Key Dining and diet Looking slimmer Exercise and physical activity Behavior changes and mind games Tools and products Restaurant dining Travel Alcohol and spirits Holidays and special events "Boost" your sandwiches with lettuce, tomato, sprouts, cucumber slices, bell peppers, and other fresh vegetables. Along with the bigger crunch, you'll get a bigger sandwich with few additional calories and no extra fat. Wear black. It's true: The little black dress -- or pants, or sweater, or blouse -- will make you look littler. Nothing works better. But if we do find a darker color, we'll let you know. Jog to the corner mailbox and home again every time there's something to post. Mail one envelope at a time. Don't eat while you're standing. No, the calories don't travel down to and out of the soles of your feet -- they just travel faster into your mouth because you're telling yourself the food doesn't count. And yes, the extra food you consume more than outstrips your barely-elevated-because-you're-standing metabolic rate. Eat only while you're seated at a proper table. Before going to a restaurant, stand before the mirror and say the words, "Please remove the bread basket from the table." There. Now you know you can actually make those words come from your very own mouth. Say them to the waiter when the bread basket arrives. Get a gum-ball bank. When having just one of anything is a challenge, per-portion payments can help. Fill it with sugar-free gum balls, jelly beans, or other low-calorie treats, and put the money toward a new something in a smaller size. Fake olives. Save the liquid from a jar of olives, and use it to immerse the con- tents of a jar of mushrooms for a day or so. Voilà! "Olives" without the calories or fat. Do a "Kennedy." Instead of sitting around the table after the holiday dinner, or collapsing in the living room amongst bowls of nuts and chips, gather up the guests for a game of touch football, take a walk with a favorite cousin, have a kite-flying contest, build a snowman, ride a bike around the family compound. Avoid "umbrella drinks." If your alcoholic beverage comes with an umbrella, an oversize swizzle stick, a sparkler, or has any other sort of ornamental flourish springing from the rim, you can be sure it also comes with extra calories. When you travel, reserve a hotel room as far from the lobby as possible. Not only will you get more exercise on the way to and from your quarters, but you'll think twice about visiting the lobby sweet shop. Cross your legs at your ankles. Not because you want to look like a good girl, but so your thighs and calves will look slimmer than if you cross them at the knee. And you'll have a better chance of getting to be a bad girl. Want chocolate? Eat a sour pickle. The aftertaste will turn your sweet tooth into something else altogether. (Think of it as Antabuse for chocoholics.) Walk for a cause. Sign up for a fund-raising walkathon or bike-a-thon to help out a cause dear to your heart. For extra motivation, enlist sponsors who will contribute by the mile. Good for your body, good for your soul, good for us all! Divert binges with aqua therapy. The warm, relaxing water of the shower or bath -- especially when scented with a calming aromatherapeutic fragrance -- can quell even manic desires for forbidden foods. Plus, chances are your shower or bath is a safe distance from the kitchen. Have your salad dressing served on the side, and dip your empty fork -- not your veggies -- into it before spearing a bite to eat. You'll cut way down on the amount of dressing you use. Decorate your dining room and kitchen tables with fresh flowers. A beautiful environment discourages ugly eating: bingeing, pigging out, or trashing yourself with junk food. One caveat: The scent of the blooms can affect your appetite. While a light aroma may complement the dining experience, a heavy fragrance can leave you gagging. Set the table with stargazer lilies and hyacinth only if you want to skip the meal altogether. Don't keep up with the Joneses. Take one bite of food for every two your dining companion takes (or, if your companion is a speed eater, take one bite for every three). When she lets the waiter remove her plate, let him take yours along with it. When you check into a hotel, turn in the calorie-laden lures of the mini-bar to the proper authorities, and replace them with healthy fruits, low-fat snacks, and beverages. Make sure you let the front desk know you didn't use the original contents -- and that you don't want them replaced. Pile on the rocks. Add as much ice to alcoholic drinks as can fit in the glass, and drink slowly enough for it all to melt before you finish. For elegant, leftover-free desserts when you're entertaining, serve individual treats, like petit fours, fruit tarts, mini-cupcakes, individual custards, or single slices of something fabulous from the bakery. Buy one per guest. Match your lingerie to your bed sheets. You'll blend. Get your ice cream "fix" from the world's tiniest spoons. Why commit to a pint, or even a cone, when a sample-spoon-size taste at the local ice cream parlor will suffice? Embarrassed to taste and not buy? Try the White Rabbit Technique: Sample this, sample that, look at your watch, gasp loudly, and run. "I'm late! I'm late! So sorry! Gotta go!" Do a dishwasher workout. For an aerobic mini-workout, unload the dishwasher one item at a time, moving back and forth across your kitchen as energetically as you can without breaking dishes. For some weight-training practice, unload the machine in one fell swoop, stacking as many dishes as you safely can and lifting the whole pile at once. Eat with chopsticks to slow yourself down -- at least until you're so good with them that they don't. Then try holding the utensils in your other hand. Order from the children's menu. You'll be served a smaller portion, and sometimes you even get a toy. To stay hydrated and full during an airline flight, when the flight attendant approaches you with the beverage cart, ask for a few extra bottles of water before the cart vanishes for the rest of the trip. Caution: If you don't have an aisle seat, drink at your own risk. Count your calories. Aloud. Before you eat something, find out how many calories it contains and count out the full number -- slowly -- before you put it into your mouth. The delay will allow you the chance to fully grasp what you're about to do, to change your mind, and will slow your progress toward second helpings. If you're considering a Snickers, with 280 calories in a two ounce bar, you can use all the extra minutes you can to start working it off. Turn up the heat. Use hot sauce, tabasco, horseradish, spicy mustards, wasabi, and any kind of pepper (from crushed red to jalapeno) to heat up your food, and cool down the speed at which you eat it. Match the color of your shoes to the color of your hose. Your legs will look longer and slimmer. Buy a good full-length, front-, side-, and rear-view mirror so you can honestly see what all of you looks like, and how good success will look on you. It will also help you remember why you want to lose that weight to begin with, and encourage you to dress thinner along the way. Sabotage the enemy. When an overloaded dinner or dessert plate is set before you, and you can't get the excess packed up or otherwise removed quickly enough, sabotage what you want to avoid overeating. Shake sugar onto the mashed potatoes, lace fish bones into the rice, pour pepper onto the layer cake or salt on the ice cream. Water, ketchup, and ashes are other weapons of choice. Every time you're tempted to eat something fattening, picture the face (and body) of that thin friend who insists that you don't need to lose weight, and foists her desserts and her gift boxes of chocolates off on you. Remind your sweet tooth that revenge is sweet. Get back at her! Copyright 2002 by Carole Bodger From The Little Book of Dirty Diet Tricks: 365 Ways to Lose Weight or Look Like You Did Without Losing Your Mind Along the Way, by Carole Bodger. Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing. |
365 WAYS TO LOSE WEIGHT OR LOOK LIKE YOU DID WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND ALONG THE WAY By Carole Bodger |
A year's worth of category-coded tricks and tips, including TIP OF THE WEEK and TIP OF THE MONTH features with step-by-step strategies for everything from conquering the "I Don't Wanna Do Its," to buying the right swimsuit, to deciphering "MenuSpeak." Here, a small taste... |
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