Find Your Formula To Lose Weight And Keep It off By Including Your Comfort Foods

All of us veteran dieters know that in the long run, it's not so much about losing weight as it is about finding a formula to keep it off for the long run.  Which is why I am a bit obsessed with mental tips and tricks (e.g., build up your mental infrastructure part 1 and part 2 and 5 tips to kickstart your diet when you are in a slump).  My New Year's resolutions always include tweaking my diet (e.g., what ELSE do I need to give up to move closer to my goal?)  For 2013 I decided to try something a little different and focused on what I wanted keep in my diet versus what to give up.

The goal was to establish my "formula", then scrutinize it, so I could understand the effect of adding or subtracting foods to and from my diet.   While defining my formula, I honed in on a few foods I could give up, that I really didn't want to give up.  I'll call them comfort foods.  I knew the odds of defining a successful formula would increase if I was not completely abstemious.  I kept two of these foods that were associated w/important times of the day for me.  One that I have in the morning w/my coffee, and one in the evening.  Other than that my formula includes low carb items.

Truth: when you really think seriously about what your comfort foods are it might be a small list, and a small amount of the food might be enough to satisfy.  Probably those impulse snacks you grab and eat w/out thinking, or eat just because they are in front of you, won't be on that list.  Focusing on what you really don't want to give up puts things in perspective.  

After you define your formula, stick with it for a few weeks to see if it moves you closer to or away from your goals.  If not, make some adjustments.  Since January I've made 3 adjustments (but still have the comfort foods).

A really helpful tool to scrutinize your formula is called sparkpeople.com  When I started using this tool I was surprised to see the carb count on a few things I was eating (see the numbers in the second column).  Using this tool, the higher carb foods really jump out.  In the screenshot below you see that 1/4 cup of cashews has 11 carbs, and I think I used to eat closer to 1/2 cup during the day before I saw this.  After I cut back on nuts I was able to make some more progress.  I was also surprised by a few other things.  For example, I was surprised to see how certain sugar free candies affected my formula.  I wrongly assumed no sugar=no worries.  There was thing called net carbs which I knew little about.  But I learned enough to know that if the sweetener is malitol, it acted like real carbs on me.  Reading a little bit about malitol helped me understand why.

I love having a formula.  I love that I can scrutinize and measure it, and that it's moving me closer to my goals.