Appetite and Drinking Water

While you're waiting for December to be over, so you can implement your new - and permanent - lifestyle change, you must be doing many things.

1. Keep a journal of what you eat and drink every day...and why. By this I don't mean breakfast, lunch and dinner, but the in-between snacks and so on.

2. Look at your portions. Do you eat the equivalent of two servings of mash potatoes as one serving?

3. Watch your calories. A bowl of ice cream a day is not that bad...a couple of hundred calories. But do you pour chocolate syrup over it? That adds another hundred calories. Do you chop up a candy bar and add that? That also ads calories.

4. A salad may be healthy for you - but it does have calories. A lot of people, apparently (according to a college study I once read) believe that if they eat a salad alog with a couple of huge hambuger and fries...the salad doesn't have any calories. Not so. Unless you leave off the dressing and toppings. So eat a large salad, or eat a large meal, not both.

I always tell the people whom I'm helping to lose weight that it is not necessary to count calories - it is only necessary to use portion control.

If you become familiar, over the course of a month (in this case December) with what you eat, and you are overweight by 50-100 pounds, then the solution is obvious. You're eating too much, and not exercising enough. Don't cut out all carbohydrates, that's ridiculous. Eat everything - just in smaller portions!

I'll explore this more in later entries.