That smaller portion thing applies to Mom’s meatloaf, too. Even if everybody else in the family has a slice an inch thick, take a smaller one. Or if Mom won’t let you, only eat half of what she gives you.

I’d be careful with the salad dressings, actually. The fat in them is removed/reduced, but it’s frequently replaced with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. You need to check the nutrition information to make sure you’re actually getting something that’s significantly reduced in calories and not just reduced-fat, added sugar. Making your own vinaigrette is pretty easy and you can control what goes into it. Of course, you have to like vinaigrette in the first place.

7

Another strategy that has been crucial to my losing 50 lbs. in 2006 and keeping it off since then is to eat more frequent, smaller meals. I used to gauge how happy I was after a meal by how stuffed I was, and would starve myself leading up to celebratory feasts to ensure a good gorging. This attitude seriously distorts your sense of hunger. Add on top of this a natural desire to eat for comfort in times of stress and you get a lot of calories consumed without thinking.

The strategy that works for me is not to limit what I eat (though I do make the obvious substitutions as mentioned above – whole wheat for white bread, egg whites and skim milk for yolked eggs or half-and-half, etc.), but how much I eat at one sitting. The goal is to eat to satiation only. If on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being absolutely starving and 10 being gorged to the point of vomiting, you should aim to eat only when you get to about a 3 and aim for a feeling of 5 or 6 after you eat. This ends up meaning that you eat about 5 times a day.

To do this I follow a simple rule: whatever portion I get (such as a sandwich at a deli), I eat half of it and do something else to occupy my mind for at least 20 minutes. If after that time I’m actually still hungry, I’ll finish it. More often than not, I forget about it because half the portion was enough. I’ll then eat the other half about 2-1/2 or 3 hours later.

It’s great. I feel much more energetic, and no longer have “that sleepy feeling” after eating.

Warning: depending on where you live or where you’re going, having to eat every 3 hours or so can take a little planning. Get in the habit of always keeping some kind of acceptable snack handy so you don’t find yourself needing to eat, but finding nothing available but a candy stand or donut shop.

I found a tea mug at a Chinese supermarket I go to that has these ten phrases on it in Chinese and in English. It looks like this, and reads:
[ul]
[li] Less Alcohol, More Tea[/li] [li] Less Meat, More Vegetables[/li] [li] Less Salt, More Vinegar[/li] [li] Less Sugar, More Fruit[/li] [li] Less Eating, More Chewing[/li] [li] Less Words, More Action[/li] [li] Less Greed, More Giving[/li] [li] Less Worry, More Sleep[/li] [li] Less Driving, More Walking[/li] [li] Less Anger, More Laughter[/li][/ul]

Note that it doesn’t say “NO <X>, ONLY <Y>”, which is not realistic. But the more you live it the better you’ll feel. And the better you feel, the more you realize you like living this way.

8

Try a “vegetarian day” once a month or so, to experiment with new all-vegetable/fruit meals, and new ways to get non-meat proteins and all the other good stuff

  • carnivorous beast who loves vegetarian food.
9

I didn’t have time to read the whole thread, so I apologize if I’m repeating.

Add a fiber supplement to your diet. I try to take the supplement right before I eat so that it’s easier to keep my portions small. When I eat an especially fatty meal, I take the supplement both before and after on the (unsupported) theory that the fiber carries the fatty meal through my system faster so that less of it gets converted to calories. :smiley:

Between adding fiber, watching portions, and exercising a bit more (my diet was already relatively healthy), I’ve lost ~14 pounds since December.

10

Once a month or so try a new fruit or vegetable.

Is there a farmer’s market in your area? Try buying your fruits and veggies there. Especially the veggies. It’s a good way to keep an eye on what fruits and especially veggies are in season and being grown locally. If something is in season and being grown locally, eat lots of it.

(Do be aware that just because something is being sold at a place called a Farmer’s Market doesn’t neccessarily mean that the something was grown by the people selling it, but they should be willing to tell you what they actually grow, and what they bought from farmers in Georgia.)

11

Ooh! Some great ideas already! Please, keep them coming.

A girlfriend came up with another: Drink more water! She says we’re dehydrated much more often than we realize, and our bodies need ample water to work best. Okay, that’s one to add some week when I’m not feeling ambitious.
I’m starting to think the hardest part of this will be finding extra time. I mean, it takes time to pack a lunch in the morning vs. joining in on the sandwich order. It takes time to really cook instead of take out. It takes time to cook most vegetable stuff, longer than sticking a steak under the grill and calling it dinner.

Oh, well. Maybe I can convince myself getting to a healthy diet is a hobby. :wink:

12

Hi all,

I would recommend tracking what you eat- I used to use fitday.com but now I use mydailyplate.com. You can also track exercise as well. I have been calling it my “non-diet”- I don’t rule out anything but I do strive to keep nutritious food as the bulk of my diet while the calorie tracking allows me to indulge a little and make it up somewhere else. I’ve always been on a low fat or low carb diet- but I decided I’m tired of dieting and would like to change my habits instead. The weight loss is slower but I have lost 10 lbs in about 8 weeks and am on track to be at my goal weight by the end of the year.

As mentioned before me- keeping veggies and fruits handy is the hard part, but once you have them on hand it’s easy to use them as snacks. The process of tracking what I eat and keeping my calories under control has helped me get a realistic feeling for portion size and also made each dietary choice an “exchange”. I’m having porterhouse steak tonight (that’s what I get for sending the boyfriend to buy something for dinner) with a light salad and rice. I will have that steak in mind all day while I eat breakfast, lunch and snack and know exactly what kind of portion I can allow myself at dinner.

Tracking food really puts in into perpective for me- when I attempted low-calorie diets in the past, I always went too low, was ravenous and would “cheat” and then get into the cycle of “oh well, I cheated on this, might as well have that”. Making all foods allowable has greatly helped me to keep on track- it’s not a cheat anymore but I can use the tracking tool to balance out the indulgences.

Another two things that have helped me ALOT is starting to walk for 30 minutes a day at lunchtime and taking a multi-vitamin. The walk is what I put in last after all my calorie counting and bingo! now I have 160 more calories to play with :). Plus those two things are active ways to make myself healthier and puts me in the right attitude every day. I think the vitamin has actually helped some of my depression issues as well- not a cure of course.

Lastly- three cheers for Quaker’s Lower Sugar Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal! I start most days off with this, it’s filling, low calorie (even with a bit of butter in it) and delicious.

13

I lost about 50 pounds and 6 inches from my waist by completely revamping my diet and doing about 2 hours walking a day (to work and back).

On the diet front I realised I just had to keep temptation out of the way. If it wasn’t in the house I couldn’t eat it.

I’m taking on board the whole complex carbohydrate thing and make sure I had a good cereal for breakfast. Complex carbohydrates ‘burn slow’ in your stomach so you don’t just get an energy spike and then a slump.

I’ve also got a rice cooker. This has been a brilliant purchase as it cooks brown rice perfectly. Each lunch is a brown rice salad of some sort. I like to dress it up with chopped veg, spices etc for variety but that stops the hunger and gives me enough energy to walk home and not have to fall ravenously on the fridge when I get in.

I also cut out fizzy drinks, even diet ones as part of my problem was that my stomach was so used to being stuffed and stretched it was always ‘hungry’. Small portions and not bulking out on pint after pint of diet coke slowly dealt with that.

I also had to get it into my head that fruit is not calorie-free and it was just as important not to eat half a dozen apples a day as it was to cut out donuts.

It’s worked pretty good as my weight has stabilised now that I’m not dieting strictly rather than all going back on.

But my circumstances are probably different to yours. I was 50 or so when I began dieting at at the stage where I was either going to be a fat old man or I had to get a grip and permanently change a significant aspect of my lifestyle.

14

I’ve got an office mate who lost a bunch of weight with Weight Watchers and has kept it off for about seven years. She snacks thoughout the day on healthy things like dry cereal, vegetable sticks, small microwave popcorn bags, or those handy 100 calorie snack packs. The tactic is to not get so hungry that you want to dive into a plate of anything, and to keep lots of healthy things on hand to stave off trips to the vending machines. Seems like a sound strategy to me.

Another thought - you may find as you cut out very sweet things from your diet that you stop craving them, and after time most processed food will taste *too * sweet.

Also make sure you’re getting enough sleep. Just heard a report on NPR this past week that correlated sleep deprivation with a rise in horomones that create appetite.

15

I would recommend this excellent article to anyone looking to eat healthier. It’s long, but it’s educational throughout.

Personally, I’m not a fan of subsitutions (ground turkey for ground beef, low fat for regular). They just don’t satisfy.

I’m not a fan of supplements and additives (a fiber or vitamin pill).

In that article I linked, he talks about this reductionist (overly scientific) view of food. One where we break food into its component parts so that you can take “hot pockets” and remove some of the fat, and add some ADM by-product from grain processing and now create, “Lean Pockets – Low in FAT!! High in dietary fiber!!!” All while a carrot just sits there in its healthy carrotness with no advertising claims.

Replacing mayonnaise with low-fat mayonnaise is not healthy eating. It’s healthy marketing.

I think you need to extend your strategy on candy bars to almost everything you eat. Look, NO ONE has will power. If you have ice-cream in the house, you’re going to eat it. But, if you don’t have ice-cream in the house, you’re not going to crave it so bad, you go buy it. I’m like that with beer. If I buy a twelve-pack on Monday, it’s gone by Friday. If I don’t buy beer all week, I’ve had zero beers by Friday. It’s that easy.

Ease of accessibility is the most overlooked part of our diets. We eat what is around.

I’ve seen the insides of people’s fridges. It’s insane. They’re packed top to bottom and side to side with food and sugar-drinks. Of course they’re eating all night long.

Our fridge has yogurt on the top shelf. Eggs and water on the middle. Meat at the bottom and fruits and veggies in the drawers. We have condiments, and jelly on the door, sure. . .but the fridge is filled with food that we need to prepare if we want to eat it. I can’t overstate how much this reduces your consumption of it.

I guarantee we eat healthier than 95% of the people out there, and we eat meat and fish almost every day, and don’t have a product in the house that says “lite” on it.

(Also, while I don’ t have a high opinion of any diet you could name, I do like what I know about weight watchers. Some people simply aren’t aware of how much food they put in their body, or what comprises the food they do eat. WW is excellent for teaching that.)

Yes, also. . .sleep and exercise.

16

Your girlfriend missed the highly publicized story last week that that thing about drinking lots of water is basically bullshit.

Drink when you’re thirsty.

Sometimes there are things we just “know”, right? Like that. Trust yourself.

17

Cooking at home doesn’t always have to be a big production.

You can make bigger meals when you cook at home and freeze some for later when you don’t have time to cook (it’s just as easy to make a double batch of spaghetti/chili/lasagne in the same time as one). Even a smallish apartment size freezer helps here (we don’t have a huge chest one, just a smaller apartment size one and it’s perfect). Lasagne is nowhere near as hard to make as it seems (takes me about an hour and change from start to table), and you can add stuff like spinach. Spaghetti you can grate veggies (like carrots) and mix it in, you can’t even tell you’re eating them.

There’s lots of quick and easy meals out there also. We do stir-frys pretty regularly as an easy way to get a lot of veggies. You can use fresh or frozen mix veggies, whatever meat you have on hand (leftovers from roasts or chicken work great this way, or we chop up a couple porkchops or steak or chicken breasts… sometimes we don’t even put meat in) We have a wok, but you don’t need one to make it in. A frying pan is just as good. Beef stroganoff takes only 15-20 minutes, tastes miles better than the boxed crap and has less salt and junk in it.

There’s some recipe books out there that focus entirely on quick easy meals for people on the go. Check out the ones by Sandi Richards, called Fixin’ Dinner (or is that just the name of her show?) well she focuses on, as I said, quick healthy meals for people on the go. You have to do a little planning, but she gives you tips and tricks on how to do it. We don’t follow everything she does, or use all her recipes, but she’s great. Even Gordon Ramsay has gotten on the bandwagon with his latest cookbook.

We used to eat a LOT of junk. Basically we worked on eating in more, buying fewer junky type foods, and eating less overall (no more stuffing my face). We did it slowly too, but we didn’t really focus on rules or what we were doing. The main reason I started was because I wanted my son to eat better, it was easier to focus on what I wanted him to eat and buying those sorts of things and I just fell in line at the same time (this doesn’t stop me from drinking too much soda and the occassional binge on chips or too many meals out some weeks though). In the course of a year or so, we’ve lost about 40lbs between us and we’re still losing, and my son likes his veggies… so I think we’re doing good.

I’m not a big fan of substituting turkey for ground beef though. We tried that a couple of times and it’s not bad but it definitely has a different taste that wasn’t what I would eat regularly. I actually prefer substituting wild meat for beef where possible instead (we had moose stew a few weeks ago). It also has a different taste but doesn’t utterly change it like turkey can IMO.

18

I am in a similar position to you and I have made some changes that really have helped a lot.

1.) I actually keep candy and stuff on hand. Right now I have a 6 pack of snickers and a 6 pack of reeses cups in my bedroom drawer at home. They have a specific purpose though. On Monday night when I get home from work and I am tired and cranky because I have 4 more days until the weekend I have a candy bar. Then on Friday night when I am so excited because I have two days in which to do whatever I want I celebrate with a candy bar. As someone else mentioned above food is a huge part of our lives and is used for comfort and celebration and all of that stuff. Coming home to say, “Gosh, today was hard. I will have a bowl of rice!” just doesn’t cut it for me. If I don’t have some yummy treat ready I will go to the store and buy a pint of ice cream and I know that. Having candy on hand prevents me from sitting on the couch with a bottle of honey like it is a beverage. That little bit of sugar is all the processed candy I put into my body all week so it isn’t horrible for me but it is enough to keep me satisfied.

2.) When I am at the store I watch for frozen dinners to go on sale and when I find one that is $1 or less and has less than 400 calories I buy a couple and stick them in the freezer. That way when I sleep through my alarm or my train is delayed and I get home an hour late I have a quick, easy lunch or dinner that is cheap and better for me than the #12 I would get if I stopped by McDonald’s instead. I would hate to run out of left overs or not have time to make a lunch and then face the temptation of ordering in Chinese food so a 75 cent bowl of frozen mac and cheese at 230 calories and a pear from the fruit bowl helps prevent me from having to face down that temptation in the first place.

3.) When I make dinner I line up the tupperware and package up what will be lunch/dinner for the next day or two BEFORE I put any food on my plate for that night. Whole grain spaghetti with marinara sauce may be good for you but when you eat 3 servings of it that kind of kills the health benefits you were looking for. It forces me to keep my portion sizes in control.

19

The “we’re dehydrated most of the time” thing might be a myth, but drinking more water can still help with eating healthier. If you’re drinking water instead of sugared sodas or a venti caramel latte, that’s obviously healthier. If you get a bottle of water instead of a sugary or salty snack from the vending machine on your daily (or more-than-once-daily) run from your cubicle to the vending machine, that’s obviously healthier.

Non-stick rice cookers are great. But don’t get one with a regular metal bowl. It will be a huge pain to clean up, so you will end up using it much less. I almost never used my metal-bowl rice cooker, but I use my nonstick one a lot. A rice cooker that you never use will not help you eat healthier.

Nobody’s perfect. The flip side of that is that nobody’s perfectly bad, either. You will cheat, but when you do, don’t say “oh, I can’t do this”. Just put it behind you and try again. Or maybe make some modification of your diet to remove that particular temptation. You’re not a bad or weak person because you cheated on your diet. Show me someone who has been on a diet and never cheated on it, and I’ll show you a liar.

20

I like this idea the best. Why? Because you’re not only going to save the calories from take out, but you’ll also save money. You can then use the money that you saved from the take out to buy something else.

Make going out a treat, rather than, “Where are we going out/ordering from today?”