Getting off the yoyo

So you're done for this year worrying about being thin for the beach.

Now we're going to talk about how to live until next beach season and not gain all that weight back.

Here's why. If you drop and gain weight over and over for 5 years, you are twice as likely to have a heart attack.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181001082145.htm

Here's how we're going to do it.
1. Cut back on anything with a sweetener in it. Doesn't matter if it's artificial, plain sugar, high-fructose corn syrup. Here's what happens.
It gets on your tongue. Your tongue's special receptors say "Sweet!" and transmit the message to the rest of your body.
Your pancreas groans and says OK now I gotta drag sugar out of the blood stream. What does it do with that sugar? It turns it into fat. So you gain fat no matter what kind of sweetener you use.
It also wears your pancreas out a little bit. All kinds of sweeteners promote Type II diabetes.

This includes almost all box cereals. It includes granola bars -- read the ingredients. It even includes BBQ sauce as I learned.

Examine the ingredients of everything you buy pre-made. Whatever has -ose on the end is a sugar. If it's up toward the start of the ingredients, there's more of it in the food. But some foods have more than one -ose in them, and it adds up.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170103151026.htm

2.  Exercise. Twenty minutes, three days a week.  That's way less than 10,000 steps a day but it's enough to keep weight off. More is better.

3. SLEEP. If you wake up drowsy, get your doctor to prescribe a sleep study. You may find that you have sleep apnea. Get into treatment. You will drop about 10 pounds quickly. You will also prevent heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and other problems.

While you are waiting to start the sleep study, take a look at my post on insomnia, which is my problem. I almost have it fixed. The last tweak was learning to sleep in spite of some noise and light, so I could keep my bedroom ventilated in summer.
https://pajheil.blogspot.com/2013/08/even-so-ive-been-fighting-insomnia-for.html

States are catching on that it's as dangerous to drive drowsy as to drive drunk, drugged, or distracted. Get ahead of the curve. Solve your sleep problems before you get arrested or worse yet, kill somebody.

4. PARTIES. Yikes. All that food. Here's what you do; this worked for a radio personality whose job was going to big shindigs.
You go to the buffet. You get the SMALLEST plate. You go down the buffet table.
When you find something that looks good, you take a SMALL portion just to get a taste of it and put it on your plate.
Keep going. Cover that plate ONCE with tastes. No heaping up.
Walk away from the table. While you talk to people, work through that plate full.
Give the plate to wait staff. Get a mineral water. Walk around, talk, dance, whatever.
The party is probably half over. People are starting to get drunk and loud. It's not fun any more.
Go home.

And don't let your kids tour the neighborhood for Halloween.  Have a small party at home with trail mix and -- OK -- candy or taffy apples, fruit juice and NO sodas. Then you won't have to take a bag full of crap to the hospital to Xray. You have to send your kids the right message so they develop good habits.

5. RESTAURANTS. Cut back on restaurants, fast-food or not. All restaurants serve too many calories, too much fat, too much sugar, too much salt, too few vegetables and too little fiber. The ones that advertise gluten-free items -- they're not necessarily low-gluten. You can make healthier food for less at home.

And here's a bonus. Cooking from scratch makes you exercise. The best food exercise is making bread without a bread maker. Make a 2-loaf batch of dough, but take half of that, break it into 8 pieces, and make rolls. You can use them for sandwiches.

Or hey, here's another idea. Tryptophan, the sleep nutrient, needs a carbohydrate fuse. At night, before bed, have one of your rolls with about 2 ounces of cheese or turkey. This can be part of that bedtime routine that helps your brain get ready for sleep.

6. Cravings. We all have them. Mine are salty crunchy things, which usually have a lot of fat in them. I made it an assignment to have them, not every weekend, but only on long weekends. Making it a chore made it less attractive.
I make my own tortilla chips.
I substitute dry-roast peanuts which have protein, omega-threes, and selenium.
If you're allergic to peanuts, talk to your doctor about the new habituation treatments.

Or here's another strategy. Get out some of what you crave. Put ONE SERVING on the plate, in the bowl, whatever, as soon as you get the craving. Now force yourself not to touch it for 10 minutes. Then you can eat it. Practice this for a month. Then increase the time to 15 minutes. Eventually, you will be able to put off satisfying your cravings. Works with kids too.

Also, never leave what you crave out in the open. Too easy to get to. I have a bag of chips in a closet right now, and I don't open that closet often. Out of sight out of mind.

7. Eat right. I put this last because I knew if I put it first, you would roll your eyes and not read the rest. Here's why you have to eat right.
Supplements don't work as well.
We didn't used to have scientific information about this, but more than 20 years of clinical studies have all come back with the same answer, and it was finally published in a medical journal.
Supplements are a waste of money, when they aren't downright dangerous.
http://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/1789253/enough-enough-stop-wasting-money-vitamin-mineral-supplements

One of the problems with supplements is, you don't know what's in them. They could illegally have prescription drugs in them. Companies advertising "herbal" remedies have been caught over and over again violating this law.

You don't have to go organic. Ignore claims about the "dirty dozen". This article describes scientific methods used to examine pesticide exposure and shows that blueberries, cherries, and kale do not belong on the list and exposure from the other nine items is negligible.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3135239/

There, I didn't even get to twelve steps. Start this month with #1, and start with sodas. In November, either do another sweet or start exercising. Do yoga, find some place to learn Tai Chi or Tae Bo, mall walk (without your credit card), whatever. By next bikini season, you will probably be the same weight you are now. Maybe less. Keep it up for life.