This is posted on the Diet and Exercise Board on BabyZone, so I thought it may be helpful for us:
Congratulations! You’ve decided its time to take control of your body instead of letting the food have control! But taking that first step is difficult if you don’t know where to begin. So here’re twelve tips to get you going.
Set reasonable goals. Aim for losing 1-2 pounds per week on average – about 1% of your body weight. Some weeks you may lose more, some weeks less – it should all average out in the end. Estimate 30 pounds – 30 weeks. Aiming for more may set you up for failure.
Make sure your motivation is the right one. If you want to be skinny and fit in a bikini or you consider diet and exercise a punishment for past weaknesses, think deeper! Your reasons should be better than that. You need to look at your life long term. Lose weight to feel better, have more energy, have beautiful skin and hair, live longer and healthier, and if you happen to look good in a bikini in the end think of that as a bonus.
Think of diet and exercise as a permanent lifestyle change, not a short-term fix. Retrain your thinking so that you make better choices in food and activity for a lifetime. If you think of it as short term, you’ll be sure to gain every pound back when you hit your goal and stop dieting and exercising. Sure, you can occasionally splurge on an ice cream sundae or a bacon cheeseburger – but make that a very rare treat and not an every day treat!
Analyze what you are eating and when. Keep a food diary for 3-4 days and note why you are eating. Are you depressed, mad, bored, or are you actually hungry? A food diary can really tell you what your key problems are.
Get a good scale that also measures body fat if you can spring for the extra cost. Also, get a tape measure. Measure your upper arm, chest, waist, hips, thighs and calves at the fattest part. While you can weigh and measure as often as you like, record it only once a week – try for the same day and time every week, like every Monday at 7am. (Weighing in the morning before breakfast is the best time – NOT after you’ve eaten dinner!)
Select a diet that you can reasonably do. For example, don’t pick some all-organic diet if organic foods are difficult to find and very expensive, or you’ve decided to do the cabbage soup diet and you hate veggies already. (Besides, the fact that cabbage does NOT burn extra fat and the soup tastes horrible – trust me, I tasted it when a friend did this one.) If microwave is your style, check out Weight Watchers or Lean Cuisine in the frozen food section!
Pick a healthy diet too! Diets based on pills, supplements and shakes are not good for long-term health and fitness. Make sure you are getting all the different food groups – grains, veggies, fruit, dairy, and protein. A good place to start educating yourself is at MyPyramid.Gov (
http://www.mypyramid.gov/). Enter your age, sex and activity level and it will tell you exactly what you need of each group. (Hint – you can also do this for your DH/OS and kids!)
Learn what a portion size is and measure everything – especially at the beginning – check
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/thrifty...ing_sizes.html for assistance. One of the problems with the old USDA pyramid was that it said 6-11 servings of grains without telling you that a serving was 1 oz, or that whole grains were better than refined, or that the 6 servings referred to people who got very little exercise and that the 11 referred people who were construction workers or professional athletes!
Pick an exercise that you will enjoy and be able to do. If you haven’t exercised in a long time, don’t expect to be able to do an hour-long Tae-Bo workout without difficulty or being in pain the next day. Start easy and work your way up. Walking is a great start – 30 minutes a day, even if you break it up into two 15-minute segments. After you’ve gotten comfortable with that, increase the time or change to some other cardio exercises – running, cycling, hiking, rowing, treadmills, elliptical trainers, Stairmaster, Tai Chi, kick boxing, dance, aerobics and of course, Tae-Bo. If you can, gradually increase your workout to an hour that’s great – if not – 30 minutes is just fine. Just keep going and do it every day! Cardio is what burns off the excess fat.
Do both cardio and strength training. Once you’ve gotten into the exercise habit, alternate days of cardio and strength. You can do cardio daily, but with strength training, you need to allow your muscles 48 hours to recover. Strength training includes weight lifting (free weights or machines), Pilates, resistance bands, exercise balls, aquatic workouts, or swimming (which happens to be both a cardio and a strength workout). You need to build muscle and strengthen your bones in conjunction to burning fat to get a lean toned body. (Yoga and stretching will help tone muscles and can be done every day.)
Make water your beverage of choice. The minimum amount of water you need is 64 oz. Sometimes we’re actually thirsty, not hungry, but our brains misinterpret the signs. If you think you are hungry, drink 8 oz of water and wait 20-30 minutes. If you are still hungry after that, then eat a healthy snack. Dump the sugary drinks. While juice is counted as a fruit serving, remember it’s got a higher sugar content than eating the fruit itself, so it will have more calories. If you drink milk, make it fat free. It may taste strange to begin with, but you can get used to it quickly and it’s better for you.
Don’t punish yourself for messing up! Everyone makes mistakes and caves in. If you eat poorly at lunch on Wednesday, don’t say, “Oh well, I’ll just pig out the rest of the week and start again on Monday.” Start at dinner on Wednesday and get back to your eating plan. And don’t reward yourself for doing well with food. Pick something that makes you feel better without calories – like a new CD or DVD, a massage, a facial, a manicure, or a new outfit for your thinner body!
Remember - the longer you wait to start, the longer it will be until you get to your goal! Good luck and keep us posted how you do!
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