How I Lost Weight in 2010 and What I Recommend - Part III

Eat right. All the best diets and lifestyle changes are going to tell you to "eat right and exercise" but again, you have to know which kinds of food your body processes well and which ones it doesn't. Again I recommend the Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type book, but don't obsess over it. Basically, there are people who do well with high-protein/low-carb (like me) and those who do well as vegetarians, or as high-dairy eaters. Some people like having a lot of structure by counting Weight Watchers points, calories, etc., while others are more intuitive (again, like myself) and can have a basic plan in their head that they build around. If you know your body well and you work best with structure, find a diet plan that works for you. If I were to have a lot of structure, I'd go with Adkins or the Palm Beach Diet, because they work real well for O blood types (high protein/low carb). There are a lot of diet plans out there and if that is your "thing" then find one that works for you. Don't be discouraged if it takes some experimenting around until you find the right one.

For me, the intuitive person who doesn't like the rigid confines of a diet plan, I found that it worked best to eat a high-protein breakfast (a sausage patty, a 1/2 cup of cottage cheese, or a simple two-egg omelet with a tiny bit of cheese and some veggies like onion and bell pepper). This was followed by a lunch of two rice cakes with either turkey breast slices or cheese (if I didn't have cottage cheese for breakfast) with a little mayo and mustard, a cup of raw veggies (like carrot sticks, pea pods, and grape tomatoes) with some ranch dressing to dip in. Some days I would have an apple or some berries. Sometimes I would have a diet soda (Diet Rite with Splenda, because I don't do well with caffeinated soda or NutraSweet, although once in a great while I will have a Diet Pepsi). I'd have a mozzarella cheese stick or a couple tablespoons of smoked almonds and maybe an 8-oz. can of V-8 juice for a snack, if I really needed one. At first, I had to have a snack to make it between meals. Now I rarely have one. Then dinner is a regular meal half the time, but in child-size portions. Think of an eight-year-old kid and serve up portions for him and that should be just right. About three times a week, I would try to have a really healthy dinner, like a salmon patty from Costco with a cup of steamed broccoli...or a veggie soup from a low-carb cookbook. But it's not unusual for me to have a couple slices of pizza if we order out, or a serving of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs with a small bowl of canned peaches on the side. Like I said, I don't cut anything out completely, or I would feel deprived. I do try to keep my gluten and my dairy down to one serving a day. And yes, I take supplements to make sure I get calcium, magnesium, B vitamins and the other nutrients I'm missing because I'm lactose- and gluten-intolerant.

One last thing: drink water. I try to go for half my weight in ounces each day. So if I weigh 150 pounds, then I try to drink 75 ounces of water a day. Dehydration is a cause of a lot of overeating. You think you're hungry, but your body actually needs water to be efficient.

(To be continued tomorrow)