Three Secrets of Stress-Free Weight Control
After working in the area of counseling and eating disorders for many years, I recognize that one of the chief sources of stress and low self-esteem for people is the anticipation of failure at weight control. Many people report a kind of feeding frenzy just before D-day (the day the diet is to begin), followed by failure to stick to a plan during the first three days, followed by a rebound in weight.
Thinking about dieting and weight control can be more stressful than the actual process. In fact, the lead up to “time to go on a diet” can even result in greater weight gain. We are constantly bombarded with methods to lose weight. Usually they involve expensive programs that promise success. However, there are three important ingredients in any weight loss program that do not involve money or signing up with any particular program. You can do them yourself, for free, and be on your way to successful weight control. Think of these steps as your diet “launch pad.”
Begin by monitoring your present weight and deciding not to gain any additional weight. Whatever your starting point – if you are ten, twenty or fifty pounds or more overweight – the first step is to monitor you weight by weighing yourself daily for three to four weeks and trying to maintain your weight rather than gain. If you don’t lose weight during this time, it doesn’t matter. The goal is to maintain your weight and not put on additional pounds.
Start to keep a diet diary. As you begin to weigh yourself each day, keep a record of what you are eating. Notice if your weight seems to increase or decrease depending on what you […]
Vintage Food: Recipe for Nostalgia
Vintage food is not “old” food as in – past its prime; uneatable; expired. It’s not that bulging tin can of stewed tomatoes with cryptic black lettering suggesting it was best eaten before 1985. It is the food we remember like a perfect postcard of something delicious that mom or gramma prepared (maybe dad, although I only remember my father standing in front of the stove once to put out a small fire I started at age seven while making toast on a gas flame).
Vintage food is a fragrant pan of fresh-baked Parker House Rolls; little pillows of smooth golden crusts, brushed with butter and brought by Aunt Elsie to every funeral reception. It’s a basket of shell beans encased in papery pink and green mottled pods. It is fat, juicy hamburgers cooked in sliced yellow onions and made from a slab of top round beef that the butcher down the street had put through his meat grinder that same day.
It is a picture of Ike and Mamie Eisenhower in the Saturday Evening Post showing them sitting behind TV tray tables with their forks poised over a Swanson’s Turkey Dinner served in an aluminum rectangle with three separate compartments for Turkey, mashed potatoes and green beans. It is Red Flannel Hash (corned beef and diced potatoes), cod fish cakes sizzling in a heavy, black cast iron fry pan, Finnan Haddie (salted cod cooked in cream) next to boiled new potatoes on a Blue Willow patterned china plate. It is succotash (corn, beans and yellow squash). It is three-layer gold cake with chocolate frosting melting down the sides […]
