How I Traded My Diet for a Lifestyle and Lost 24 Pounds

HOW I TRADED MY DIET FOR A LIFESTYLE AND LOST 24 POUNDS IN 12 WEEKS!

Dieting is a pain. I think basically everyone would agree that having to adhere to a rigid restriction of your free-flow eating preferences puts a bit of a damper on the whole food experience, especially if you’ve been raised Italian like me growing up. For Italians, eating is one of the simple pleasures of life, but at the age of 50, and having made two trips to Italy, I learned that what Americans consider Italian food, really isn’t anything close to what Italian’s consider Italian food. I also observed first hand how few obese Italians there are in Italy.

If you think about it, most of what is not good for us is basically made appetizing with loads of sauces, dips, dressings, salsa or salt and flavor enhancers. So it’s really just the sauce that tastes great. Don’t believe me? Try eating plain pasta – yuk- or a burger with no mayo, no ketchup and no salt. Well maybe you still like the burger but my point is; we can make anything taste great with a little dressing, so how about doing that instead, with the “good for you” foods.

In my dieting attempts over the years, I tried to get around that big negative by not eating enough or, not eating at all on some days, but then making up for it big time all at one meal. What we need to do here is make what is good for us TASTE GOOD TO US and eat regularly.

Now, one of the interesting things is that quite a lot of the “good foods” taste great with very little dressing, so we get an easy “win” there, no hardship involved. For the rest, we just have to get a little creative.

So which are the “good foods”? Well, I think you can be pretty confident over in the fruit and vegetable isles. There’s not much there that can do damage to our weight management program and, what tastes better than a really ripe tomato, or papaya or mango?

Fish, shellfish, pasta, yes, pasta of course is in my diet plan, but with loads of real tomato sauce which means no cans, no jars, no production, no additives, preservatives and chemicals with names we can’t even pronounce. Instead we just go with some garlic cloves, some olive oil and some tomatoes, fresh basil, oregano and parsley. You can even use some salt or, jazz it up with some red wine!

Now, at the start I titled this article, “How I Traded My Diet for a Lifestyle,” and you’re probably thinking, where’s the lifestyle part? Well, here it is. You can eat loads of goodies as long as you make a corresponding investment in some form of exercise. It’s like a balancing act, as much as you load up one side, you have to balance it out with the other, and in this case the “other” is the regular exercise. Regular is the operative word, it must be regular even though it doesn’t have to be those exhausting “burn off the pounds” sessions you hear about so often. Just regular, consistent exercise with something you hopefully like doing, walking, cycling, swimming, golfing and if you really enjoy aerobics, that’s fine too.

For me, I have my beautiful wife, Andrea, to thank quite a lot. She made the decision to buy a good quality treadmill for less than $600 and began using it regularly while I pretty much watched (lying on the couch) as she began to get into really great shape. On February 9, 2008 I decided to give it a try. I began to walk ½ an hour in the morning and ½ an hour in the evening – starting off with a fairly easy program. At the same time I began to make little changes in my diet beginning with a light fat-free breakfast usually a banana and some fresh fruit and/or yogurt. I’d purposely eat a light lunch, perhaps a roast beef sandwich, fish or visit my favorite Thai restaurant. The big change was not snacking on anything when I got home from work and before dinner. At dinner, we’d basically eat the normal meals, like chicken, fish, beef, pasta, a veggie and some fruit for desert. The first big change for me was eating just one portion of everything instead of doubling up. The other really big change for me was not snacking after dinner, especially cutting out the ice cream, but if I do snack I munch on pumpkin seeds (roasted), or nuts, maybe another banana or an apple, or a pear, but I stay away from the fatty snacks like potato chips at all cost. As the weeks went on I stepped up my walking program and included doing 20-25 push ups before and after each ½ hour walking session which has really helped tone me up quite a bit, too. My goal was not to lose a particular amount of weight, but to try and burn at least 500 calories a day coupled with a more balanced diet of all the "good foods" I really like a lot.

So it’s really all about balance, (something my Italian father always used to tell me) and the freedom to eat as you wish, as long as you stay with the “good foods”, balanced out with that regular exercise. I think the trade-off is very liberating and it’s certainly been worth it having lost 24 pounds and 2 full inches off my waist line to boot!

About the Author:

Mark Capuano is a 30-year veteran in the health insurance industry with an emphasis on developing group health insurance plans for employers that are designed to transform employees in to better health care consumers through the use of defined contribution funding strategies and wellness education. For more information on how to fix and control your health care cost, call 330-575-2029 or visit: http://www.strictlyhr.com.