2008 Transformation Contest

This morning I am eating turkey in stir-fry vegetables for breakfast.  Being an introspective type of guy I ponder why my diet is so successful today compared to the previous attempts at cleaning up my food intake?  I don’t bother with measuring or weighing out my food.  I don’t bother with tracking my macro’s.  In previous attempts I would do both in a compulsive way.

As I chew through a chunk of turkey, water chestnut, and pea pod I came up with a few changes.

The food replacement game:
How many out there have tried to replace their favorite food with something that fits their diet.  You know the game.  If you are avoiding pasta you get giddy when you discover Spaghetti Squash or you look for the lowest carb version of pasta.  This can lead you down the artificially created foods such as the Olestra chips.

I don’t play the food replacement game any longer.  Favorite foods that do not fit the diet are gone.  That is just the way of things.   Favorite foods that fit the diet but I find I ‘can’t eat just one’ are gone.  My body and my life has no room for these foods.  

Instead of the food replacement game I am playing the favorite replacement game.  An example is ice cream.  I love the stuff.  I can’t eat enough of the stuff.  There is no place in my diet for the stuff and it is gone from my diet.  There is no ice cream like replacement in my diet.  I am not eating frozen yogurt or ‘fat free’ ice cream.   Ice cream simply does not enter my body.  What I have done is shift my favorite food from ice cream to cottage cheese + blueberries + walnuts.   It is not that I get a craving for ice cream and try to satisfy it with my CBW, I get a craving for CBW and no longer for ice cream.  Hard to believe?  It is the truth.

Pasta and pizza are another prime example.  They are favorites of mine and I have zero control when I start to eat them.  My diet right now calls for no carbs outside low GI/GL vegetables.  Instead of trying to find a replacement for these foods they are simply gone from my diet.  What is funny is that I don’t crave these foods.  Sure, when the family brings in a pizza I would love a piece, but I stay away.  There is no substitute for the pasta or the pizza.  I have retrained my palate to prefer a steak and steamed broccoli to the pasta and pizza.  This took time but if you would place the two side by side I would choose the steak because I like it more not just because it is better for me.  

And that is the big difference in my successful diet and non-successful diet.  Instead of trying to find foods to act and taste like my old favorites I have changed my favorites.  It is a mind game.  Am I lying to myself about what I like best…..sometimes.   But after lying to myself about what my favorite food is I start to believe it until I find I am no longer lying.  In the end I find that I am a changed person.  

I encourage anyone that has a great deal of weight to lose to think about changing their palate of favorites.  It takes work, time, and concentration.   It takes the willingness to eat foods you previously found distasteful……wow you mean I actually like zucchini now?  Yep!   If you don’t change your favorite foods and simply substitute some facsimile I guarantee you will fall back to eating as you did before.

Darn that turkey and stir-fry was good.  Those vegetables were so sweet and flavorful! I am satisfied nutritionally and palate-ly.  Change is good!