Diet Baseball
Three Strikes and It's Out
As a Weight-Loss Specialist I have grown to HATE the weekends. Like a priest, I hear confessions from morning until night on Saturdays and Sundays. Admissions of guilt that sound like this: "I ate too much, I drank too much, I had dessert, and I didn't exercise."
Week in and week out I teach my clients how to lose weight and get rid of their fat. Drink enough water, limit your starches, exercise regularly, avoid processed food, fill up half your plate with vegetables, eat no more than two pieces of fruit per day, measure your nuts, and don't eat unless you're physically hungry. I sound like a broken Bride of Chucky Doll to me.
I go over the diet maintenance rules with male and female clientele until they can recite them in their sleep. The dieting boundaries I prescribe will become, I hope, second nature to them. Nobody wants to be on a "diet" forever. What you consistently eat, must become the way you live your life, a lifestyle that's automatic, something that you don't even have to think about anymore.
But it never ceases to amaze me that after 4 to 8 weeks, 3 to 6 months, or even after an entire year of learning what good, clean eating habits, figuring out what works for them, and discovering which foods just DON'T, that those same individuals who have lost 20, 30 50, and well over 100 pounds go back to eating the same kinds of food that contributed to their weight gain (the same foods that I took out of their diet) to begin with.
Some foods cause negative effects in the bodies of certain people for one reason or another -- bloating, gas, cellulite, water weight gain, and fat deposition. I like to describe it as a metabolic food allergy. It's not a "real" food allergy like being allergic to shellfish or nuts that cause ones throat to swell shut or the skin to break out in hives. It's a physical weight-gaining phenomenon that takes place every single time Miss or Mr. XYZ eats PQR.
Specifically, I am talking about going to a nice restaurant with your beloved, having a couple pieces of bread and oil before dinner, and then blowing up like a balloon on the scale the next morning. Maybe for you it's alcohol. Does a glass or two of chardonnay with lunch cause you to unbutton your pants by night fall? Or perhaps the fat-gaining Satan in your life is a baked good like a mini cupcake or chocolate-chip cookie. A nibble of just one of these sweet treats send you into your closet to pull out your sweat pants with the adjustable waist band for several days.
It's been my professional experience that there are just some kinds of food that don't work metabolically with some people for whatever reason. (The reason doesn't really matter.) This is where the Diet Baseball Rule of Three Strikes (XXX) comes into play. Let's say you've been doing great on your diet -- losing 2-3 pounds per week, your clothes are getting looser, your fat stomach is disappearing, and your chicken wings are firming up and no longer flapping in the wind when you wave to a friend. One day you get forgetful or over confident (cocky) and think that after losing 20 pounds you can have a couple slices of sausage pizza and a glass of chianti with a girlfriend. Your girlfriend can eat Italian and not gain a pound, but you can't.
The next morning like clockwork, you're 5 pounds heavier on the scale and you call me screaming, "What happened?" I could explain to you about carbs holding approximately 3 grams of water per carb gram or give you a speech about inflammation and alkaline/acid balance but doing that just causes me to use up my valuable saliva and you to think that your 5 pound gain is only temporary, but I know it's probably not. You're drifting back toward the diet rat wheel and in another week or two you will have repeated the same kind of unclean eating behavior and gained more weight until pretty soon you are back where you started -- fat and unhappy.
When you have achieved real weight loss, not lose a pound/gain two pounds, but really won the battle of the bulge and reset your weight set point, there are foods at this new weight-weighing low that you can no longer eat and stay where you're at. No body wants to hear that though. Whether or not it's true doesn't really matter to most people who have been overweight and then diet down and get thin. This is the point where I usually get into a tug-of-war with my client as to whether he or she is going to listen to me or their stomachs.
So here's how the Three Strikes Rule works. You want to eat pizza, I tell you that maybe you can eat a couple bites of pizza every now and again but your days of devouring several slices are over unless you want to tie yourself to the stairclimber for 2 hours. You don't believe that you can't eat pizza anymore so I let you try it your way and you have pizza. The next couple days I ask you to text me your weight. You gained 2.5 pounds. Strike ONE. We both make a mental note. A month goes by and your craving for cheesy pizza comes back so you give in to your desire and stop at the local pizzeria and chow down. The next morning you are 3 pounds up. Strike TWO. You are starting to believe me now but not quite yet. It usually takes this third time for you to admit what I have been saying all along. This next dietary slide occurs two months after strike two and just as morning follows night, you ate pizza and you gained 3.5 pounds. Strike THREE and now pizza eating is OUT.
Maybe weight gain happens when you eat cereal or oatmeal for breakfast several days in a row. Perhaps it's avocados in your salad or fat-free frozen yogurt after dinner that makes you blow up. It can be something different for everyone but what actually matters is what foods don't work with YOUR unique metabolism.
The 3 Strikes Rule (XXX) -- borrow it from me and use it to help you stay at your ideal body weight from here on out. Get off the weight lose/gain merry-go-round for good.
Thank you for reading my blog and making me feel like I'm doing some good in the world.
-Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert
