Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - Holiday Maintenance Skills ~ How Do You Intend to Stay on Track?

A bit early, I know, but I've just come across this article which also contains a short video featuring Dr Berkeley:

Quote:

Weight Management Tips from Dr. Barbara Berkeley

Barbara Berkeley, M.D. is the author of Refuse to Regain!: 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You’ve Earned! She is a board-certified internist who specializes in work with the obese and overweight. In the video above, she shares weight management tips for avoiding holiday season weight gain. The strategies will work for any challenging time — picnics and barbecues in the summer, etc. — whether your maintaining your weight or losing weight.

Dr. Berkeley says that while weight gain is not inevitable during the holiday season, studies have shown that weight gain is to be a pound or two for people of normal weight. For overweight and obese people, who are more than 60 percent of the population, the weight gain is an average of five pounds or more. The vast majority don’t lose those excess pounds.

The biggest mistake we make is what she calls the Scarlett O’Hara mistake — I’ll think about it tomorrow. We make exceptions to the normal way we eat and think about it tomorrow. But tomorrow brings weight gain. She says another mistake people make is tasting things, but these calories can be significant and add up; for instance taste of cranberry sauce can be 60 calories, pecan pie as much as 130 calories.

She lays out a very clear strategy to follow during holidays. It’s applicable year round, as we are often confronted with social settings that center around food that may challenge us in weight management.

Weigh yourself daily. You have to know what your weight is to know whether or not you are gaining, losing or maintaining.

Have a plan in going to social settings. This means knowing what foods you will avoid.

Don’t let alcohol make your food choices for you. With alcohol consumption comes lessening of inhibition and decisions that come from poor judgment putting you at risk to overeat.

Avoid foods with sugar and starches. Too many calories can be consumed too easily.

Pass on dessert or — if you are able to do so – allow yourself only three bites.

Set a simple goal. Maintain the same weight. If there is any change in your weight, work on reducing the gain on days that you are not out socializing or at parties.

Put yourself in a situation in which you don’t need willpower — in other words avoid being around food as it causes primal responses in the body that can make it difficult to resist, as documented extensively in Dr. David Kessler’s book The End of Overeating. If you are in a party where there is food, go to someplace where you are not near the food.

And of course, as we know we can separate ourselves from the food, but then we may have to deal with those who are insistent that we eat something. She suggests being upfront and saying you can’t eat for medical reasons if you’ve got health challenges such as hypertension. Or, if needed, tell a white lie if you are pressured to eat such as saying you have an upset stomach.

I was glad to find Dr. Berkeley’s book and learn about her approach. The rules are very clear and direct, but of course, we must commit to following them. I find that contemplating the alternative helps; even having to lose five to ten unwanted pounds would be bad enough, let alone allowing the scale to keep on creeping upwards. Maybe weighing yourself daily can lead to “scale trauma,” but on the other hand it can be a powerful deterrent to weight gain which, let’s face it would be a lot worse!

There is not a lot written about weight management, as we are bombarded with so many diets to lose weight that have clever names and gimmicks. Even if they work, we must move to the next phase, keeping it off.

http://www.skinnybliss.com/weight-m...a-berkeley.html