Woman

Wellness
Thick and Tired: Maintaining Your
Weight-Loss Goals in the New Year
Dr. Beth Miller has some sound advice on how to lose weight and keep it off.
By Megan Russell
NUTRITION
It’s a new year, and you know what that
means: a new you! It’s the season of filling
your head with lofty ideas of who you
think you want to be, only to drop those
goals two months from now with a private
“Who was I kidding” attitude masked
publically as confidence in who you are.
The ultimate goal in this yearly game every
woman seems to play is losing weight. And while
this article may already be a bit too cynical about
resolving to change yourself, one thing’s for sure:
Meeting your weight-loss goals can often be not
only life changing, but lifesaving. Where these
resolutions inevitably go wrong is that people
don’t really understand where to begin and how
to maintain their weight loss.
This is something Dr. Beth Miller, internal
medicine residency program director at University
Medical Center Brackenridge, hears every single
day from patients. They want to know where to
start, and once the weight is off, how to keep it off.
For Miller, the best place to start is by understanding
what you’re eating now.
“Take an inventory of what you eat and how you
eat so you know how many calories you eat. Where
are your ‘danger calories’ and what kinds of foods
you binge on And you have to be impeccably honest,”
she says.
So don’t forget that little piece of candy you
grabbed on your way out of work. Miller also
cautions to not overlook the calories in alcoholic
beverages, something many people tend to let slide
after a stressful workweek.
The easiest way to track inventory of what you
eat is through a food diary. These days, they are
free and easily accessible on your phone. Apps
like MyFitnessPal and My Diet Diary offer calorie
counters so you can see where your danger calories
are coming from.
“The best thing to do is to keep it up for a few
days,” Miller says. “Most people eat similarly week
to week, and you can take a look at that and ask
yourself, ‘What can I do without’ Or, ‘How can I
modify this’ I usually go through a long behavior
discussion with people because there are certain
things you know you’re going to overeat.”
And to overcome that behavior, Miller recommends
being methodical about your diet.
“Do practical things you think you can sustain,”
she suggests. “It’s of almost no value to bounce up
and down: to diet, lose weight and regain it and
then diet, lose weight and regain it. It’s of more
value to pick out a weight, even if it’s not your
ideal weight, but maybe it’s where you tend to land
all the time, and just don’t gain anymore. Stay
there and decide that you’re going to be happy with it.”
Often, people try to set a goal that’s far below what they can sustain in the long run,
so choose a goal that’s practical, and learn to love where your body naturally lands.
And what should you be eating The top foods Miller recommends are fruits and vegetables.
“I recommend five to eight half-cup servings of fruits and vegetables a day. And I
know that’s a lot, but it pushes out a lot of the other unhealthy foods because you’re too
busy focusing on your healthy choices,” she says.
When consuming enough fruits and veggies, you’re not hungry. You can eat as many veggies
as you want, but your body doesn’t want to binge on those foods. A lot of our heavily
processed foods have been manufactured and created so the body doesn’t say stop, Miller
notes. In other words, if you’re eating grapefruit, you’re probably not going to want to eat
four grapefruit; your body will say stop. Or if you’re eating carrots, you’ll get a funny feeling
in your stomach and your body will say stop. But if you’re eating potato chips, you just keep
eating them and you don’t stop because they’ve been manufactured to be that way. This
means all that unhealthy, processed junk food confuses your body’s signals. Junk food doesn’t
give your body the nutrients it needs. When your body doesn’t get nutrients, no matter how
much food you put into it, it still thinks it’s hungry because it’s starving for nutrients.
Once the weight loss starts, how is it maintained For starters, Miller warns against binge
diets and fasts.
“You binge a few times and then you regain your weight. The problem is your body remembers
being heavier and thinks that is its ideal weight, and your body’s fat cells remember
MyFitnessPal
My Diet Diary
62 | Austin Woman | JANUARY 2015