The Weightwatcher Wonder

So, like, I understand there's been a lot of comments, compliments, and complaints about my weight loss trip. The thing that surprises me the most about this trip that people have witnessed was that people would see me eat and wonder how I did it. No one seems satisfied with the answers of 'eat right' and I remember having a long conversation about this with one of my friends who basically interviewed me on the methods I used to get to this point.

Basically, you're going to hear the same things that you hear from magazines with weight-loss tips and books that have long lists of nutrition facts, food journals, and counting calories. It's not that I don't think they don't work. They probably do but you and I both know that we're too lazy to fill those things out, and really if we did, we're paying $20 for a workbook on weight loss and then find that we left it at the gym and it's gone the next day. I think the real success is just creating boundaries and then working as freely as possible in those boundaries if that makes sense.

So here are some rules that I went by, that I didn't realize I went by, until my friend asked about what I did instead of the routine accusations and questions about my weight loss.

1) PATIENCE: A lot of people like to think this all happened within a few days. This process took me 10 months of endless struggle. I went from having 4 full meals a day of having pancakes, syrup, and french toast for breakfast, and hamburgers, fries, pizza, and ice cream for lunch, dinner, and a midnight meal. I was eating probably 4000 calories mind you, so if you aren't losing weight drastically, it's probably because you didn't each as much as I did. Don't expect results in five days. Expect it more in five months. I won't lie. It was horrible. I got fast food withdrawals. I got hunger cravings because I was so used to having super-size onion rings and Wendy's frostings at 1AM and having pizza and cookies and soda for dinner. To transition from that to fruits, vegetables, rice, fish, and grilled chicken felt smooth like water at first, and then you hit the rocks. You just keep telling yourself 'do this for one more day' and tell that to yourself everyday.

2) EAT UNTIL YOU'RE FULL: I cannot stress this enough. As long as you're eating the right stuff, eat until you're full. The biggest mistake that people make is that they cut back during meals and then completely overshoot later with snacks and deserts of gargantuan proportions then wonder what went wrong. I remember one of my friends telling me they haven't eaten a meal in three days yet gained 3 pounds. But when I saw mountains of empty jumbo-size bags of potato chips in her room, she said those didn't count because they were snacks. You may think it doesn't count, but your stomach says it does. Then you have friends who eat minute portions of their salad during dinner but then take a trip over to Cold Stone and try to order the smallest sizes without realizing that even the smallest Cold Stone portion is at least 500 calories, thus not only cancelling out the salad they tried to skip on, but made up for their lunch as well. Which reminds me...

3) NO SALADS: I don't like salads. There are only two places where I'd EVER order a salad because I liked how it tasted and that's the Bread Basket's chicken caesar salad and Plutos, and I hardly ever eat at either place. I eat out often at Chinese restaurants and none of them serve salads. Salads aren't satisfying. They don't fill you up and you have the greater tendency to make up for the calories with something else. Whenever I go out, I get lots of seafood. I fill up on seafood, potatoes, rice, and steamed vegetables because I like my food hot.

3) COMPROMISE: Steam/Grill it. Don't fry it. It amazes me when people are amazed that I eat meat. OK, so recently I stopped taking pork and beef because of the whole hormone issue and honestly, it makes decisions on food much easier. However, that was just recently, so even during the time I took beef and pork, I still didn't gain weight because I didn't eat it fried. Meat is suppose to be as filling and low-calorie as fruits are. The problem is when you add lots of cooking oil, "special" sauces, bread, and flour to it that suddenly a gigantic chunk of 200-calorie fish fillet becomes a 1100-calorie fried entree + mayonnaise. And if you gotta have that juicy hamburger, in the words of Tyra Banks, you can have the hamburger but take the bun off. Even when I'm forced to take trips to Chipotle or McDonald's, I order a burrito bowl (no wrap) or I order a double cheeseburger and skip the fries.

4) SKIP THE SNACKS: Even if you get hunger cravings, eat a hunk of fruit. I take an apple, banana, or pear as a fruit. I prefer pears though. A Snickers bar doesn't make a filling snack but I know a gigantic apple would, plus it's half the calories of a Snickers bar. Buy a variety of fruits and buy them in large quantities so you know that the expiration date on those things is coming fast, forcing you to become more stingy on spending extra money on candy bars and milkshakes. The variety is to ensure you won't get bored and can have something different every day.

5) FRUITS FOR BREAKFAST: Mind you, I absolutely miss french toast which is the worst food item that can be ordered at Denny's. I love waffles and pancakes and the gooey syrupness that it makes me sad just thinking about it. However, I have stomach issues. Big stomach issues that my doctors had concerns several times that I might have had some precursor to colon cancer due to constipation. That helped made the push towards a healthier, high fiber diet. Fruits are conventionally more thought of as a snack rather than a meal but for me, I take fruits as breakfast. I take a lot of them. When I say a lot, I mean that I go to Safeway, buy a cantaloupe (you know, the whole thing), cut it open and eat the entire thing with a spoon. That's my breakfast. You'll be as stuffed as a marshmallow until lunchtime comes around. The last time I looked it up, a cantaloupe was no more than 250 calories. How's that for a power-sized yummy, guilt-free and healthy breakfast. This is why I encourage buying lots of different kinds of fruits in large quantities. That's a lot of perishable food you got to chow down.

6) DRINKS: A lot of empty calories come from drinks. I stay away from fruit juices because fruits are always better. Smoothies don't make good snacks or drinks. If I take a smoothie, usually it's for a meal and I order one of those power sizes and drink it up for lunch or breakfast. I loved soda though so usually I take a lot of diet soda, which I know is still bad for me but I feel that if I've given up on so many foods already, I deserve a break like this. And besides, I found that once I stuck to diet drinks, it made it easier to "cope" with not having junk food because I still felt like I got some false access to it. You also will begin to realize that after taking diet soda, it's hard to go back to regular soda because it's way too sweet and you don't get the sugar high. Tea is very good. I tried to go with coffee but I always end up choosing tea again. Compromising is key. I couldn't give up soda, so I took diet instead.

7) FORGET CARBS/CALORIES/FAT NUMBERS: Whoever said to eliminate carbs from your diet has got it all wrong because fruits are HIGH in carbs. Breads are too. I love bread. Do you know what bread I love the most? The Wonderbread in all of its fake white fluffy mess. But I want to be healthy too so I trade it up with multigrain and whole wheat. It doesn't taste as wonderfully fake as Wonderbread, but it'll do. Compromise is key. If you can't do that, your diet is too rigid and you'll eventually collapse from the ominous junk food withdrawals.

8) TIMING: I eat about every 5 hours but because of work, my schedule often gets thrown off so this is what my day often looks like. I have fruits for breakfast and the best part about that is that you can choose the amount you want in relation to how soon you're having lunch. Not having lunch for a long time? Scarf down that entire pineapple. Did you wake up late and might be having lunch in about three hours? Just have an apple and some berries. Lunch and dinner are pretty much free for all as long as it's the right foods. I don't need to list what the right foods are here because honestly, everyone knows what they are. Oh, and I usually clear my plate so that pretty much stomps out the idea of eating less means losing more.

That's about it I think. People have told me that when they went healthy, all of their junk food and doughnut cravings stopped and they became totally disinterested. Maybe they're telling the truth but those cravings have never stopped for me. Whenever I walk by a food court in the mall and see the golden arches smiling at me, I want to say yes, have that super-sized please. I gave up my favorite foods in the process: french fries, french toast, Starbucks strawberries and cream + whip cream, potato chips, sponge cakes, bread bowls, and ice cream pizookies. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fast. A lot of pouting and complaining was involved in which I had meals filled with fish, vegetables, and rice while everyone else had pizza and pasta and stare at me like I was insane. Then later they asked how I did it.

If there is anything to take away from this, it's a couple things.

It's not about eating less, it's actually about eating more but making sure it's the right thing you're eating. I can eat 3 waffles and still have another. But I can't get pass a cantaloupe that has the caloric count of 1 waffle.

Compromise is a huge deal. It can allow you to succumb to your junk food withdrawals without feeling guilty and without there being any consequence. Take the In-N-Out hamburger but have the spread replaced with ketchup. Take the diet soda instead of regular soda. Instead of candy, take the fruit.

Variety: It helps you keep up the discipline and patience with seeing the excess weight go away. Having fruits as a snack gets boring unless if you have a different one everyday.

It's also good to imagine how you'd be feeling after you're finishing what you ate. Would you feel good about it? Guilty? Satisfied? Restless? If you want that brownie that badly, picture how you'd feel once you've gone through the whole thing. That often helps with the cravings and encourages you to have the fruit instead.

If you want to lose it, you cannot go on a diet. This is lifestyle change. This temporary diet adventure has nearly taken a year to accomplish. And because I don't follow this salad and skipping-meal nonsense, this is a way of eating I'll have to stick to for the long run. This is good-bye to Burger King French toast sticks for a very, very long time.

So if anything, yes, you can still eat meat, appease some of your junk food cravings, and actually skip trips to the gym, as long as you're eating not less but better. Those were the steps I followed without becoming a frustrated soup-and-salad-addict who gives up again on their 28395256th diet.