I recently received a comment from a reader that was interesting.  The writer mentioned that I looked happier in the previous “before” weight loss picture.  I assure you that I was NOT happy, far from it.  As a matter of fact, as a visual person, I was depressed over my weight and appearance. I also felt tired and lacked energy.  My mojo was gone.

In closing, I must say that posting these pictures has been beneficial for personal reasons.   It’s a reminder how far I’ve come and what I never want to go back to.  

Wishing you health & happiness!

Even though I’ve reached my desired weight last year, I still weigh myself first thing in the morning (after emptying my bladder and in the buff). When my two lovely toddlers broke my beloved scale, the Rowenta BS-360 Origin Scale, I was anxious to replace it with a new identical unit. Having recently lost mega weight, I wanted a replacement scale as soon as possible because I was eating differently than before. Now I wasn’t trying to lose weight, but rather maintain it. Testing new eating strategies made me nervous because my worst fear was gaining weight. The Rowenta scale, which I owned for more than four years, was not only easy to read, but accurate. I checked feverishly on-line to find the identical scale. To my surprise, Amazon.com offered it. I couldn’t have been happier because I think Amazon.com has great prices as well as great customer service. Unfortunately, after ordering the scale, I received notice that it was no longer available–probably discontinued. After reading numerous consumer reviews on other Rowenta digital scales models (I wasn’t impressed), I settled on the Seca Clara 803 Digital Scale. At the time Amazon didn’t offer this scale (now they do) so I ordered it from Med1online.com, which ended up being disastrous (more about that later. In the meantime, avoid Med1online.com unless you like to be abused). Fortunately after my Med1 fiasco, I was able to order the scale from Amazon. As soon as I received the Seca scale, I weighed myself. Almost six weeks had elapsed since my last weigh-in and I was nervous. Did I gain anything back? To my delight, I had not gained, not even a pound. As I mentioned before, I feel more secure weighing myself daily in the event I need to immediately address any weight gain. I believe my new attitude towards food and eating is great, but it’ll take awhile to undo the years of bad eating habits.

So far I’m very pleased with the Seca Clara 803 Digital Scale. I would highly recommend it for those of you who like digital scales. It’s offered with either a black or white non-slip coating. It weighs in 0.2 pound increments, which is a great motivational tool in my opinon. My weight loss program instructed me not to weigh myself (after the initial weigh-in) for one month. I couldn’t resist though. I was encouraged and excited even when my weight loss was minimal. It certainly kept me motivated to continue on my program, building success after success. Like the Rowenta, the digital read-out on the Seca is easy to read. This digital scale is accurate, sturdy, sleek looking and made by a reputable company whose scales can be found in professional medical offices. In my opinion, it’s well worth the $70.

I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but I’ve noticed a pattern that whenever I don’t get enough sleep, I over eat the next day. I’d say I have pretty good self-discipline when it comes to food , but when I’m tired, I can’t control it as well. As a person who was trying to lose weight, this troubled me. After analyzing the problem, I came to the conclusion that lack of sleep was making me over eat because I thought my body needed more calories to convert to energy. Well I was a little off, but I was right that lack of sleep was detrimental to weight loss. Today I stumbed upon an article in Psychology Today (April 2008 Issue) that talks about the relationship between sleeping and eating. According to Christopher Gardner, a nutritionist at Stanford University, “There’s a critical mass of evidence that we need to help people sleep better to help them lose weight.” Another study by the University of Pennsylvania concluded that people ate more junk food after a four-hour night’s sleep.

The article goes on to say that we do indeed eat more after a few nights of poor sleep because the chemistry in our bodies change–specifically the levels of two appetitie-regulating hormones, Ghrelin, which signals hunger, and Leptin, which supresses hunger . Due to lack of sleep, the levels of Ghrelin increase more than usual, while the levels of Leptin decrease more than usual. Hence, the brain relays a faulty message to the body to keep eating. And if you’re too tired, you’ll probably move your body less, burning less calories.

The article also advises to avoid eating foods with high protein or high fat within three hours of hitting the hay because they take longer to digest. It suggests that if you get hungry just before bedtime to eat complex carbs.

Additionally, it states that eating beyond a certain time will NOT make you fat. It says it’s more about portion control and the amount of fat consumed in the evening. Europeans do eat late and are thinner than Americans, so maybe the Mediterranean diet is best. However, when I stopped eating late, I began losing weight quicker. I eat dinner between 5:30 and 6pm. My portions are not huge either.

In conclusion, sleep deprivation causes havoc to your health and mood. It elevates your blood sugar levels, contributes to weight gain, leads to depression, affects immune system, memory, heart, and the list goes on and on. Find a bed-time routine that works for you. Maybe you need to switch your pillow or purchase a black-out shade. If you’re asking yourself how to lose weight, make sure you’re getting enough sleep.

Words like, “I’ll try to lose weight” or “maybe I will diet….” are non-committal terms, which are excuse words. Every time I hear them, a red flag goes up.

We are all dedicated to something. The $64 million dollar question is, “What are you committed to?” If you can’t pin-point it, just look at your life to see what results you have produced. Your results are the products of your commitments. After a little self-discovery, perhaps a shift of focus is in order.

Although commitment is crucial in weight loss; it isn’t enough. You’ll need to follow it up with some type of action. Only then, results occur. Commitment + Action = Results. Let’s say that you’ve tried everything you know and you still can’t lose weight; then commit yourself to finding outside help until something works. Is lack of will power the problem? Ask yourself if you honestly and truly want to lose weight. Maybe you’re not ready to commit to weight loss. Or perhaps it’s a lack of control due to emotional eating (see my previous posts about emotional eating).

As for me, I hit rock bottom at 200 pounds, the heaviest I had ever been. I was depressed. I hated my reflection in the mirror, and I hated how easily I tired. I used to dream of snapping my fingers like magic to lose weight quickly. Of course, the reality was that I had reached a critical point in my life. Was I going to follow in my mother’s footsteps? Was I going to subject myself and my family to this sub-standard quality of life? NO WAY. I vowed that after I weaned my 2nd daughter from breast milk, I would do whatever it took to lose the weight and keep it off, once and for all!

I am an average person. If I can lose weight, so can you. In fact, I know you can! The human spirit is amazing. I truly believe we possess the power to change our life circumstances if we really want to!

According to Dr. Dena Bravata, a research scientist at Stanford University, individuals increase their total daily steps by 2,000 while using a pedometer. And of course, more exercise burns more calories. This can help you lose weight quick.

An analysis of 26 studies was conducted by the American Medical Association. Their conclusion was that a pedometer is a motivator in increasing physical activity, especially in sedentary individuals.

I have used several different pedometers. I would recommend the Walking Advantage Step, Distance and Calorie Pedometer. It accurately measures walking, hiking and jogging distances. It also keeps track of calories burned, which I found to be motivating. It can be purchased online for $17.95 (now discounted at Amazon). Of course, there are cheaper ones out there. You could also pick up a simple pedometer for about $10 at a local drug store.

Using a pedometer is fun. It’s like a game where you’re competing against yourself, which is my favorite competition. I would suggest for the first month, especially if you haven’t been active, to start slowly. To get your extra steps in, try parking your car at the far end of a parking lot or take the steps instead of the elevator. Any increase in physical activity will help burn more calories. Just remember, every bit helps, 10 minutes here, another 15 there adds up. Use your pedometer to track your progress. After one month, increase your physical activity. Pretty soon, you’ll be feeling better and it’ll give you the desire to lose weight week after week until you reach your weight loss goals. Visit Amazon.com for everything from cheap pedometers to the fancier Omron pedometer

I’ve been asked to post my before and after photos. So here they are in all of their glory. If you haven’t guessed, the picture on the left is before I lost the weight. It was taken late May 2006, several months after the birth of my second daughter. I weighed approximately 200 pounds. It was a challenge to find a “before” picture because I hardly took any. I’m a visual person and I hated the way I looked and felt so I purposely avoided being in pictures. The image on the right was taken during the 2007 holiday season. I now weigh 123 pounds. Yup, that’s a 77 pound weight loss! For me, it was difficult to lose weight while I breastfed my babies. I know, most women lose weight while breastfeeding. NOT ME. It wasn’t until after I weened my 2nd child, that I started my weight loss.

I can’t tell you how much better I feel.  My weight loss was the best gift I could have given myself and my family!

To tell of my mother’s sad and difficult life, I have to go back in time when she was a child. She was born in 1932 in Thessaloniki Greece to a poor, single mother. She didn’t know her father, except seeing him once when she was 3 years old. Shortly thereafter, she, her mother, and her grandparents moved to Athens.

At 10 years old, during WW2, she remembers the Nazi tanks entering Athens. She recalls the dead bodies in the streets; some executed, some dead from starvation. Her own family was poor but luckily had jewelry to sell for bread. Like other children, she could not continue her education beyond grade school because they couldn’t afford it. Because they had no money for rent, she lived in a dirt-floored basement for many years, until she got married.

By 12 years old, she had to earn money for her family. She did so by working alongside her mother, sewing button holes.

At 15 years old, my mother met her prince charming, my father. Despite the disapproval of my father’s family, they eventually married in 1950 when she was 18 years old. She should have listened to her instincts and the warning of her uncle, but love blinded her. Indeed my father was handsome, charming, funny, and very intelligent but proved to be a womanizer and an abuser, both physically and emotionally. After 34 years of loyal service (and I do mean service because my mother waited on my father hand and foot), he eventually “dumped” her in 1984 for his first love. It was hard times for all us, especially for my mom who was 52 years old, in a foreign land, not educated, and non-proficient in English. I’ll tell you, she’s one tough woman. Although we suffered financially (my dad was the bread-winner), she was too proud to ask or receive a cent from my father.

When I think back to my childhood, my mother was never at a healthy weight or even remotely close to it. However, she did start off thin when she dated my father. Over the following years, she kept gaining more and more weight, drowning her sorrows with food. First she was 1X, then 2X, then 3X, and now she’s a 4X. She knows what to do to lose weight. She also knows losing weight quickly is not healthy. The problem is that she can’t control herself with food. She is a self-confessed emotional eater. She admits that she eats when she’s depressed, stressed out, bored or upset. That’s basically all the time. In my opinion, she has lost the physical sense of real hunger. Now, you might be thinking that it’s normal to gain weight over the years. Yes, you’re right, but in my mom’s case, her weight has TRIPLED with no end in sight!! She refuses to seek counseling because she says the memories are too painful. She also refuses to go to Overeaters Anonymous because she’s embarrassed. She prefers to live in denial, keeping her painful past locked deep inside. It’s not working nor has it ever. I feel that I’ve been slowly losing my mother for decades.

Just this past holiday season, my daughter and I made gingerbread cookies. They were in the kitchen when I saw my mother pop an entire cookie in her mouth hoping no one saw her. Another time, before I could clean off the table, my mother stole a bite of my daughter’s left-over lunch after she had finished the very same meal. I saw the bite of pasta fall out of my mother’s mouth. I asked her if she was still hungry to which she replied, “No.” These are just two examples of an endless list.

Without knowing it, my mother taught me that eating was consolation for my emotional turmoil. My weight was usually around 125 pounds; until I became depressed then it fluctuated upwards. For many years, I had an eating disorder, an unhealthy relationship with food. I didn’t realize that I too had a pattern until recently (In my previous posts, I talked about how to overcome emotional eating.) I love my mother, but I don’t want to be her. I have too much at stake to lose if I continued this pattern; my health, my marriage, and my two little girls. What would I be teaching them if I didn’t resolve it? I certainly wanted to stop this destructive cycle with me. I believe I finally have for the most part. It takes awhile to undo a learned behavior.

My mother never had a great life. There are others who have experienced far worse. However, my mother’s inability or desire to deal with her emotions has made her into a food addict, an uncontrolled emotional eater. Unfortunately, the cost has been great to her and to all of us. It has robbed her of good health; she’s diabetic, too heavy for her synthetic knees, and has heart trouble. It’s also deprived me of many mother-daughter experiences, like taking a stroll, going shopping or anything that requires walking. My children have been robbed of their grandmother. My daughter says to her, “You just sit, sit and sit.” It makes me sad to realize that my mother has deprived herself of many wonderful experiences; the kind of experiences that make you smile in the golden years. It didn’t have to be like this. She deserved a better quality of life than she allowed herself to have.

As previously stated in my last two posts, emotional eating is an eating disorder that if left unchecked has serious health consequences. To lose weight successfully, one must address the food issue as well the emotional factor of eating.

Discover Emotional Eating

In addressing the emotional issue, some self-discovery is in order. If you don’t know what’s bothering you, it’s important to keep a journal on the computer or a diary, especially in the beginning. Write in your journal when temptation strikes. Ask yourself what just happened that triggered this particular incident of emotional eating? Write down how you are feeling. Are you bored, angry or sad? Obviously, pay no attention to grammar or structure. Sometimes people eat because they don’t want to be alone with their thoughts when this is exactly what they need. Over time a pattern should emerge, helping you identify the problem area in your life that needs improvement. By then you should know the real differences between real hunger and the pseudo pull of emotional eating. Before reaching for that morsel of food, you’ll know if the hunger is real or emotional. Don’t worry if at first this doesn’t stop you from eating, but it’s a step in the right direction, which will most likely lead to an improvement in exercising self control. “Know Thyself,” said Socrates. You DO need to know yourself before you can change.

Eating Disorder Help

Depending on your situation and your support structure, if you suffer from depression consider seeking professional help. I would also recommend a visit to your medical physician first to rule out an underlying medical condition. Once you have a clean bill of health, counseling and/or some form of anti-depressants should help. This is your life and as far as I know, it’s the only one we have. Don’t let your it slip through your fingers.

Find another form of therapy or a healthy outlet to your eating such as phoning a friend, gardening, taking a short walk, reading a book, or surfing the web to name a few. Find something that you like to do, then do it. Needless to say, any form of exercise is best. Studies show that even moderate exercise releases endorphins and has many positive physiological effects.

Beat Emotional Eating

In conclusion, the goal is to fix the personal issue that is stopping you from having the life you deserve. We cannot divorce our minds from our bodies. If we are unhappy, our bodies suffer too. A wise teacher once told me, “If you’re unhappy, your body will find a way out.” He’s is so right. You owe it to yourself to examine your life and see what is making you unhappy. Ask yourself what needs to change. It’ll take courage to hear and accept the answer that comes forth. Remember everything in life requires effort. Again, change is GRADUAL. Don’t expect to change your situation overnight and lose weight fast. However, taking these steps to improve your quality of life will certainly give you a boost of self-esteem and give you the courage to carry on until your attain your weight loss goals. Best wishes for success!

Step One: Addressing the Food Issue
In the previous post, we covered the difficulties of losing weight due to emotional eating.

First of all, to lose weight, throw away your junk food and avoid buying them in the future. This is crucial in the beginning of a weight loss plan. If you find this too much of a cold-turkey method, try reducing the intake of junk food (including sodas) by 50% immediately with the intent of eliminating them in the future. Remember out of sight, out of mind.

Secondly, plan what you’re going to eat for the day or if possible, for the week. Remember to eat at least three meals and one or two healthy snacks (We’ll talk about what constitutes a healthy snack in another post). By planning out your meals in advance, you’ll be less likely to eat whatever is in sight, also known as the “see-food diet.” Also, cut out late night suppers and stop eating at least 3-4 hours before bed-time, so your body has time to burn off some of the calories. I eat dinner sometime between 5:30-6:30pm, and I noticed I lose weight quicker. If I start to feel a little hungry later in the evening, I make myself a cup of herbal tea. If you like Chamomile, try Celestial Seasonings “Honey Vanilla Chamomile.” It’s yummy! Also, it’s helpful to cut back on caffeinated drinks (such as coffee and diet sodas) to one or two a day. If you like cream and sugar in your coffee, reduce the amount you put in. Switch to skim milk as well. As you are aware of, diet sodas contain aspartame, which is toxic. Please, please don’t drink too many of these. In time, you’ll feel better once your body has flushed out the caffeine.

You’ve heard the expression, “chew your food 10 times before swallowing.” Well, it’s true. Simply put, the slower you eat, the less you’ll eat and the more weight loss takes place. It takes 15 minutes for your brain to register the chemical signal that lets it know you’re full. If your scarf your food down, you’ll end up eating too much. I have a friend who takes one hour to eat dinner. At first, I thought she didn’t like the food I had prepared, but later after many dinners I realized that that’s how she eats. I’ll tell you, she doesn’t have an issue with her weight. In fact, I’d say she’s at an ideal weight. As for me, a mother of two small toddlers, I don’t have the time to eat meals at a leisurely pace, but I have slowed down. However, I certainly do not eat in front of the computer or television.

It’s also important when you eat. To lose weight, you should eat when you start to feel hunger pangs. If you wait until you’re starving, you’ll either over eat or eat whatever is in sight, which probably won’t be healthy eating.

As a general rule, to shed pounds, put the fork down before you feel satisfied. To maintain your current weight, put the fork down when you’re satisfied, NOT full. I know this is hard but it’ll get easier with time. Again, becoming familiarized on when to eat, when to stop, and what to eat takes time, especially if you have been trapped by emotional eating. Don’t worry, if you fall off the band wagon, try again the next time. Don’t throw the towel in so easily. REAL change is GRADUAL. What’s important is that you take some daily initiative towards your weight loss goal.

In my next post, we will continue on how to lose weight by eliminating emotional eating by addressing the hardest obstacle, the emotional issue.

Are you having a hard time losing weight because you eat mindlessly? Do you have a pattern of eating when you’re bored, lonely, sad or angry? If yes, chances are you’re an emotional eater.

Emotional eating is a self-destructive pattern of eating without feeling hunger. Additionally, if left unchecked, it’s a vicious cycle that may eventually rob you of your self-esteem, health and happiness. In this scenario, food becomes a temporary pick-me-up that does far more harm than good.

I once had a co-worker who weighed more than 400 pounds. She tried every diet you could think of to lose weight. Every time you saw her, she was eating. Her desk drawers were always filled with the three C’s: Chocolates, chips, and crackers. After her numerous diet failures, she decided to get a weight loss surgery. Although it would be very painful and it required a long recovery, she was convinced it was her only solution. When she told me of her decision, I pleaded with her to see a psychologist before having it done. You see, I knew her painful background of being sexually abused. She ignored my advice. In the course of one year and a half, she indeed lose weight, about 150 pounds. She looked great, felt better, and was much happier. However, her success would be short-lived.

By treating (surgery) her symptoms , and not the cause (emotional distress), her eating disorder remained an issue. After having her stomach stapled, she couldn’t eat as much. But that didn’t stop her. She continued to eat and eat. At times, she’d eat so much that she’d feel nauseated. Over time, her over-eating caused her stomach to stretch. As a result, she gained some of the weight back. I’m not insinuating that every plus-size person is an emotional eater or that their situation is this severe. However, what I’m trying to stress here is that my former co-worker was an out of control emotional eater.

Unfortunately, no one is immune to challenges, struggles, stress, boredom, sadness, anger, loneliness, and the like. While we cannot control some aspects of our lives, we can and we should focus on what we can improve. Whether you want to lose or maintain a healthy weight, you must first learn how to eliminate emotional eating.

In my next post, I will explain the first step on how to lose weight by eliminating emotional eating.