Overcome Obesity With New Food Habits

Want to lose weight and keep it off? Don’t diet! Follow these healthy tips instead.

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Obesity

Do it daily. NWCR participants who stuck with their food plan seven days a week were one and a half times more likely to maintain their weight loss the following year than those who took weekends off.

Be the boss of your plate. “Take an active role in how your food is prepared,” says Elizabeth Ricanati, MD, medical director for the Cleveland Clinic’s Lifestyle 180 program. “Look at the menu online before you go to a restaurant so you can plan what you’ll eat and how to adjust it so it’s healthier.” For example, you can halve the calories of your burger plate by asking the waiter to leave off the bun and swap the fries for a side salad.

Weigh in weekly. This way you can make adjustments if the scale starts to creep back up. Seventy-five percent of NWCR participants weigh themselves at least once a week. But don’t step on the scale too often. Your weight can fluctuate day to day, depending on how much water you drink and other factors, and you don’t want those upticks to discourage you.

Make more meals. Meals prepared outside the home have more calories than home-cooked food does — and we’re eating them more than ever before. What’s worse, the high-dose combination of sugar, salt and fat in many prepared foods creates a chemical addiction that drives us to eat more of the stuff, even when we’re not hungry, argues David Kessler, MD, the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and author of “The End of Overeating.” Cooking at home is the only way to control the ingredients in your meals.

Banish temptation. When faced with a favorite food, even the most resolute person can cave. “If cookies are your trigger food, don’t keep them in the house,” says Melissa Ohlson, MS, RD, the nutrition projects coordinator for preventive cardiology and rehabilitation at the Cleveland Clinic Heart & Vascular Institute. “You’ll save money and you won’t be faced with that temptation on a daily basis.”

Turn off the tube. When we eat while watching TV, we chow down more and enjoy it less. That’s because we’re too distracted to taste the food or even know how much we’ve gobbled. A University of Buffalo study showed that children who ate in front of the television consumed 500 more calories and ate 21 minutes longer than kids who didn’t eat with the TV on. A British study showed that eating to the drone of the tube led to more snacking a few hours later.

Set a realistic goal. Losing one pound a week sounds doable, doesn’t it? And that adds up to 52 pounds over a year. Losing weight slowly through behavior changes means you’re more likely to keep it off. Keep in mind that the extra pounds didn’t all come on in one month — they’re not going to come off that quickly, either. “It’s like the tortoise and hare,” says Dr. Ricanati. “Remember who won.”

MORE: BMI Guide

— by Katherine E. Solem

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