Pizza must be savored!

Last weekend, my husband and I passed a woman walking down the sidewalk, holding a sandwich in her right hand.  She kept taking bites of it and I wanted to say “Stop! You’re not savoring!”

Next, next two ladies walked towards us holding paper plates with slices of pizza, eating as they walked.  Oh no!  The tragedy! Pizza is a treat, and must be eaten while sitting down, preferably in small bites, and chewed slowly.

Living Thin means ingesting only the amount of calories one needs in a day.  That amount is limited, so I like to enjoy each and every bite I put in my mouth.  Here are a few rules to help you enjoy food, and not overeat:

1)  Slow down.  Enjoy every bite.  Chew food slowly.  Food can only be tasted while it’s in the mouth. After it goes down into the stomach, the pleasure of eating is over.

2) Sit down and eat.  Make eating an event.  Use plates and silverware.  Cut food up into little bites; it feels like you get to eat more.

3)  No walking and eating.  Our bodies need to send oxygen to muscles for walking, not digesting.  It’s harder to chew and eat while walking — much harder to savor.   Wait until there’s more time to eat.

Sonja at Trail Dust Town in Tucson, after savoring lunch at the Dakota Cafe

5)  No mindless eating in front of the TV.  It’s easy to eat an entire bag of chips or cookies and wonder where they all went — which could be an entire day’s allotment of calories.  Either bring one portion to eat, then stop, or quit this habit altogether.

Read:  Why French Women Don’t Get Fat; 10 Tips; Find out what author Mireille Guiliano has to say about savoring food, and how French women eat whatever they want – and stay thin.

Are "they" trying to keep people fat?

The diet industry rakes in $59.7 billion dollars a year.  Keeping one-third of Americans overweight is a very lucrative business.   Dieters need to beware of ways the diet industry may want to pull — and keep, the wool over our eyes, such as:

1) Using words like “Fat Free” on packaging, tricking dieters into thinking they are eating less calories.  For example, Yoplait advertises their yogurt as ”99% fat free;” however, one container has 170 calories.  Dannon Fit ’N Light Yogurt only has 60 calories per container; it’s what I eat every morning for breakfast.  Did you know that if you eat 100 more calories than you burn in a day, you will gain one pound in a month, or 12 pounds in a year — or 120 pounds in 10 years?  It adds up.

2) Watch out for clothing retailers that trick people into feeling thinner than they really are, by

Sonja in Haleiwa, Hawaii, August 2011

making them fit into “smaller” sized clothes — or so it says so on the tags.  Old Navy is mentioned on MetaFilter as one of these, with women saying they fit into a size 4 or 6, when they are 8s and 10s anywhere else.  Men are quoted as saying the clothing there is “wildy big,” and while they are a large or XL at all other stores, at Old Navy they are a medium.  I think this sets people up to think they can now eat more because they feel thinner — and, of course, they will want to shop at the store with the “smaller” size.

3) The very lucrative $59.7 billion-dollar weight loss industry, and all the diet programs that go along with it (I know, I have probably been on every diet out there).  They all work.  I even lost my final 50 pounds on a nationally known diet, and bought food, products and supplements from them.  It’s not the diet, I have found, it’s living thin and keeping it off afterwards that is tricky.  Eighty to ninety percent of dieters gain their weight back after they quit dieting.  The diet industry keeps dangling new diets in front of our noses, telling us what was wrong with the last diet, and telling us why the new diet is going to work.  Aren’t we smarter than that?  Quit financing the diet industry, and live thin, my friends!

Sonja, summer of 2011, Utah mountains

One thing I did after losing fifty pounds ten years ago was give away all my fat clothes.  My closet used to range in clothing sizes 8-18, perfect for a person used to yo-yo dieting for most of her life.  Getting rid of the larger-sized clothing was a huge commitment – it said, “this time, I’m going to stay thin.”

After reaching your “happy weight,” just go ahead and do it.  Get some new clothes to show off that new figure, and dispose of those larger-sized clothes.  Here are some ideas:

1)  Bag them up and take them to a donation site like Goodwill, Deseret Industries, the Veterans Association, your local church or any place looking for clothing.  Many will come and pick them up at your house.

2)  Take the clothes to a consignment store, where you can receive some money, nice when you are going to be spending a bit on a new wardrobe for your new figure! (but oh so worth it!).

Buffalo Exchange consignment & thrift clothing store

3)  Invite a friend to go through your bags before they go to the donation site, if it would make you feel better if your clothes went to a good home.

4)  Alter something only if it’s worth it to you.

When you go through your closet and drawers, be ruthless.  Get rid of everything that is too big now.  Baggy clothes do not look good!  Besides, you worked hard to lose weight, and it’s time to show off. 

Only having thin clothes in your closet is a huge commitment, and can be a bit scary.  But it shows that you are now living the thin lifestyle, and that is who you are now — a thin person, now and for the rest of your life!

Read:  “Act Like a Thin Person,” and “Think Like a Thin Person.” 

For other ideas:  “Yo-Yo Dieting: Stop the Insanity!” and “Life After Dieting; What Now, That the Pounds Are Gone?”