"How many pounds did YOU lose?" It's one of the first questions I get asked in my line of work. My answer is the same one you might hear from any other woman who has lost -- and found (and lost and found) -- weight on the many diets we've seen come and go through the years: "Hundreds." We are not alone. More than 97 million men and women-over half the adult U.S. population-are overweight, according to the National Institutes of Health, and of the fifty-million-plus Americans who will go on weight-loss diets this year, only 5 percent, the Federal Trade Commission says, will keep the weight off. They are housewives and executives, teachers and technicians, flight attendants and postal workers...even health and fitness writers. We fight a common, and ongoing, battle: the battle of the bulge. The last time I gained weight was when I left my job at a magazine's editorial offices to work from home, with my new coworkers, Ben and Jerry. And Edy. And Sara Lee. Forty pounds later, having sworn not to purchase a stitch of clothing in yet a larger size, I was about to launder the very last pair of jeans whose stitches could still hold me. As I reached for the detergent I was struck by the realization that if I put those jeans into the washer and dryer, exposing them to shrinkage of as much as a micron, I would never get them back on my body again. The jeans didn't get washed that day, but I cleaned up my weight-loss act. I started fighting dirty. Like many women, I, too, have eaten my way through the Cottage Cheese/Jell-O/ Tuna Salad Age (extra lettuce, please), to the bacon cheeseburgers of the Atkins Era (hold the lettuce, please). I even confess to guiltily slinking into the local pharmacy for a bottle of syrup of ipecac during a regrettable binge-purge phase. I know what it's like to throw an entire bag of cookies into the trash only to "rescue" them when no one is looking, to divide a portion in half -- and then eat both halves. I understand that when it comes to overeating, "just say no" just won't cut it. Another thing that won't cut it: patience. So what if every health professional worth her protein -- including me, a health and fitness writer for many years -- knows that nothing but slow-and-steady weight loss is either healthy or sustainable. I, like every other dieter, wanted to lose it all now. If my body wouldn't cooperate, my closet would have to help me look as though it had. A few wardrobe adjustments, a lot of black ensembles, some makeup and hair tricks, and a little bit of strategic posturing, and at least some of those pounds were instantly "gone." That's what I'd like to help you to do: not just lose weight, but look like you did, right away. Losing weight is hard work that calls for changing everything from our behavior (what we eat, how we eat it, how we work it off) to the beliefs we've been spoon-fed since childhood (food is love, children starve in Africa if we don't clean our plates, a cookie will make everything all right). Like a drug, food can be addictive, but we cannot go cold turkey (pardon the expression), or put on a patch and quit. Not if we plan to continue living and breathing,anyway. We sit down to the table with it (if not stand over the sink with it) several times a day; we encounter it in social and business settings; we receive it as a gift. We are seduced by its image in magazines and on television, and have to fend off its advances from friends and family eager to fill us with everything from get-well casseroles to seductive Valentine Godiva chocolates. Food pushers are everywhere -- even Girl Scouts show up with it at our door, beseeching us to buy. Beyond diet and exercise alone, weight loss involves self-motivation, patience, perseverance, willpower, the occasional gnashing of teeth, and a sense of humor to get us through it without throwing up our hands and diving headlong into the Haagen-Dazs. It involves cooking strategies, food-shopping strategies, get-off-the- couch strategies, restaurant strategies, home-alone-with-the-refrigerator strategies, surviving-the-holidays-with-the-family strategies, and vacation strategies, to name a few. Most important, long-lasting success means never feeling deprived, but being able to live life to its fullest -- complete with parties, vacations, dinners out, and holiday celebrations, even wearing swimsuits! -- just like "regular people" do. Weight loss is a fight to have your food and have fun; to have your cake and eat it. I say there's no reason why you can't. This book wasn't written to advance lengthy arguments about the importance of good nutrition or the benefits of physical activity. These are things you already know. Neither will it put you on a diet or prescribe a program of exercise. There are many other good publications to do that. As someone who has not only read extensively about these very topics, but written as extensively about them, I learned that to practice what is preached calls for more than believing it is important, or even that it works. It calls for food warfare: what I call "dirty tricks." And that brings us to what this book will give you: a shoot-from-the-hip, take-no-prisoners guide to everything the nutrition and exercise gurus won't tell you fast enough -- from how to cut fat and calories without feeling like you've cut out your taste buds, to exorcising the fear of exercise, to Restaurant Dining 101 (Repeat after me: "Please remove the bread basket from the table"). It's about helping you learn how to stick to your diet and exercise programs, and how to keep your sanity while you do. Never mind the way you're supposed to behave (have a little sliver of the pie), this book addresses the way you (and I) do behave (finish off the rest of the pie after everyone else has gone to bed), and helps you change that behavior, one pie at a time. Because losing weight can seem an endless journey, these pages offer strategies to shorten the trip by helping you look thinner along the way. You'll find clothing and makeup techniques, posture and hairstyling tips -- even the way you decorate your home can help. Who wants to wait until she is slim to look slim? This book will show you how. My goal: to serve you a year's worth of the sanest, healthiest, and best weight-loss and look-slim strategies there are; a tasty assortment of tried-and-true basics in bite-size servings that are fun to read, easy to do, and that work -- whether you are outright heavy, unpleasantly plump, or just want to take off the five pounds you gained on your last vacation. The tips will work as well for gourmet cooks as for heat-and-servers, for the physically active and the sofa-bound. Above all, they're designed for people who might know better but aren't always able to "just do it." In other words, they work for human beings. I love food, and I eat a lot of it; I abhor exercise, but I keep moving; the word "diet" makes me hungry, but I lost -- and kept off -- all the weight I wanted gone. I fought dirty and I won the battle. So can you. 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 |
I know what it's like to throw an entire bag of cookies into the trash only to "rescue" them when no one is looking, to divide a portion in half -- and then eat both halves. I understand that when it comes to overeating, "just say no" just won't cut it. |
Never mind the way you're supposed to behave (have a little sliver of the pie), this book addresses the way you (and I) do behave (finish off the rest of the pie after everyone else has gone to bed), and helps you change that behavior, one pie at a time. |
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