read The Best Life Diet by Bob Greene

I just read the Phase 2 section and didn’t find it all that helpful. Mostly the point is “understand your emotional hunger” and “use the hunger scale.” I’ve encountered both pieces of advice before and I struggle with both. None of the wise words here helped me with either. The material would be good if I hadn’t already learned it elsewhere.

Phase 2 is supposed to be the big weight loss phase. But, unlike Phase 1, there’s nothing new here for me to try. I’m already doing the things in Phase 2 to the best of my current ability. Sigh. I was kind of hoping for something that was going to push me up a notch.

I skimmed the rest of the book and I’ve decided I got what I’m going to get from it. I like the changes I made in Phase 1 and I’m going to keep them in my lifestyle. I want more changes, but I’m not going to use this book to help me make them. I’ll find another book or, more likely, figure them out for myself.

According to the book since I’m basically following the guidelines for Phase 1 and I didn’t lose weight, I should move on to Phase 2. But I couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to, because I don’t have the book. The library’s copies are all out and I’m not buying it in hardback now when it’s coming out in paperback at the end of the month.

Plus, I don’t want to go on to Phase 2 at the beginning of the Christmas Season. I know that I’ll be excited about it at the New Year’s resolution season, so I’m going to wait for that.

But, I don’t want to gain weight in December, so here’s the plan:

• continue following the guidelines, aiming for closer to 100% than I got in my Phase 1 Check-In.

• reduce my bread consumption slightly—enough to help me be attentive of what I suspect is the major problem in my diet at the moment, but not enough to awaken my famine breain.

• weigh myself each week so that I don’t delude myself for weeks on end that I’m losing when actually I’m gaining.

I gained 3 pounds in Phase 1. That sucks.

Phase 1 ends tomorrow when I’ll be weighing myself for the first time in 4 weeks. I thought I should evaluate myself on the guidelines today—otherwise, I’m likely to let the number on the scale effect how I grade myself.

Exercise: 99%—it looks like I’m going to miss my second strength training workout this week due to muscle strain in my lower back, otherwise I did all of my workouts.

Three meals + 1 or 2 snacks: 85%—I had a lot of 100% days, but also had some days where I threw in an extra snack.

Stop eating two hours before bed: 96%—not much trouble with this one. And I like waking up hungry for breakfast.

Drink water: 83%—still struggling with this a bit but I made some progress this week.

Supplements: 98%—missed my evening calcium pill a couple of times.

That averages to 92.2%, which would have got me a high B in graduate school unless the teacher took pity on me and rounded up to 93% for the A.

My best weeks were Week 1 when it was new and Week 4 when I was motivated by this check-in. That’s important because I’d really like to stay in Phase 1 through Christmas, but I can’t just tell myself “keep doing what you’re doing, it will be fine” because it’s more likely that as time goes on I’ll slip more and more. I’ll have to find some way to keep things new for myself. This week, I set up a 4-Day Win for drinking herbal tea (which I use for about half of my water count) and it’s been going much better, so that’s one idea.

OK, one week in and I’ve been mostly able to incorporate the guidelines of Phase One into my life. I didn’t drink enough water on Friday when I was out of the house for 5 hours (a water bottle in the car might help with that) and I took one sip of alcohol when my husband wanted me to try something (but since I average less than a drink a week in normal times, I’m not too hung up on that rule anyway).

The thing that has had the biggest effect for me is simply eating three meals and two snacks a day. That nipped in the bud a bad habit I was developing: eating as many meals as a hobbit! I am eating a little more at these meals and snacks than I might if I didn’t know that I had limited the number of times I eat. But, I think that’s okay. By limiting the amount of times I eat, yet allowing myself to eat as much or a tiny bit more than I want when I do eat, I’m avoiding two of my major binge triggers—eating too often and getting too hungry.

I’m also taking the opportunity to make consistent use of the best practices I developed over the past year of gradual improvements in my eating—rainbow eating including eating a salad and fruit every day, incorporating my new favorite “miracle” diet food: yogurt cheese, and planning all my meals (including snacks) even though I rarely follow the plans. Having a plan and making substitutes to it keeps me more in control of what I’m eating than making it up on the fly.

The daily yoga is making me stronger (and making me feel better than I expected—physically and otherwise), so I think that was the right choice for me to pursue.

So, so far, so good.

• eat three meals and one or two snacks per day
• stop eating two hours before bedtime
• drink lots of water but no alcohol
• take a multivitamin and consider adding an Omega 3 supplement and a calcium supplement

That’s it. In four weeks, I check to see how I’m doing. If I’ve successfully added these habits to my life and I’m not losing much weight, it’s time to move on to Phase 2. If just these changes causes a weight loss, I can continue to stay in Phase One until I’m no longer seeing a weekly weight loss. If I haven’t successfully developed the habits, I’ll stay in Phase One until I have.

One of the things I liked about this book over other ones is the way it handles exercise. So many diet books gloss over it or assume that you aren’t doing any. It’s not very motivating to be told to go out and walk 30 minutes 3 times a week when you already walk 60 minutes 5 times a week.

Greene’s first message (after his kind of pre-message that if you smoke, stop) is to exercise more. He describes 6 levels of exercise from 0 (virtually none) to 5 (full athletic training), asks you to identify which level you are at, and then encourages you to do what it takes to move up a level.

My exercise is roughly Level 2, to move to Level 3, I need to add strength training. It’s pretty clear that he actually means by that “weight training.” But, me and weights? We don’t get along. I can get injured just looking at a weight machine wrong.

However, I am willing to add two yoga routines a week that emphasize strength. Assuming that goes well, I’ll think about adding some pilates or band work in a month or so.

Adding two yoga routines on top of the two I already do, gives me a goal of four a week—I actually find it easier to develop a daily habit than a four-day-a-week habit, so I think I’m going to sign up for the Practice yoga 30 times in 30 days Thing.

I’m having to work a bit to get past the oh-too-obvious money-making potentials in this book.

a) “bestlife™” is a product endorsement—The Barilla Plus pasta I just bought has it. Wondering how much Barilla pays Bob Greene for that….

b) thebestlife.com apparently has great stuff, the book says so, but it will cost you something like $60 to see it. Sheesh.

OK. Moving right along.