For me, this time of day is the evening.  I rarely, if ever have a problem sticking to healthy eating in the mornings and throughout the day.  If there were no such thing as evenings, I would have reached my goal weight long ago! I often get cravings 1-2 hours after dinner.  Sometimes they get so intense that I lose all interest in my weight loss goals. I literally only care about satisfying my craving – that’s how powerful food cravings can be.  Of course, if I do indulge, the next morning I feel like crap. Not just physically from the junk food, but mentally as well. I get angry with myself for not being strong enough.

There are a number of things you can do to reduce cravings, or to increase your willpower to overcome them. For me, a short 20-minute run or other workout usually does the trick. It gets me in a better state of mind and helps me to feel better about myself which boosts my motivation to stay on the right track.  Of course, you have to have the willpower to actually do a quick workout, which I find that I often don’t.  It can be a vicious cycle sometimes.  If you find yourself getting very intense cravings and you feel like you really want to give in, just try doing some exercise for a bit and see how you feel after.  You might be surprised how much it helps.

Here is an article with some unique tips to help you beat cravings: 8 Out of the Ordinary Approaches to Defeating Your Food Cravings

And another good page that has some good info on what you can eat when craving certain types of foods: How to Stop Cravings for Carbs, Fats and Sugars

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 2 cups low sodium vegetable broth
• 3/4 cup tomato sauce
• 3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
• 2 Tbsp no sugar added maple syrup (I use E.D. Smith)
• 1.5 cups dry red lentils

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook until soft (not brown).  Add the garlic, chili powder, and mustard powder and cook for another minute.

Add the vegetable broth, tomato sauce, balsamic vinegar, mustard, maple syrup, and lentils.  Stir until fully mixed and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low, cover, and let simmer about 30 minutes (or longer if necessary).  The lentils should be soft, but still intact.  If you need to simmer longer, you may need to add 1/4 cup of water.

This barbecue lentils recipe is a great way to get a lot of fiber in your diet, and they are pretty tasty too!

I know that for me, cheat days have become dangerous.  Sometimes they turn into a cheat weekend.  Once I start eating things I shouldn’t, it is hard to stop.  Often, this is because we go out and buy a few treats for cheat day, but always end up getting too much because everything looks so good.  Since I hate having junk around the house during the week tempting me, I just end up eating way too much on cheat day, trying to get rid of everything.  Crazy!

After a cheat day, my weight balloons way up 5 or 6 pounds.  This is mostly food weight and water weight (from all the sodium).  It takes a good part of the week just to get back down to the weight I was before the cheat day.  It really seems to be affecting my overall progress.

If I could handle having just a single cheat meal, without going overboard, I’m sure the results would be a lot better.  I think I need some time going cold turkey to get rid of all the cravings.

There are many web sites out there with conflicting opinions on whether or not you should have a cheat day or cheat meal.  Some say that a cheat day is key to rapid fat loss because eating high calories causes release of the hormone leptin, which essentially burns fat.  Others say a cheat day can only harm you.  My personal opinion is that for those who have control, having a small cheat once per week is probably just fine and maybe even beneficial.  It’s when it starts to get out of control that it can become harmful.

Here is an article against cheat days: What’s Wrong With a Cheat Day?

And here is one touting the benefits of cheat days: Leptin and Weight Loss

I’d like to hear from you.  What are your thoughts on cheat days?  Do you use them?  Have they helped you?

I’m going to share with you the most crucial weight loss strategy that will literally make or break your success. This is the number one fat loss tip I could ever give you. If you don’t get this right, you can kiss your fat loss results goodbye. This is the one absolute requirement for weight loss, and it’s something you’ve probably heard of before. However, there’s one critical distinction about this familiar advice that you might not have considered – and this one thing makes all the difference in the world…

Let me quote Melvin Williams, PhD, professor emeritus of exercise science at Old Dominion University and author of the textbook Nutrition for Health, Fitness and Sport (McGraw Hill):

“Human energy systems are governed by the same laws of physics that rule all energy transformations. No substantial evidence is available to disprove the caloric theory. It is still the physical basis for bodyweight control.”

There are a variety of diet programs and weight loss “gurus” who claim that calories don’t count. They insist that if you eat certain foods or avoid certain foods, that’s all you have to do to lose weight. Dozens, maybe hundreds of such diets exist, with certain “magic foods” put up on a pedestal or certain “evil fat-storing foods” banished into the forbidden foods zone.

Other weight loss “experts” invoke the insulin/carbohydrate hypothesis which claims that carbs drive insulin which drives body fat. That’s akin to saying “Carbs are the reason for the obesity crisis today, not excess calories.”

They are all mistaken.

Of course, there IS more to nutrition than calories in vs calories out. Food quality and nutrition content matters for good health. In addition, your food choices can affect your energy intake. We could even point the finger at an excess of refined starches and grains, sugar and soft drinks (carbs!) as major contributing factors to the surplus calories that lead to obesity.

However, that brings us back to excess calories as the pivotal point in the chain of causation, not carbs. A caloric deficit is a required condition for weight loss – even if you opt for the low carb approach – and that’s where your focus should go – on the deficit.

Now, here’s that critical distinction…

You’ve heard it said, “exercise more and eat less” a million times. However, saying “focus on the calorie deficit” is NOT the same thing. If you don’t understand the difference, you could end up spinning your wheels for years.

You could exercise more, but if you compensate by eating more, you cancel your deficit.

You could eat less, but if you compensate by moving less, again you cancel your deficit.

This type of compensation can happen unconsciously, which leads to confusion about why you’re not losing weight or why you’re gaining. That often leads you to make excuses or blame the wrong thing… anything but the calories.

Therefore, “focus on the calorie deficit” more accurately states the most important key to weight loss than “exercise more and eat less.” Make sure you understand this distinction and then follow this advice.

Last but not least, keep in mind that there are a lot of ways to establish a deficit and many of those ways are really dumb. Eating nothing but grapefruits, cabbage, twinkies… but in a deficit?… Dumb!

The bottom line is that a calorie deficit is required for fat loss, but once your deficit is established, the composition of your hypo-caloric diet DOES matter. That’s why any good fat loss program starts with “calories in vs calories out” but doesn’t stop there – you also need to look at protein, essential fats, macronutrients, micronutrients, food quality and how the diet you choose fits into your lifestyle. This is the pivotal strategy that my entire Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle system hinges upon.

Don’t let the simplicity of this idea fool you. This is the #1 key to your successful weight loss now and in the future: Focus on the deficit!

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

About the Author:

Image by digiyesica via Flickr

About a year ago, I wanted to see if I could quickly drop 20 pounds. I had been slacking for a few months and wanted to kick start my weight loss again. I decided to try the Velocity Diet.

In a nutshell, the Velocity diet consists of drinking protein shakes and taking various other supplements. You don’t really eat any solid food except once per week, you can have oatmeal. Every night you can have a small amount of natural peanut butter. Some of the supplements I took included CLA, Omega 3-6-9, and other healthy fats. I also added ground flaxseed to some of my shakes. It was a while ago so I don’t remember the exact details of it, but if you’re interested you can just Google Velocity Diet and you’ll find information about it.

There were 2 different caloric intakes on this program: a higher one for weight training days, and a lower one for non weight training days. All of the calculations to determine how many calories you should be taking in were provided on the website where I found the diet. The creator of the diet did not recommend doing cardio as it can cause muscle loss when you are restricting calories. He recommended doing 1 hour walks on non weight training days.

Again, a disclaimer. I’m going strictly by memory here. To get the exact details of the diet, you’d want to search for it. I do know that I followed his plan exactly, with the exception of the brand of protein he recommended. I used the brands of casein and whey which I already use and like.

Before I continue, I just want to say that this is definitely not something you would want to do long term. In fact, I personally will never do anything like this again. If I remember correctly, you are supposed to do it for 28 days. I only lasted 21 days. I am also not posting to discourage anyone from trying it, I’m merely describing my experience.

I guess if there is any benefit to doing something like this, it is that it’s extremely simple to plan your daily calories. It takes all of the guesswork out of that.

Now, for my experience.

The first few days were fine, I didn’t really notice too much in the way of hunger, even though my caloric intake was a lot lower than what I was used to. After a few days, though, I was really looking forward to that tablespoon of natural peanut butter every night. I was getting really sick of nothing but shakes. I started having trouble sleeping. Toward the end it was getting really bad. I couldn’t fall asleep easily, and when I did, my sleeps were restless and I was constantly waking up. I have no idea what was causing that.

I lost a bunch of weight the first week – 11 pounds! I now know that it was probably mostly water weight (because of a lack of carbs). The second and third weeks were not nearly so spectacular. Maybe a couple of pounds each.

Even though I tried to slowly re-introduce carbs to my diet, I gained a lot of that weight back right away, as soon as I started eating solid food again (probably the water weight I lost in the beginning). I continued exercising and eating a healthy diet, but I just couldn’t lose any more weight. It took over a month of this before I started seeing results again.

Now, I don’t claim to have all the answers, but here’s what I believe happened. I think that restricting calories so much caused my metabolism to slow way, way down. It took a month of eating normal amounts of food and exercising to get it back up to normal.

This was a lesson to me that there are no quick fixes when it comes to weight loss. The only healthy way to lose weight long term is through healthy eating and regular exercise. When you restrict calories too much, your body will fight back and not only will you be constantly hungry and more likely to binge, but you will stop seeing results. You do need a caloric deficit to lose weight, but not such a large deficit that it causes your metabolism to slow down. I also recommend having a higher calorie day every few days to help keep your metabolism humming.

When you are trying to lose weight, it is very important to have a caloric deficit each day, but not such a huge deficit that your metabolism slows down. Many people will say they know how much they are eating and don’t have to track calories. For some people that may be true but for the majority of people, it isn’t.

How do you really know how many calories you are putting into your body unless you are keeping track? It is important to have a good idea so that you know whether you need to decrease, or even increase your caloric intake. It also helps you to keep track of your macros and make sure you are getting the right ratio of protein, carbs, and healthy fats.

When I first started counting my calories I was shocked at how many I was actually taking in. I was able to adjust and the weight started coming off again. Some people might find it necessary to start eating more in order to lose weight. If you starve yourself your body fights back and slows your metabolism way down, making it really difficult to lose weight.

It’s not important to be 100% accurate. What is important is to have a good idea, and to be consistent with how you track. Then, you can make adjustments if necessary.

I’ll be the first to admit that tracking calories can be a pain in the butt. I usually do it for a few weeks to make sure I’m on the right track, then stop for a while. You’ll find that after you’ve tracked for a period of time, you’ll have a good idea of how much you’re taking in. Every so often you should track again for a week to make sure you are still in the right range.

Stay tuned for another post on how I track calories and how to make it as easy and painless as possible.