Revamp Your Kitchen for Weight Loss Success

When it comes to eating healthy, there is almost always a battle. Don’t fret - it is a battle we can win. We often sabotage ourselves with the things that we keep in our home. Eating healthy is twice as hard when all you stare at each day is sweets and fattening food. Give yourself a break and make it easier by cleaning out that kitchen.

First, take inventory of the entire kitchen. We normally think about what we have in the fridge because we are always in there. My kids can open the door and stand there for five minutes trying to decide what they want to eat. You would think we had the entire supermarket in there as difficult as it is for them to choose some times.

We neglect the cupboards and other hiding places. You might say that the cupboard is full of canned foods and bags of this or bags of that. But, what is in those bags and is it good for you? If not, they need to be exchanged for better food choices.

Take a can of soup for instance. If it has more than 1,000 milligrams of sodium, or salt, per serving, that is too much. The body only needs two grams of salt a day. Half of that is in your soup. Instead, choose lower sodium varieties or better yet, make some homemade soup and skip the salt.

I’m going to pick on pasta for a minute. We all love pasta. It goes well with a variety of meats and sauces and is easy to fix when you are in a hurry. Pasta made from enriched white flour is not good for you. It goes straight to the hips. Substitute whole wheat pasta and keep your blood sugar on an even keel.

I keep my cereal boxes on top of my refrigerator. The kids love pre-sweetened cereal. It is tasty, but we can make better choices for ourselves and our children. Now I get Honey Bunches of Oats and other cereals that have more nutritious ingredients. There is just enough of a hint of honey and cinnamon to sweeten the cereal but also give my kids their needed amount of fiber for the day.

Eating vegetables is better than drinking them. For one thing, a glass of apple juice will stick to my ribs exactly ten seconds before I want something more substantial. An apple or an orange will last a lot longer than that. Hopefully until it is time to eat lunch or dinner. Lighten up on the juices and buy more fresh fruit. To keep it fresh longer, place fruit in a wicker bowl in a cool dry place where it’s easily accessible when those cravings hit.

To help make your weight loss a successful journey, ask yourself what’s in your kitchen. Your answer could very well be the thing that is keeping you from reaching your weight loss goals. Take inventory and clean out those foods that are not in your healthy eating plan.

Helping Kids Lose Weight

Kids learn from watching their parents. When they see us struggling with our weight, they may struggle with it as well. All the pressures of school and friends don’t go a long way to helping the weight situation. Kids swing from too thin to too fat. Here, we will talk about kids who need to lose weight and ways you, as a parent, can help them do so.

Gaining weight doesn’t happen overnight. It would be nice though so we could get rid of it just as fast. Alas, that is not how it is. When you need to lose weight, you must do the work. No one can change their body image unless they are willing to work for it.

One way to help kids to lose weight is to do some family exercise sessions. It doesn’t have to be a competition or any type of rigorous activity. Start out slow and build up to a faster pace. Take a walk before or after dinner. If you walk before dinner, you will eat less at the meal. If you work out afterwards, the body burns off some of that stored fat.

For kids, exercise has to be fun. If it is a chore, kids will quickly become frustrated and turn away. Play kickball or volleyball in the backyard. Take a few laps in the pool. Each of these activities burns calories and gets the heart rate up. Kids can get behind those activities and improve their weight.

In many school curriculums across the country it is required to take a gym class. Gym class five days a week can whittle down the waistline in no time. Because everyone has to do it, there is no pressure on your child to be singled out.

The hardest part of losing weight for kids is food. They love to eat and eat and eat. Kids feel invincible and that extends to their body. They can put anything into them and still be healthy. Not! What you put in your mouth determines where it goes.
Foods high in fiber are going straight through you, but not before grabbing a little fat on the way. Foods that digest slower, like complex carbohydrates, keep the body fueled. When you grab a snack from the vending machine, the sugar will give you a rush for about an hour and then it’s like someone put a pair of lead weights on your eyelids.

Turn your kids onto healthier snacks like carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and fruit. It is easy to carry a piece of fruit in your pocket and munch on the bus or as you walk home. Veggies can be eaten with low calorie dressings and dips to make them taste better.

How do you get your kids moving and shaking? As you work on the exercise portion of weight loss, don’t forget the food. Teach them how to eat healthy by doing so yourself and watch as your children begin to make healthier choices that will serve them well for life.

Menu Planning Central can help you plan quick, healthy meals for your children.

Recovering From Weight Loss Setbacks

It happens to each of us at least once on our weight loss journey. We go on vacation and live a little only to come back and step on the scale. When we do, we’ve gained back some weight and are disappointed. Or, you could be an emotional eater who is going through a personal crisis that results in added pounds.

The next step is the most important one. The choice is between struggling to recover and continuing to slide back into old habits. Before the choice is made, we must realize something about ourselves. It’s okay to slip up. Forgive yourself and forget that it ever happened.

Setbacks are a part of weight loss and any kind of goal we set in life. There has yet to be a time when everything in our life went according to plan. If it did happen for you, you need to write a book and let the rest of us off the hook. Assuming that it has not, it is something that we must learn to deal with or it will crush us to dust.

If you wisely choose to struggle and recover, try to discover what caused the setback in the first place. The answer will help you not to repeat the same pattern again. A common cause of setbacks in weight loss is emotional eating. Unfortunately, you don’t find out that you are an emotional eater until you get emotional and begin to eat.

It is not normal eating. Emotional eaters eat to relieve stress. You don’t have to be hungry. The act of eating something that pleases you releases those same “feel good” endorphins as exercise. It’s a cruel joke, I know, but there it is. The trick is to pinpoint emotional eating before you’ve gained too much weight.

Struggling is not pleasant for anyone. As you battle back, your mind may tell you that you messed up. Learn to ignore it by replacing that negative feedback with positive words of encouragement. Accentuate the positive things about yourself. Are you a star on your job? Tell yourself how good you are at what you do. If you have kids, bask in the knowledge that you are a great mom or dad.

Take on a partner. This person can be trying to lose weight also. They will be charged with telling you the truth and not just what you want to hear. You will do the same for them. By pointing out the good attributes of someone else, you will learn to do it for yourself.

Weight loss is a lifelong process. Even when you lose the weight, you must work to maintain that loss and continue to be healthy and fit. Don’t give up so early in the game. Learn to deal with setbacks and get on with working towards your weight loss goals.