How to Think Thin Blog

If you’ve read any of my books or articles, you probably know that I like doing things the easy way - and for me that means working with human nature instead of against it. We get so busy in our lives that we often forget the simple things that can help us stay healthy.

Weight loss tip #1: Stop whatever you’re doing and go do some spring cleaning. I don’t mean you need to dust your ceramic dog collection - I mean you should go though your cupboards and ‘fridge and throw out all the food you know you shouldn’t be eating. If you hide a bag of cookies under the bed, just in case you get hungry, get rid of them.

If you can’t bear to do it yourself, ask your spouse or kids to help you.

If you aren’t sure what you should be getting rid of, here’s a hint - if it contains sugar of any kind, or if it’s made almost exclusively with white flour or white rice, you don’t need it. Packaged and processed foods should be carefully considered to see if they’re really healthy or not. (If you would hesitate before feeding it to your dog or your kids, you probably shouldn’t be eating it either…)

Don’t think of this as a sacrifice - you won’t really be “wasting” the money you spent if the items you throw out aren’t really good for you. If the food makes you fat instead of healthy, it shouldn’t be in your house. (I have to remind myself of this several times a month - I throw a bag of chips or a carton of ice cream into my grocery cart and then have to decide if I’m going to put it back on the shelf before buying it, or throw it away after I bring it home. Most of the time I do it right, but the unconscious mind is a powerful thing, and I have been known to chuck a full unopened bag of my favorite cookies in the trash when I unpack my groceries. It hurts, but it doesn’t feel as bad I would if I actually ate them…)

Weight loss tip #2: When you go grocery shopping, stay out of the center of the store. Supermarkets carefully place the “real” food, like veggies, meats and dairy, on opposite ends of the store, around the edges. The long walk encourages you to spend extra time going through the aisles containing the pretend food that is highly processed, and highly profitable. Chips, cookies, packaged meals, and sugared soft drinks are lurking in those middle aisles, waiting for your compulsive reach. The only exception to the “outside only” rule would be the frozen veggie section.

Better yet, make most of your food purchases from a local farmer’s market.

Weight loss tip #3: Commit yourself to reading a really good book about nutrition. Notice that I didn’t say anything at all about buying a “diet book.” Since every diet book starts off by saying that it should be a lifetime commitment, why not start out by educating yourself on what good nutrition really is? We get fat because we eat too much of the wrong things, and too little of the right things, so the first trick is to find out what the right things are. Once you know that, you won’t need another diet book.
For a really good education on good nutrition, I suggest Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, anything by Dr. Dean Ornish, and The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II. These books are not as easy or entertaining to read as the latest fad diet book, but if you do read them you’ll know more about making healthy food choices than 90% of the American population.

Weight loss tip #4: Stop “rewarding” yourself with food. One of the best ways to blow a diet is to promise yourself a high-fat or high-sugar treat if you stick with a healthy diet plan for a whole day, or even a whole week. This attitude of rewarding ourselves with unhealthy food makes it almost impossible for us to stop thinking the wrong way about food. If fattening food is good enough to be considered a reward, then fattening food must be “good” food, and broccoli and it’s healthy cousins in the veggie bin must be “bad” or “boring” food.

The promise of the reward also keeps that cookie or piece of apple pie right at the forefront of your mind, which is exactly where you don’t want it to be. If you must reward yourself for eating healthy food in moderation, make the reward something that has nothing to do with food - the latest book you’ve been dying to read, a hike that you’ve wanted to take but never make time for, a new craft project. Anything, in fact, except food.

Weight loss tip #5: Say a prayer before eating. Food is the stuff that makes life possible, so it makes sense to give thanks before eating, even if you aren’t a religeous person. A prayer or meditation before a meal will help remind your subconscious mind that food is important to your survival - food is sacred, (when it contains actual food, and isn’t just empty, deadly calories). If you aren’t a member of a church that has traditional pre-meal prayers, or even if you aren’t a member of any religeous organization at all, it just makes sense to give thanks for the food that keeps you alive.

Food is sacred, but some food is more sacred than others - organic, lovingly grown veggies brought to your local farmer’s market from a nearby farm contains more life-giving nutrition than the highly processed, expensively packaged snack that has all nutrition stripped out of it, and then a few government-required vitamins stirred back in.

I’ll be back with the next 5 tips soon. If you have any tips of your own, please post your comments below.

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