Stress, Cravings and Preventing Weight Gain

What should I do when I’m stressed and crave sugary and salty junk food?

Become mindful of your stressors, how you are dealing with stress and your choices.

Learning new methods for stress relief will help 

prevent avoidable weight gain

Managing food cravings is a simple but difficult process. In my experience, I have seen that when an individual makes a emotional judgment and gives into eating when they are not hungry it is often do to temporarily losing sight of their goal(s) and/or continuation of habits.

First, understand that there are physical needs during stressful times. Your body is burning sugar and your cravings are present so you will replace immediate energy stores. Also know that an Apple is a better choice than junk.

Second, understand your role in the habits and choices that you have created. You MUST own your choices and your result. Look past your immediate desire and play out in your mind how you will feel while eating this  "much needed" food. Play out the after effects. How do you feel once you've finished? 

A few "rules" I have my clients to focus on is:

Become Mindful

Before you begin to feel stressed is the best time to focus on how you are handling your day. Monitor your stress levels. If you are becoming "STRESSED!!!" it is time to take a break, contemplate your thoughts and actions and choose your next action. This 2-3 minute reset of thinking and breathing acts to calm you and allows you to retain focus.

Smile. It relieves stress.

Remember: staying in the stressful situation will INCREASE your stress. You must change your thinking and your actions right there.  

Control your kitchen

Keep temptation out of sight. Clean the area of "junk" and create a scenario where you have to go purchase the items you want so badly. This will act to slow down your reactions.  Choose fruits and vegetables first while you focus on breathing.

Know WHY you are eating what you are eating

Say it out loud - "I am eating due to stress, not hunger."

Own the fact that you need to control your stress differently to create a long-term change.

Try these tips for controlling food cravings:

1. Develop a mantra. Something like: "I feed my body and my needs, not my taste buds."  
2. Ask yourself questions: "Why am I going to eat this?  Is it because I actually want it and need it or am I re-actively responding to an immediate desire?"
3. Keep focused on your goal. Post it in sight and refer to it often.
4. Drink a glass of water to slow the decision making process down. Water can make you feel a little fuller AND it will give you something to do while deciding if you are actually going to give in to your cravings.

 

End your stress eating here.

To your health,     
Robert DeVito

Do I REALLY need to log my food intake?

Food Journal = Success

* Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle studied the eating behaviors of 123 overweight, previously inactive women for a year. Women who kept food journals and consistently wrote down the foods they ate lost about six pounds more than women who didn’t.

*Women who reported skipping meals lost almost eight fewer pounds than women who did not, and those who ate out for lunch at least weekly lost on average five fewer pounds than those who brought in their lunch.

The study appears in an issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

More insights available here!

Food journalling is extremely important. Consider this: can you accurately recall every single thing that you ate and drank exactly one month ago? We didn’t think so.

• The more frequently you track how much you move and how much you eat, the better decisions can be made regarding your solution. Ask yourself this: Is my goal short term or long term? If you answered long-term then guesswork has no place in your solution.
• Journalling is necessary if you do not have a complete understanding of food amounts and need counseling on making better choices.
• There are multiple levels of compliance with food journalling. Some clients track everything from foods eaten, calories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, and meal timing, while others just jot down the foods eaten.
• Innovation Fitness Solutions recommends journalling of some sort for the first phase to gain insight into your habits (good and bad).

Being aware of your habits and choices and having actual data can help you immensely in attaining your goals.

Tips for creating your food journal:

• Write down what you’re eating throughout the day, rather than saving it up to log at the end of the day. Also, jot down how you are feeling when you eat, and how what you eat makes you feel.

• Record your level of hunger along with the foods you eat.

• Be honest. Measure portions, read food labels, and write down both your slip-ups as well as your better meals.

"If you ink it you'll think it. If you don't, you won't."

How to do it -

Phase I - An effective method that I have employed with numerous clients is to have the client journal everything that is eaten and drank for 14 days straight. This gives the client and the coach valuable insights into their habits and choices. From there, the client can choose 2-4 days per week to journal for the next 4 weeks (this helps to maintain the consistency and aids in taking ownership over the new habits being created).
Phase II - The next phase would be to journal on Fridays and Mondays (book-ending the weekend) every week and an additional day of the week to insure that old habits are not creeping back into our day.
Phase III - Finally, the last phase would see the client journaling at least 1 weekday and 1 weekend day for at least 2 weeks of each month. This maintenance journaling plan insures that food portions are not increasing over time.

Get more info here! 90 Days to a New You

To your health,
Robert J DeVito

Fitness Strategies for Weight Loss Success - The Workout

Fitness Principles for Weight Loss Success

Your Workout = Upside down and inside out.

Working out improves your health, fitness and longevity.  Initially, when you begin a workout regimen the physiological changes are significant.  Your Nervous System is working incredibly hard to figure out how to handle all of these “new, unaccustomed” stimuli that it’s experiencing and you will burn significant energy performing the work AND adjusting to the work.

The good news is that you will end up burning a significant amount of extra calories every day in an attempt to recover from this new experience.  The downside is this does not last long.   

Our body is designed for survival.  That means that it is great at conserving and storing energy.  This is a true disadvantage to those of us trying to reverse the amount of stored energy that we have. 

Here are a few suggestions to maximize your exercise time and results. 

Chances are you have or will experience most of them.  The good news is you are not the first person to experience them, and we now how to deal with it.

Who should you be taking Fitness advice from?

The strategies:

1. Bottom line to weigh less:  E IN vs. E OUT.  If you are attempting to lose weight/fat you need to expend more calories than you consume.  If you are not losing weight you are not in a deficit.  Stop coming up with reasons or excuses and review your intake in its’ entirety, then review your exercise plan to insure that you are maximizing your efforts in the gym.
2. You need to understand that Weight Loss is different than Maintenance of Muscle while losing Fat.  These are two significantly different methods to two significantly different outcomes.
3. Working out initially burns a significant amount of extra calories.  Your body is an adaptive machine.  It's goal is different than your desires.
4. Working out for the goal of LIFELONG Fat Loss is different in methodology from working out for Fitness and Health. 
5. Your results slow down after 1-2 months.  It is natural.  
6. Many people will experience a rise in hunger and appetite as a result of initiating a new workout plan.  Understanding what you are eating, when you are eating it and why you are eating are keys. If you do not connect the dots of FOOD - FITNESS and FOCUS, you will spin your wheels.
7. Exercise increases the need for nutrients.  If you are simultaneously dieting and exercising then the body needs nutrition that is extremely difficult to attain from food alone. If you are in a nutrient deficit and a calorie deficit, this can begin to ruin your ‘metabolism’. 
8. The body strives for “the path of least resistance”.  This means that it likes to be efficient.  This is counter-productive towards any Fat Loss goal.  Mentally, you are striving to burn more calories; physically your body is trying to figure out how to burn less… 
9. If you are exercising for the same amount of time and at the same intensity on the same machines for more than a month you are allowing the body to become efficient.  (S.A.I.D. Principle) 
10. Consuming a meal (Breakfast) is entirely under-appreciated and the importance of said act is way too overlooked for Fat Loss.  
11. Most people weigh themselves too frequently.  You will most likely not lose 2 ponds of fat overnight, nor will you gain 2 pounds of fat.  We all experience temporary and frequent fluctuations.  Weigh yourself every week or two for an accurate measure of what’s happening. 
12. Many people never maximize their effort.  I am a huge advocate of coming to the gym frequently.  It burns calories, maintains tone, and improves overall health.  All of these are great!  But, if you are attempting to alter your body composition it takes a bit more than just showing up.  An all out effort as frequently as possible will increase your calorie burn per minute.  When you don’t have what it takes to give a maximum effort then show up anyway and work out.  When you do have that ‘tweaked’ mental state – use it!  Lift heavier, run faster, jump higher, do more repetitions.  As NIKE says: Just Do IT!  RIGHT NOW! 
13. Make frequent changes to your workout.  Workout changes prevent boredom and increase the challenge to your body. 
14. Utilize Strength Training.  It helps to maintain muscle tissue, which will help to keep your metabolism higher,  it maintains "tone" and it burns more calories than cardio does.
15. When doing strength training be sure to use "bang for your buck" exercises that use multiple muscles and motions.  If your goal is not to be a bodybuilder, then do not train like one.

Try 14-days with IFS for FREE

To your health,

Robert

How do I get to my goal?

"How do I get to my goal?"

Are you acting according to your goals?

Unfortunately, there is no one canned answer to this question.  Consider this, pick your favorite store in the world, and now figure out how many different routes you can take to arrive there.  The options can be endless. Now utilize this same thought process for your personal fitness goals.  The same analogy can apply. When you add in all of the marketing that tells you to take a specific direction or route, your friends telling you the "shortcut" that you can take to arrive at the store faster and the feeling that everyone you know has figured out how to get to the store in a timely manner but you, you may not even want to go to that store anymore!  It could get really confusing.

Fat Loss, Health and Fitness, and Sports and Performance goals all place different demands on the body. From the amount of sleep required to the number of meals and calories eaten daily to what they are made of (Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats) -  it is slightly different for everybody. If you add in your genetic predisposition for where and how much fat you hold, your given metabolism, food preferences and dislikes plus your attraction or aversion to exercise it can be exhausting and de-motivating to try and figure all of these items out for yourself.

My advice: DO NOT GIVE UP!  That is one surefire method to fall short of your fitness goals.

Now that we have decided that you will not do that let's discuss how to succeed.  Focus on food, fitness and education, the foundation of Innovation Fitness Solutions.

When your actions meet your goals you will experience progress.

Food

It's a good idea to spread your food out throughout the day.  I recommend at least 4 meals daily and sometimes up to 6.  The number of meals depends upon your goal and some of the factors discussed above, but a good starting point is 4 meals.  Do not ever eat less.  It just leads to hunger and hunger leads to poor food choices and over-eating.  Regardless of the goal, it is important to know how many calories you need to maintain your weight daily and how many calories you are actually consuming.  Do you really know how many calories is in that Whole Wheat Bagel you eat?  How about that Chai Tea with skim milk you had yesterday?  Having the facts at your fingertips is a great method to understanding how to be successful, guesswork usually can get you started but never works long term.

The good news is that there are people who have spent their entire adult lives preparing themselves to help you get the success you want. Your Weight Management Specialists and Exercise Specialists care about you and your results and we do know how to help you.  Everyone has different goals, and the strategies that you must utilize for success have to be tailored to you. Realistic, Progressive and Maintainable (R.P.M.) methods for long term success are right here in front of you. Talk to one of us and let us help!

Fat Loss
Fat matters, carbohydrates count but calories are the bottom line!  Do not buy into the myth that some foods are fattening and others are not.  It is not true.  Every food can help make you gain weight and every food can help you keep it off.  The amount of ingested has to be less than the total calories burned or you will get bigger eating sunflower seeds and grapefruits.  It just does not matter! Control your calories and eat as healthy as you can right now.

Health and Fitness

The more consistent and the healthier the choices that you make the better you will feel.  I suggest 30-45 minutes of cardiovascular work 3-4 times weekly + 2-3 strength training sessions weekly.  In addition, maintaining a diet of consistently balanced foods along with your exercise routine will help you achieve your goal with ease.  Your body will thank you for it and your mind will as well.  When we choose healthy options we give our body the fuel it needs to keep going strong throughout the day, fight off cellular damage and be mentally sharp.

Sports and Performance

Eat often, eat well and eat balanced!  The timing of your pre and post workout meals is crucial to your success.  Eating 45-60 minutes pre-workout is essential to providing the energy necessary for optimum performance.  A post workout meal consisting of a 4:1 ration of carbohydrate to protein is important for recovery.  In addition, optimal rest (6-8 hours of sleep) and the proper training intensity is essential too. Try not to workout more than 3 days consecutively if your intensity level is above a 7.5 on a scale of 1-10.

Result

In my opinion one of the strongest variables someone can change is to get out of daily result and into the process. It is a BIG PICTURE way of looking at your goals and your goal setting.  Everything matters but mistakes will be made and they will be corrected.  Nothing is impossible and a great plan makes for great successes.