Author: Diane Carbonell

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Handling the Premenstrual Munchies Without Gaining Weight

It seems so unfair. You are sailing along with your weight loss plan for a few weeks and have lost a pound or two. Then out of nowhere you are hit with the major munchies. Chips? Yes, please. Cookies? You eat five. You’ve just encountered the premenstrual munchies. Here are some ways to handle those annoying munchies that come every month without blowing your diet.

Why does it even happen?

Blame it on mother nature or blame it on the fact you are a female. Whoever you place the blame on, there is a reason for the premenstrual munchies. Scientists theorize the change in blood sugar you experience the week before your cycle starts is partly responsible for your increased appetite. This, combined with normal hormonal changes in the luteal phase of your cycle increases your desire for foods that aren’t exactly healthy.

In fact, a study published in an issue of the “British Journal of Nutrition,” found that women who suffered from premenstrual syndrome were more likely to crave and consume foods high in carbohydrates and simple sugars.

Now that you know why it happens, the key to not letting those munchies undo your hard work is to learn how to control those cravings.

And they can be strong.

I know there are times during the premenstrual period when I find myself standing in the pantry just hoping I’ve got something in there that is junky enough to satisfy the munchie of the moment. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.

I’ve had clients tell me they try to resist the munchies by eating something healthy. But instead of being satisfied with a few rice cakes or a handful of raw vegetables they end up eating 300 calories in healthy foods and then eating the cookie or bowl of ice cream they originally wanted.

That’s not good, but it’s real life.

The key to handling premenstrual munchies is twofold.

First, you’ve got to know when they are likely to come and then have a plan for dealing with them.

To know when they are likely to hit you the hardest, take a month to track your cycle and your cravings. Most women tend to have the munchies hit the week before their period hits. Once you know when you are at your most vulnerable, watch for the signs.

What are the signs?

 – Craving salty or sweet foods.

 – Not feeling satisfied no matter what you eat.

 – Having a desire to graze or snack more than you normally do.

What’s a good plan?

I like taking a three-pronged approach to handling the premenstrual munchies. This plan ensures you are addressing the physical, emotional, and practical component of those frustrating cravings.

1. Eat What You Crave

I think it’s better to eat what you really want instead of trying to satisfy your desire for a bit of chocolate with baby carrots. You can spend all afternoon grazing on healthy foods and still feel unsatisfied.

Identify what it is you really want and have some.

2. Eat In Small Quantities

Now, having what you want doesn’t mean you can have as much as you want. You’ve got to commit to eating a small amount of what you really crave so it doesn’t blow your diet.

And if you are craving chocolate or chips, those calories add up quickly. For example, 2 ounces of chips has over 300 calories and a single candy bar can easily have 250 calories or more.

Portion out your food and savor it by eating it slowly.

3. Adjust Your Calorie Intake Accordingly

If you do overeat, do your best to adjust your calorie intake accordingly so you don’t end up eating 1,000 calories more than you need to in order to keep your weight loss going. For instance, if you eat 500 junky calories by “accident,” eat a plain salad with some grilled chicken for dinner instead of a higher calorie meal. Doing this every once in a while won’t hurt you in the least.

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10 Sneaky Ways To Cut Calories From A Recipe

Calories really matter when you are losing weight.
It’s just a fact of life.
Because of this, you need to learn how to make your favorite dishes in a lower calorie version so you don’t feel deprived and your family won’t notice the difference. There are all kinds of ways to cut calories from a dish, but here are my 10 favorites. My family never even notices the difference between the lower and higher calorie versions.
That’s sneaky at its best.
My family used to think they didn’t like diet food. Of course, their definition of diet food was anything with vegetables as the main ingredient. They also got annoyed when I told them I had made a dish healthier for them. In their minds–and sometimes in mine as well–that made it not as delicious.
Over time I learned it was better not to say anything about cutting the calorie count by substituting ingredients. I just did it and enjoyed knowing I was feeding my family healthier meals that they still loved. And from a weight loss perspective, I ate smaller portions of the lower calorie meals and lost weight at a reasonable pace. It worked out well for everyone.
Here are the top 10 sneaky methods I use to cut calories from a recipe.
1. Reduce the sugar in your favorite dessert recipes. You can often reduce the sugar by a third without adversely affecting the texture or taste. Make a test batch, though, to be certain you like it with less sugar.
2. Use half the fat or none at all in recipes that call for oil or butter. I usually skip sautéing in oil and just use some water and a lot of stirring. I save over 200 calories by doing this, and no one can tell the difference. If you want to get rid of the fat in muffins or baked goods, unsweetened applesauce often works well.
3. Substitute finely chopped vegetables for some of the meat in casseroles and sauces. Instead of using all ground turkey for a meat-based spaghetti sauce, I use one-quarter of the recipe amount and add 1 cup of finely chopped zucchini.
4. Skip the add-ons that add nothing but calories to your food. I’m talking about the habit of finishing vegetables with a tablespoon of oil, adding whipped cream to a low-calorie apple crisp, or dousing a green salad with 200 calories of dressing.
5. Use some fat-free ingredients when possible. I’m not an advocate for a completely fat-free diet, but using fat-free salad dressing, sour cream, and fat-free milk and cheeses in a higher calorie recipe can save a lot of calories.
6. Change the cut of meat to save calories. Use a leaner cut of beef, chicken instead of pork, or ground turkey instead of hamburger.
7. Leave out most of the cheese called for in a recipe. If you’re making a Mexican dish that calls for 1 cup of cheese, use 1/4 or 1/2 cup instead.
8. Use egg whites instead of whole eggs when possible. I use a combination of egg whites and whole eggs in omelets, breakfast casseroles, and in some muffin recipes.
9. Use Greek yogurt in place of sour cream. Greek yogurt and sour cream have similar textures and flavor profiles. Try using Greek yogurt instead of sour cream for Mexican dishes, salad dressings, and in baked goods. If your family is like mine and thinks they don’t like Greek yogurt, wash and save an empty sour cream container and fill it with Greek yogurt. They’ll never know the difference.
10. Take it easy on the sauces to save calories. Make gravy with less fat and use it sparingly, serve dressing on the side, make marinara sauce instead of meat sauce, and use lower calorie versions of Alfredo sauce. When we have an Asian-inspired meal, I give each person a small container of dipping sauce. That way I control the calories and they all feel special.

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4 Simple Techniques to Setting Your Final Weight Loss Goal

You won’t get anywhere if you don’t have your final destination in mind. Unless you have a lot of time, you wouldn’t set off on a road trip without a clue as to where you want to go. Weight loss is the same way. If you don’t know what your final weight loss goal is, you may never get there. Here are four simple techniques to setting your final weight loss goal. Some involve the scale and some don’t.

Set a Weight Goal

The most common way to set your final weight loss goal is to pick a number on the scale. Don’t just pick a number randomly, but really give it some thought. If you are years away from high school, picking your high school weight might not be realistic. Ask your doctor what a good weight is for you, use the Weight Watchers calculator and take a look at their recommended weight ranges based on height and age, or select a weight you feel you can easily maintain.

Set a Body Percentage Goal

You may want to avoid setting a number because you are scale averse or because you are focusing more on developing your muscular strength as you lose weight.

Setting a body percentage goal is easy but tracking it is more difficult. WebMD indicates that an adult man is considered healthy when his body fat percentage is between 10 and 25 percent, and a woman should aim for between 18 and 32 percent body fat.

To monitor your body fat, the easiest way is to have a professional use calipers to measure you. Many gyms have people who are trained to measure body fat or you can purchase a set of calipers and do it yourself. There are also scales designed to measure body fat, but they are not always accurate.

Set your body fat percentage based on a range and measure your body fat every two weeks.

Set a Body Mass Index Goal

The body mass index (BMI) chart is the standard that doctors use when deciding whether you are underweight, at a normal weight, overweight, or obese. While some people do not like the chart because it does not take into account athletes with large amounts of muscle, for the average person, it works relatively well.

A normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9. Use the BMI calculator at the National Institutes of Health to determine where you are right now. Set your BMI goal and check on your progress using one of the many online calculators.

Set a Clothing Size Goal

Some of you may be scale averse and refuse to use a scale as a way to measure your weight loss progress or set your final goal weight. That’s fine as long as you do have a way to know when you have reached your goal and are satisfied with how you look and feel.

Clothing size is a way to set a final weight loss goal. The key for this technique is to pick a piece of clothing rather than just a size. If you say you are going to lose weight until you can fit into size 8 pants, what size 8 pants are you talking about? Clothing manufacturers do not use the same measurements when determining size, so selecting a particular size is difficult, if not impossible.

Set your final goal as being able to fit into a particular clothing item or two. It may be one you have hanging in your closet from thinner days or one you buy as your goal outfit.

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5 Ways To Stop Using Food As An Emotional Salve

Do your emotions have anything to do with your weight? Is emotional eating real? Do some people use food as an emotional salve?
Yes. Yes. And yes.
I’m no psychologist, but I don’t have to be one to know for a fact there is much truth to the concept of emotional eating. Your emotions often play a vital role in your ability to lose and maintain a healthy weight.
Many of the decisions you make on a daily basis are driven by emotion, not just the food choices you make, but also how you react to various situations.
Research supports the fact that many overweight people have emotional issues that greatly affect their food choices. Jennifer C. Collins, MA, MS, and Jon E. Bentz, PhD, writing for the Journal of Lancaster General Hospital, stated:

Food is often used as a coping mechanism by those with weight problems, particularly when they are sad, anxious, stressed, lonely, and frustrated. In many obese individuals there appears to be a perpetual cycle of mood disturbance, overeating, and weight gain.

Using food as an emotional salve often begins in childhood. As I was growing up, I began the cycle of emotional eating without even being aware of it. When life felt busy or stressful, I walked down to the neighborhood convenience store and picked up a stash of chocolate and potato chips to eat later. Those early patterns set the stage for further dependency on food to soothe emotions.
It should not surprise you that emotions affect food choices. Food has played more than a nutritional role in the world for centuries. Births, deaths, milestones, and holidays are all marked with food. People worldwide use food as the centerpiece in many celebrations. Because food is used for more than just nutrition, it stands to reason that food elicits an emotional response in many people. I know it does for me.
It is the rare person who struggles with weight and has no emotional attachments to food.
Some common emotions that may cause you to turn to food are:

  • Sadness
  • Anger
  • Frustration
  • Happiness
  • Joy
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Boredom

That’s some list isn’t it? Some good, some bad, and some not so attractive.
All emotions are valid and important. How you handle your tendency to eat due to emotions will make the difference between success and failure when it comes to weight loss. Compulsive overeating due to emotions is extremely common and difficult to control.
However, it is possible to control your emotional response to food. It just takes practice, dedication, and accountability.
Here are five steps to take to quit using food as an emotional salve.

1. Acknowledge Food Fixes Nothing

It is tempting to reach for a Twinkie or dish out some ice cream when you are feeling emotional. However, the truth is that eating foods that are not part of your nutritional plan does nothing to fix the emotion. Instead, you likely feel guilty after blowing your diet.

2. Determine What Emotions You Are Trying to Quash

Look at the list above and see if you identify with any of the common emotions that drive overeating. Write down what emotional triggers you have as a way to recognize the emotions that you are trying to quash with food.

3. Pinpoint Behaviors

Emotional eating is often associated with certain behaviors. For me, when I had a stressful phone call or conversation, I would find myself drifting into the kitchen to find something to eat. Think about the last time you over ate. What were you doing? Where were you? What was going on in your life?

4. Seek Out an Accountability Partner

Ditching emotional eating is tough to do alone. I had my husband help me by holding me accountable for whether I finished off the leftover birthday cake or went through the fast food drive-thru. Find someone who is nonjudgmental and trustworthy.

5. Deal With Emotions Without Food

When you feel emotional, train yourself to wait about 15 minutes before eating a food that isn’t on your plan. Set a timer if you need to. Walk away your emotions, get busy with a project, or lift weights as a way to let the initial rush of emotions pass without overeating.

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The Magic Bean: The Key to a Healthy Heart and Wallet

Did your friends in elementary school ever sing this little chant when confronted with beans on their lunch tray?  “Beans, beans are good for your heart. The more you eat the more you . . . !” Well, in the interest of keeping this article in good taste, I will let you fill in the last word. Let me help you out by telling you the missing word rhymes with “heart.”

Anyway, beans are good for your heart and yes; they sometimes cause you to pass wind.  Beans are also great for weight loss and overall health.

They are one of those foods you really should be eating whether you are a vegan, a vegetarian, or a flexitarian. For a long time, I only ate beans when they were mashed up and fried in a refried bean dish at my favorite Mexican restaurant or in baked beans loaded with bacon. While tasty, those beans did not do much for me nutritionally nor did they help with my struggle against obesity.

You can understand why those bean dishes did not help me lose weight when I tell you that a restaurant-sized serving of refried beans has about 350 calories and 10 grams of fat and loaded baked beans has 231 calories in 1 cup.

Of course, it did not help that I was eating a lot of other high-calorie foods with those bean dishes.

I rediscovered beans during a time in my life where I did not have much money and needed to lose 150 pounds. My husband and I had recently had our third child and were trying desperately to make ends meet.

Personally, I had reached the point where I was fed up with weighing 300 pounds and was finally ready to make a permanent lifestyle change.

Beans were a lot cheaper than meat and relatively low in calories so I began experimenting with different bean recipes. And, because I am a good mom, I taught my 7-year-old the bean chant. She loved it and has taught it to her six younger siblings.

Because I like to learn about new things, I did some research on beans. (That way you don’t have to!) I found out some interesting tidbits that made me a life-long believer in beans.

1. Beans are high in fiber. A cup of cooked beans has over 10 g.

2. They are versatile.

3. A 1/2 cup of beans has about 100 calories.

4. Most beans are excellent sources of Omega-3 fatty acids.

5. They are a good source of protein with one cup giving you about 14 g.

6. Cooked beans freeze beautifully.

7. Beans are low on glycemic index, meaning they are good for your blood sugar.

8. Contain B vitamins, calcium, potassium, and folate.

9. Beans have just 1 g of fat per serving.

10. They are filling, which helps you eat less food.

Now, of course, eating beans did not magically make me wake up 150 pounds lighter and they will not magically make you lose weight either. Sad, I know. But, they are a great food to add to your diet.

Some of my favorite ways to use beans are in my terrific minestrone soup, stuffed into whole wheat tortillas that I make myself, or mashed and made into hummus. I also add cooked garbanzo beans or kidney beans to green salads.

Oh, and by the way, it is super simple buy dried beans and cook them yourself. You can soften them overnight and cook them in your slow cooker while you are at work.  They are much cheaper when you buy them dried and keep for a long time.

Some people I talk to about weight loss are afraid of adding beans to their diet because they are high in carbohydrates. (ie: 40 g of carbohydrates per 1 cup of black beans.) I encourage you to not be fearful of the carbohydrates in beans because they are the good kind of carb. They are complex carbohydrates, which your body needs no matter what type of diet you follow.

We have beans at least twice a week and I save money, keep my weight at a healthy number, improve my family’s nutrition, and enjoy experimenting with new ways to prepare these little food gems.

Try adding beans to your weekly meal plan for a few weeks and see what happens.

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The Big Picture: A Weekly Calorie Allowance

Calories, calories, calories. It’s what a lot of people who lose weight use as their barometer for whether they are following their diet correctly. Counting calories is a proven way for losing weight, but there are many variations on what should be a relatively simple process. One question I often get asked is whether keeping track of calories on a weekly rather than daily basis works. Here are some things to consider if you want to track weekly versus daily calories.

The Concept

The concept behind weekly calories is simple. When you track weekly calories it doesn’t really matter how many calories you eat on a Tuesday or Saturday. What matters is that at the end of seven days, you have met your calorie goal for the week.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you want to keep your calories between 1,200 and 1,400 calories a day. Simply multiply those numbers by seven to get the weekly totals. In this case, you can eat between 8,400 and 9,800 calories each week.

The Benefits

Daily calorie counting means that you stick to a certain calorie number or range every single day. For some of you, that might be too restrictive. The benefits of a weekly versus daily calorie target are:

  1. You can vary your calories day to day, traditionally called calorie cycling.
  2. If you have a cheat day or huge meal one day it doesn’t matter as long as you are within the target number for the week.
  3. It feels easier to track because you are looking at one final number rather than worrying about seven incremental numbers.
  4. It gives you flexibility for vacations, social events, and stressful situations.

The first benefit, calorie cycling, also has some research to back it up. Animal studies that were published in a 2007 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that calorie cycling may be a good way to increase weight loss in humans.

The Downsides

Like any dieting strategy, a weekly calorie goal has some downsides. While it can work for weight loss, the truth is that a weekly calorie goal does still require you to monitor your daily calories. You can’t just guess at the end of the week as to how many calories you consumed each day and still lose weight. You’ve got to know for sure.
A second downside is if you eat too many calories early in the week, you may not have enough calories to stay full and feel satisfied by the end of the week. Using the earlier example of eating 8,400 to 9,800 calories per week, if you eat 8,500 calories for the first five days of the week, you don’t have enough left for the last two days. That’s a problem.
What will you do then?
Well, you should eat at least 1,200 calories a day, so you will have to go over your calorie allotment for the week. If you do that a few weeks in a row, you aren’t going to lose much weight.

Tips to Really Make It Work for You

To make weekly calorie counting work you have to do three things:
First, you’ve got to have a solid way of tracking calories. Fortunately, it’s super easy to do by using an app on your phone or a website you visit on your computer. Enter in your daily food intake and keep a running tally of your calories for the week. At the end of the week, analyze how you did.
Second, you must be flexible. If eating a strict diet every day appeals to you, you likely won’t love weekly calorie counting. Flexibility in your food choices allows you to have lean days and generous days when it comes to food.
Third, make sure you are honest. Because you are looking at the week as a whole, you may find it easy to forget to write down a food you ate or make assumptions about your calorie intake. Honesty with yourself not only helps you keep to your calorie goal but helps you identify areas of weakness within your food plan.

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Tread Carefully Around the Thanksgiving Table

Thanksgiving is a time filled with potential pitfalls for the dieter. Even though the holiday celebrates a historical event, the focus of Thanksgiving ends up being all the food spread around the house. If you are trying to stick to your diet and lose weight, you need to tread carefully around the Thanksgiving table.

Holidays are a time of great celebration and Thanksgiving is no different. Many holidays have a food-centered focus, but none so great as Thanksgiving. Starting with the turkey and finishing with the pumpkin pies, the holiday is all about food.

When I counsel people about sticking to their diets at Thanksgiving, I often tell them to keep the focus of the holiday on the people and the reason for the holiday rather than the food.

That’s hard to do at Thanksgiving.

After all there are a lot of traditional foods served at Thanksgiving that are not diet friendly. But all is not lost.

You can enjoy Thanksgiving and still stick to your diet.

The first thing I want you to think about is whether you will be challenged by tempting Thanksgiving foods on just Thanksgiving day or over the entire Thanksgiving weekend. If it’s just the single meal, then enjoy yourself and don’t stress over the calories.

However, if your family is like mine, there may be Thanksgiving treats present the entire long weekend. That’s where it gets challenging. Especially when you consider that the average Thanksgiving meal has 4,500 calories, according to the Calorie Control Council. If you eat near that calorie level for days in a row, you can easily gain some weight. Not to mention that overeating for several days can make it mentally difficult to get your diet back on track.

When I approach a food-centric holiday like Thanksgiving, I make a mental list of the foods that I can only have during that holiday. For example, I never have pumpkin pie, cranberry nut pound cake, or dressing during the year. Then, I decide whether I want to spend my calories on those Thanksgiving foods. Fortunately for me, I am not a fan of pumpkin pie so I can pass it up. Dressing and cranberry nut pound cake; however, are worth spending a few extra calories on.

After deciding what foods are worth the calories, I take a look at the holiday schedule. I make sure I have time to exercise a little longer each day to burn some additional calories and keep myself focused on my weight loss goals.

When the holiday weekend begins, stay tuned in to what you’re consuming and avoid mindless eating. This is really important because mindlessly munching on can greatly impact how many calories you consume. For example, 10 crackers and a serving of cheese ball is 260 calories, there are about 300 calories in 1 cup of traditional sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin pie with 1/4 cup of whipping cream has about 300 calories.

Definitely offer to bring healthy options such as:

Mixed green salad

Steamed green beans that aren’t smothered in cream of mushroom soup

Fresh fruit

Low-fat cheese

Lower calorie desserts

Assorted nuts

I assure you that treading carefully around the Thanksgiving table will help you avoid weight gain, give you a sense of satisfaction, and reinforce the fact that you can enjoy the holiday without ruining your diet or gaining weight.

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8 Surprising Truths About Weight Loss

1. You Can Weigh Less And Look Bigger

Believe it or not, you can weigh less than someone your same height and build and still look bigger than he or she does. If you don’t exercise and your friend does, he will look smaller and fitter than you even though you have the same build. It’s not the end of the world, just a surprising truth about losing weight. One way to combat this is to include both strength and cardio training in your weight loss plan.

2. Weight Loss Can Be Fun

Some people say weight loss is drudgery. I can totally relate to that. But once you get in the swing of it, losing weight can be fun. It’s fun to see old clothes fit once again, feel in control of your food choices, and be happy with yourself when you look in the mirror.

3. How Easy It Is For Weight To Come Back On

A truth that few people talk about is how easy it is for the weight you lost to reappear. It takes considerable effort and dedication to keep those pounds off. While one slip-up at the breakfast buffet won’t pack on 10 pounds, a few slip-ups a week for a month will get you started down the road to weight regain.

4. Bones May Reappear

When you lose weight, you may notice that your collarbones, wrist bones, and even knee bones become more prominent. This was one of those non-scale victories I most enjoyed. Here’s a funny story. A friend of mine went to the doctor after he lost weight, convinced he had a mass on his chest wall. The doctor felt it and said, “Congratulations Jim. You’ve found your sternum!”

5. The Closer You Get To Your Goal, The Less Food You Need

If you start out losing weight by eating 1,800 calories, as you lose weight, you will need to reduce the number of calories you eat or increase the number of calories you burn. To combat this phenomenon, try eating the number of calories you will need to maintain your goal weight. Then you don’t really have to reduce the number of calories you need as you go along.

6. Working Out Is Rewarding

I was an avid hater of exercise until I began to exercise regularly. After about six weeks of regular exercise, I discovered I liked the way it made me feel, enjoyed the improvement in my fitness level, and loved feeling stronger. If you think you hate exercise, give it a six-week trial. You may find, as I did, you like it more than you thought you would.

7. New Habits Are Hard To Keep

Part of the weight loss process is developing new habits. Although easy to keep in the beginning, some habits are hard to keep up. For me, the habit of occasionally writing down what I ate was fun in the beginning but got tiresome after a while. I kept at it, though, because I knew that it would help me in the long run. If a habit is one you want to keep up, commit to it no matter how hard it is. Eventually, it will become a permanent rather than temporary habit.

8. The Types Of Foods You Eat Matter

Some people successfully lose weight by just eating at a certain calorie level and ignoring the healthfulness of the foods they eat. I suppose you could lose weight eating at McDonald’s every day, but what does that teach you for the long haul? Not much. Instead, focus on calories and nutritional content of your food. Not only is it better for you, it helps you develop the habit of making good food choices.

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Sticking to Your Diet In a Family of Enablers

Family is great. Except when it isn’t. And sometimes your family isn’t on your side when it comes to dieting and weight loss. In an ideal world, your family would be your biggest cheerleaders, standing by helping you make healthy choices and exercising with you, but the reality is occasionally very different. If this is your situation, let me help you out of this potential minefield by sharing my tips for dealing with family members who are less than helpful when it comes to your diet.

The role of family support in dieting is one that isn’t talked about a lot. I suppose that’s because most people assume your family has your back when it comes to improving your health. And in many cases that’s true. And in all cases, that’s the way it should be.

The sad truth is there are situations where your family isn’t your best support system when you are trying to lose weight. And, in some cases, they intentionally or unintentionally stand in your way.

Here’s a real life example. A person I’ll call Samantha had over 75 pounds to lose. She wanted to lose weight in the worst way but always failed at her diets. After years of struggling, she finally reached the point where she was making good progress.

At first her family was all for the weight loss. But as time went on, her family became less supportive. They said things like:

– “You don’t want mom’s apple pie? You are going to hurt her feelings.”

– “Samantha, why don’t you just have a bite of cake – a little won’t hurt you.”

– “Surely you can take the day off from going to the gym. One day doesn’t make a difference.”

– “Have an appetizer with us. You know you love fried cheese.”

– “Samantha, you are making us all feel guilty for eating so much. Can’t you lighten up sometimes?”

So what happened?

There are often several factors at play. Some are rooted in family traditions and others are due to insecurity or concern for your health.

Family members may feel threatened by your weight loss and not even realize it. As you change the way you eat and the types of activities you participate in, your family may wonder whether you will still relate to them in the same way you always have. To alleviate their concerns, whether voiced or not, sit down and have a frank discussion with them about why you are making these changes and ask if they have any concerns.

You may find it hard to broach the subject, but it is always better to get it out in the open rather than sweep pending issues under the rug.

Sometimes family members try to sabotage your diet. Prepare yourself for this possibility by deciding in advance to politely refuse offers of foods not on your weight loss plan. Over time, they will get the hint you are sticking to your plan and committed to losing weight.

If your gentle rebuffs don’t work, you may have to stand up for yourself and confront your family members in a kind and loving way. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind, reassure them you still love them and let them know in a nice way that it is not okay for them to sabotage your diet.

Part of your weight loss journey is learning to deal with outside influences that tempt you or cause you to stumble. Unfortunately, handling unsupportive family members is sometimes part of that process. Use these moments as a way to cement your new lifestyle to yourself and show your family how to respect and appreciate you in a new way.

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Using Pumpkin to Lose the Plump?

During the fall, you can’t miss the abundance of pumpkin based foods and drinks available in grocery stores and restaurants. Higher end coffee shops like Starbucks and fast food joints like McDonald’s offer some type of pumpkin confection during the cool fall months. If you are interested in losing weight, you know to avoid high-calorie pumpkin desserts, but is pumpkin a food you should think about including in your diet plan? Here are five good reasons to eat pumpkin whenever you can.

Pumpkin Gives You Fiber

Pumpkin lattes don’t have much fiber, but both raw and cooked pumpkin do. The USDA Nutrient Database indicates that 1 cup of raw pumpkin has 1 g of fiber and a cup of cooked pumpkin has 2.7 g. Fiber not only helps you stay regular (if you know what I mean) but also plays a role in keeping you full. So indulge in real pumpkin but skip the lattes.

In case you were wondering why the difference in the raw versus cooked numbers, when you cook a food like pumpkin it becomes compressed or denser. So a cup of cooked pumpkin takes up less space than a cup of raw pumpkin. Now you know.

Pumpkin is Low, Low, Low in Calories

Pumpkin is very low in calories, making it an ideal weight loss food. A whole cup of raw pumpkin has just 30 calories and a cup of cooked pumpkin has 49 calories. That’s less than an apple or half a banana. You can eat a lot of pumpkin and not have it negatively affect your weight loss efforts at all.

Pumpkin Fits into Low Carb Diets

Pumpkin is not a zero carb food, but it is relatively low in carbohydrates. A cooked cup of pumpkin has 12 g of carbs and raw pumpkin has just 7 g of carbs. If you want to include pumpkin into your low carb diet, just be sure to pair it with other low carb foods. For example, have a pumpkin soup alongside a grilled pork chop or lean steak.

Pumpkin Has More Potassium Than a Banana

A small banana has 362 mg of potassium and a cup of raw or cooked pumpkin has 394 and 564 mg, respectively. Potassium is important to your body because it moves glucose to your muscles and helps control your electrolyte balance. Adequate potassium intake helps your body maintain or replenish its electrolyte balance after sweating during exercise.

An easy way to use pumpkin as an after exercise pick-me-up is to blend 1/4 cup of pureed pumpkin with half a scoop of protein powder, 1/2 cup almond milk, and a dash of stevia.

Pumpkin is Versatile

Pumpkin is a versatile vegetable you can use in your weight loss plan all year long. In fact, I tend to buy a few extra cans of pumpkin during November to use throughout the year. If you are ambitious, you can buy raw pumpkins, cook them yourself, and store the cooked pumpkin in the freezer for six to eight months.

I like to use pumpkin in whole wheat muffins, smoothies, pancakes, casseroles, and soups. When including pumpkin in foods, make sure not to ruin the low-calorie pumpkin by adding a bunch of calories from sugar, unhealthy carbohydrates, or unnecessary fats. I’m looking at you – sweet potato casserole.