Want to Know How Marie was Doing on her Weight Loss Program?

Marie's weight loss goal was 16.8 pounds based on 7% which, if successful, would bring down her weight to 223.2 pounds. Her goal for fat gram was to limit the intake to 50 grams of fat each day. She did not like recording everything she ate but followed through.

Here is an example of her entry. At 9 am, she had a muffin (34 calories, 1 fat gram), 1 tablespoon of sugar-free jam (48 calories), 8 ounces of coffee with 2 ounces of whole milk (40 calories, 2 fat grams). in the office as she was late waking up.

She recorded in the same manner her food and fat gram intake for lunch, supper and snacks. At the end of the day, the total showed that she consumed 1338 calories and 43 grams of fat. Not bad, eh? For her physical activity, she walked for 30 minutes.

One day she was surprised to find that she exceeded her fat gram goal intake. She found it was so easy to consume 100 grams per day. For instance, the two slices of 12-inch pizza she had at 7 pm had 534 calories and 24 fat grams. She decided right there and then to lower her fat gram intake. How did she do this?

She packed her lunch from home to eat at the office three times a week and just ate lunch at the office cafeteria two times a week. Because she likes turkey and tuna she had these for sandwiches or salads with cottage cheese. She had frozen dinners that were of low calorie variety three to four days a week. She was able to control the portion this way.

Due to the aforementioned changes, Marie was able to limit her fat gram intake. Some days, she could even afford to have a small dessert. Dessert was important to her because otherwise she would not feel satisfied without it.

She lost one pound a week and she was happy to record this on her weight graph. When she checked in at six months, she showed she was on track to lose her 7% weight loss goal. Sadly, she had a hard time with her exercise goal.

She therefore attended supervised activity sessions of forty-five minutes, twice a week and this enabled Marie to achieve seventy-five minutes of activity during the sixth week but went down on the seventh and eight weeks by achieving only fifteen minutes of physical activity.

She tried to persevere so let's follow her progress to see how she did with this Treatment with Exercise.
I will report to you next week to let you know if she had more lapses and what eventually happened to Marie. How about you? Are you doing your sessions again with a buddy? Good for you!

How Some Participants Lost Weight

With the weight loss as the goal, the Diabetes Prevention Program knew when they started this lifestyle changing program, that they will deal with a myriad type of people. Their starting weights were different and so were their lifestyles. In other words there were as many backgrounds as there were participants.

They had something in common though. The one motivating factor that spurred them on to volunteer to participate in the program was to prevent diabetes. They all wanted to lose weight. Another thing they had in common was they tried to incorporate the program in their daily lives.

Let's follow the story of one of them for whom we will use a fictitious name to protect her identity. Let's call her Marie who is around the early 60 years old. She had a track record of a long history of being overweight with 240 pounds as her starting weight. She had tried all kinds of diets and not one of them worked.

When she started this program, her Body Mass Index according to a table is 44 which makes her obese. Anyone between 25 and 30 BMI is overweight and anybody within the range of 30 and above is considered obese. I wish I could show you the table that gives the estimated the BMI. It is so easy to use.

For now, suffice is to say that the calculation to get the BMI is weight in kilogram divided by height in meters squared which results in a measure of kg/m squared. But it will be so much easier just to use the table. I am hoping to have it in my regular website at Free Diabetes Alert.

Anyway, let's go back to Marie. Her motivation to join the program to lose weight is not to look good but to prevent diabetes and the complications that may come with it. She had prediabetes so she had a strong motivation to prevent it from becoming full blown.

Next week, let's she how she did. What do you think was her weight loss goal? Knowing that she weighed 240 pounds at the start of the program, can you guess her weight loss goal? How many fat grams a day would she limit her intake? Did she record the food she ate? Stay tuned; there will be more on Marie next week.

Session 16: How to Stay Motivated

This is our last session and it's confession time regarding weight lost and the food, calories, and exercise minutes that we have been recording. Let me start. I had no problem with recording the weight, calories and exercise minutes, but this I have to confess. I lost only half of my weight loss goal. Sigh...

I am not worried; that's still better had I not gone through this Physical Activity Program. Had I not gone through these 16 sessions of the DPP's Lifestyle Program, I would have gained pounds instead of losing half of my weight loss goal. What I will do is go through these sessions on my own again. Hopefully I will lose the other half in the process. If you have any suggestion, let me know by contacting me at my website.

Now how do we stay motivated is the burning question. List the changes we have made including our activity minutes, our eating plans of less calories and fat grams and the weight we have lost. Put the list up on the fridge. We will be so proud of ourselves, looking at the list once in a while.

Take photos of yourself if you have achieved your weight loss goal. Do fill out a contact form in my website to avoid spam. And I will inform you where to get in touch with me so you can send me the photos. I will have them uploaded in my web site for all the world to see. Wouldn't every one envy us then. How cool a way is that to keep us motivated!

Since you have lost the weight you set out to lose, now is the time to reward yourself. Think of what you have been meaning to have and do get it, within reason of course. Lucky ducks! I wish I were one of them, but please help us those who are not as lucky by sending us some words of encouragements.

For some of us who did not reach our goals, how can we improve our progress? Maybe we can have some kind of a friendly contest. For your homework, keep recording your weight, food and fat gram intake plus your exercise minutes. And think of a way you keep yourself motivated.

We are done but it is not over. Do these sessions again by yourself or with a group of friends and let us know how you're making out. Make sure though that you find out from your doctor that you don't have a condition that will be against the type of exercise you want to undertake. Next week, I will write about how some participants of this program did it.

Session 15-Keys to Managing Stress

This is an all-important session as most often people give up when there is enough stress in their lives. But how about the social cues we discussed last week? Did you identify some of yours? How did you overcome them? And how about your weight, food, drink, and fat grams intake, calories and exercise minutes? Did you keep a record of them? Good! Give me a five!

Now on to this session, we go. Let's be honest. When we are stressed, we eat more and we do less Physical Activity. Right? So this week we will identify the things that make us stressed and learn how to manage them so that our effort to change our lifestyle will not go to waste.

Doing too many things is stressful, don't you think? So let's learn to say no. Do you find, for example, that you're the only one replacing the toilet tissue in its holder? Then let's not do it because doing so will just enable other people to rely on us. We have to learn to share the work with others.

It will also be helpful to identify how we react to situations that are stressful. Do we get angry and lash out at others and taking our feelings out on them? Do we feel empty inside, sad and depressed? Do we refuse help from others and down too hard on ourselves?

After recognizing how we react when stressed out, let's do some positive self-talk. Let's remind ourselves to slow down, to take things as they come. When things go wrong, replace the negative self-talk with positive ones. Things that happen are not all our fault; they just do, for it is the fact of life.

Here are some strategies to manage stressful situations:

• Read a book of the favorite kind. This always relaxes me.
  


• Plan ahead so you can have an extra time just for yourself.
  


• Take a vacation; it does not have to be a long one. Even a night out with some friends will do wonders.
  


• Talk to someone you trust about what's bothering you; just getting what's bothering you out will give you some relief.
  


• Train for a short walk-a-thon.
  


• Is there something you've always wanted to do but had no chance to do it? Well, now is the time. Just do it!

There are others I wish I could tell you but it's homework time. And we still have one last session to do. After that we will talk more about stress and so for now, try to identify what gives you stress and tell yourself how to deal with it. And do keep track of weight, food, calories, and exercise minutes.

Session 14: Making Social Cues Work for You

Hello there my darlings. How are you making out? Hopefully, you're doing much better than I am. What am I saying? Of course, I'm losing weight, but I have a confession to make at the end of this course. I'm not giving up though; we still have two sessions to go. That's two whole weeks. And I'm staying away from buffets, I promise.

Did you record your food and drink, fat grams intake, weight and the number of minutes of exercise? Well, let's therefore get down to the business of Session 14 when we will learn how we can make the social cues to work for us. What are these social cues?

I don't know about you but when I see people eating, I want to eat too. Isn't that bad? And it gets worse when they offer me food to taste. How can one resist that especially if it's Lindy’s Cheesecake? There must be a way to eat good Diabetes Food. Then there are some when you’re getting ready to walk will entice you to go to the movies instead.

Now these are cues that we should know how to handle. They are such problematic cues we should try to stay away from them. Maybe we can change the problematic social cues to helpful ones. Do you think we can do this? Of course we can.

Let’s look at the people eating healthy instead. And when you’re offered healthy food, accept a small apple or something. So what to do is to stay away from social cues that will tempt you away from your new lifestyle. Know the people around you who give positive social cues.

Yes, go with people who encourage you to eat healthy. That’s easier said than done especially if it’s your husband who is steering you to the buffets. Could this be a ground for divorce? Well, anyway, let’s not go there. Let’s just do our best.

Also, go with people who are physically active. Join them in their walks. What works for me is planning ahead for parties, vacations and such. We went on a cruise one time and didn’t gain weight. Isn’t that grand? To think that the estimate for the daily weight gain on a cruise is at least one pound.

For homework, think of problematic social cues and turn them into helpful ones. Tell us the plan that helped you turn that around. Then write down every day your weight, food, drink, and fat grams intake, calories and exercise minutes. You thought you got away from that, didn’t you? Not a chance, sorry. See you next week.

Session 13: Jump Start Your Activity Plan

Here we are on Session 13 but first, how was your week? Did you keep a record of your weight, food and drink, fat grams consumption and the number of minutes of physical activity? Did you find a situation that tempted you to eat more and exercise less? How did you deal with it?

Folks, this works as long as you do your share, you can't help but lose weight. It is happening to me, although not as much weight as I wanted to lose. But it is a good start for me because without this program, I probably would have gained more. Now with the Physical Activity I am doing, I can’t help but lose a bit of weight.


Now let's deal with the boredom that could settle in with our activity plan. How do you do your activity? Do you run in place? Are you getting tired of the way you're doing your activity? Oh, I know, to get over the boredom try something new. Why not go swimming every once in a while instead?

And if you're tired of running in place, why not do it some place else. Do it in the laundry room or outside under the trees while you commune with nature. Just don't go on a burst of energy and run in place while you have guests. I tried that once, and boy, I almost landed in a psychiatric hospital.

Make it fun. Play badminton or some other new game. And this is the best, make it social. Invite a group of your friends for a run-along fest. As you run, you can gossip as much as you can as long as you don't put anyone down. Find out what Senators Clinton and Obama's latest antics and talk about this with your friends.

Make it a challenge. Learn a new kind of sports. I did and now I golf three times a week. My challenge is to break a hundred but that is nowhere near the horizon, but I did score a par once. The trouble was, just as I thought I was wonderful, I tripled bogey the next hole. What a let down!

Remember to be aerobically fit, you should follow the principles. The frequency should be five to seven times a week, the intensity should be to the point you can still talk but not sing, the time of activity should at least be ten minutes, gradually increasing to twenty and then sixty minutes. As for the type of activity, it should be one that strengthens the heart and muscles in arms and legs.

For homework, keep track of food, fat grams, exercise, weight and calories. Take your pulse while exercising. Check if you are in your target heart rate range. One test for this is exercise hard enough that you can still talk but intense enough that you cannot sing.

Session 12: Adjusting to Lapses in Lifestyle Changes

Have we done our homework? Where is the notebook where you jotted down your daily food and drink intake, the fat grams, the number of minutes of exercise you did each day? What did you do with the negative thoughts that came along each day? Did you talk back to them? Good for you.

Now let's go to session 12 which will help us go through the slippery slope of changing our lifestyle. For lapses there will be. They are a normal part of the process. We will be kidding ourselves if we did not go through some of them. For any weight loss program like at this site , we will experience a lapse.


To be successful at what are trying to do, that is lose weight and change lifestyle, is to learn how to recover quickly from these lapses. Find out what makes those lapses happen. In other words, what triggers them? Then practice how to react to these triggers and get back on track. Check this out:


Lapses are normal for we are humans. To err is human; to forgive divine, right? So we are likely to experience lapses especially in high-risk situation. A lapse occurs when we do not follow our plan of eating right and moving more. It is usually a separate event from which we can easily recover.

A lapse won't hurt our progress unless it graduates into a series of lapses which they call a relapse. This is when we lose focus and go back to our old unhealthy habits. We can still recover from a relapse but it will be harder than dealing with a lapse.

After relapse comes collapse. This is when we have returned to the old habits and have gained back all the weight we have lost. The wrong thing to do is to react to a single lapse as if it were a relapse. So it is the way we respond to a lapse that is important. The truth is that no single lapse will ruin the progress we have made.

So let's learn to master how to respond to lapses so we can regain our focus and go back to the healthy ways of eating and exercising. Talk back to it and to someone who supports your weight loss program. Ask why the lapse occurred and learn from that.

Then focus again on what is right and all the positive changes you have made. Lapses are just opportunities to learn something. Remember that had we not done something good, there would not have been any lapse. Know the high risk situations. Do you eat more when you're tired? Take a nap. Do you eat more when you're mad. Take a walk; it will lift your spirit.

Continue to keep a record of your daily weight, food and drink including fat grams intake, and the number of exercise minutes. Then identify a high risk situation that made you eat and not exercise. Then deal with it accordingly. Share with us next week how you dealt with this slip