Idea's & Info from Inchworm

Natalie, This was on "The View" Yesterday and I thought they were some great ideas!*Inchworm

Joy Bauer, author of Joy's Life Diet: Four Steps to Thin Forever, to show us how to look fine in '09 and make it last. shared these diet secrets with us:

1. Get your head in the game: Joy says that all successful dieters have come to a realization or made a deeper commitment and that they have to know in their hearts that they would succeed this time. Success starts in the head, moves to the heart, and only lastly involves the mouth and stomach.

2. Cut back on added sugars real and artificial: Some studies suggest that even drinking diet sodas and eating foods with artificial sweeteners can increase the risk of being overweight. Artificially sweetened foods may not have the calories of sugar sweetened foods, but the keep sweetness on our taste buds and minds. Joy recommends cutting out all sugars (real and artificial) for at least a week to help you break free of your compulsion to eat sweet foods and then minimize your intake going forward.

3. Revel in "unlimited foods": Joy says it's imperative to load your fridge with foods like non-starchy vegetables like peppers, sugar snap peas, carrots and cucumbers and low calorie condiments like salsa and mustard and sparkling water. Feel free to indulge on these foods in unlimited amounts whenever you're hungry.

4. Walk off your cravings: A recent British study found that chocolate lovers had reduced chocolate cravings in response to stress after going for a brisk 15 minute walk than after rest. If you walk for 30 minutes a day at a moderate pace, you'll burn 1000 weekly calories instead of eating 1000 weekly calories worth of cravings. That means at the end of the year, you can walk off 52,000 calories and drop 15 pounds!

5. Stretch dinner with a first course: Begin dinner with a bowl of broth based soup with non-starchy vegetables or a voluminous tossed salad with reduced fat dressing and you could slash calories by 20% at mealtime. The fiber-rich first course will fill you up fast, leading you to cut back on portions of higher calorie foods at dinner. Based on a 1,000 calorie dinner, you could save 73,000 annual calorie and drop 21 pounds at the end of the year.

6. Ditch starchy carbs at dinner: Follow the first veggie course strategy at dinner with lean protein, a double helping of veggies and completely omit all starch including bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. You'll save even more calories and further accelerate your weightloss. Eliminating just 1 cup of starch with dinner every night for a year could save you 80,000 calories and drop another 20 pounds.

7. Lose liquid fat traps: Cut out soda, sugary drinks, and caloric coffee concoctions and your body reaps big benefits. By trimming 250 soda calories each day, you'll prevent 108 cups of straight sugar from entering your body.

*Natalie, I found an awesome treat today at Costco! Yoplait Smoothie- It has packets of ready to make smoothie's, frozen berries and frozen yogurt bits. All you have to do is add the liquid. You can do milk, soy milk, juice, whatever you want. And to get your protein in it, add a serving of tofu! It only has 70 calories per serving, 14 grams of carb and a full serving of fruit. These make great breakfast or small meal. It was about $10 and there are 5 packets, 1 packet is 2 servings. I made it tonight and am putting the other serving in the fridge for tomorrow! *Inchworm