Diet and exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle can help improve your Plastic Surgery results. Whether you wish to firm certain areas or slim down the body in general, you can help shape your body with good diet and exercise habits.
In order to help you look your best, Dr. Whiteman will do his part to make sure you receive the treatments that will enhance your body. But you also need to make sure to do your part—maintaining a healthy diet and regular exercise—to help achieve your best results. In some cases, difficulty losing weight can be a symptom of a medical problem. If you suspect this to be your problem, check with your doctor to rule out medical conditions, such as hypothyroidism or polycystic ovarian disease. In the majority of cases, people have difficulty losing weight because they are consuming too many calories and not burning enough off with exercise.
Common Diet Mistakes:
Skipping Meals
If you skip meals, you will likely be extremely hungry and may overeat at the next meal. Aim to eat 3-6 small meals or snacks per day. Listen to your body and do not ignore your hunger cues. Eat when you are truly hungry, and do not eat when you are not.
If your diet is too strict, you are not going to follow it. Make small changes in how you eat in order to build healthy life-time changes to last for a lifetime.
Fad Diets
Fad diets frequently lack important nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins and/or minerals). They usually lead to short-term weight loss (losing weight in muscle and water) – BUT not FAT loss. They often lead to clinical symptoms such as headaches, anxiety, fatigue, depression, illness, and decreased metabolism.
You can recognize Fad diets because they boast “magic” or miracle foods (like the grapefruit diet), bizarre quantities, rigid menus, specific food combinations, rapid weight loss (“lose 30 pounds in 30 days!”), and usually no increased physical activity.
Not counting the small stuff
Even a piece of candy from a co-worker’s candy dish, a food sample in the grocery store, a special coffee drink with whipped cream or some extra mayo on your sandwich can add extra inches on your waist. Review your diet for sources of “Hidden Calories”—foods that add calories, but not much nutrition.
Cutting out food groups
Food=Nutrients. Each food group contains certain vitamins and minerals you will not get from other food groups. Include all foods from the food guide pyramid to get all your vitamins and nutrients. Instead, choose smaller portions to help you shed the pounds.
Not planning out meals/snacks
When you don’t plan ahead, your diet choices might not be as smart. Make sure to have healthy snacks in the fridge and pack your lunch (if possible).
Eating “low fat” or “low carb” food items
Be careful with foods with these labels, they may have less fat or carbohydrates, but these foods are not calorie free. Many “low fat” products add extra sugar and “low carb” items often add extra fat, which adds extra calories— READ THE FOOD LABELS!!
Skipping exercise
Exercise is vital for maintaining long term weight loss. When you lose weight, you will lose some muscle. In order to maintain your muscle mass (and therefore your metabolism), make sure to exercise—cardio to burn calories and lifting weights to build muscle (and then later burning calories at rest!)
Tips for Diet Success:
Make small changes to your current diet
Gradual changes are easy to make and stick to in order to keep off weight long-term. Whether it be cutting out one extra juice/soda/sweet tea, changing from whole milk to 2%, or trading in sugar or honey in your coffee for a non-calorie sweetener, these small changes add up in a big way.
Exercise
The Joslin Diabetes Center conducted a study where those who followed a diet and exercise for 6 weeks lost weight. Those who maintained their exercise programs for 6 weeks after stopping their diets maintained their weight loss, whereas only some who continued following their diet for 6 weeks maintained their weight loss. This is because when we exercise, we build muscle. Muscle burns calories. The more muscles we have the more calories our bodies burn—and therefore, the amount of calories we need to maintain our weight is higher.
Decrease your intake of soda, juice, sweet tea, and alcohol.
One 16oz glass of soda, juice, sweet tea or beer is about 240 calories. There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. If you cut out one soda, juice or sweet tea per day, you could lose nearly one pound per week. If you drink mixed alcoholic drinks, the amount of calories you are drinking is even higher. Since you get calories from the juice or mixer and the liquor (which contains about 150 calories per one ounce.)
Instead choose water, lowfat or fat free milk (cow, soy, etc), or diet soda. You can flavor your water with lemon, lime, or even a cucumber slice.
Cut your portion sizes in half
When eating out in a restaurant, dishes are twice as big as they were 20 years ago and are often seasoned with extra cream, butter and salt to add flavor. Main entrees can contain more than 1000 calories at most restaurants. Ask your server to wrap up half of your meal before you even are served your dish so you won’t be tempted to finish your entire meal, or share with a friend!
When at home, take half of what you think you want to eat – our eyes are often bigger than our stomachs. If you also slow down to enjoy your food, you might find that your hunger is satisfied with a much smaller portion.
Try to eat out at restaurants less.
Due to the higher calorie foods and bigger portions, this can be costly on your waist line.
But, if you are going to eat at a restaurant, try to choose wisely:
Have it “your way”. Ask for food to be baked, broiled, boiled, grilled or stir fried rather than fried. Have sauces and dressings on the side. Order vegetables instead of high-fat sides like French fries.
Avoid items that are described as: crispy, battered, breaded, creamy, rich, “stuffed with” and super-sized. These items are all high in fat and/or calories.
You might say, but I HAVE changed my diet and I eat well, but are you consuming hidden calories?
Hidden Calories:
- Skin on poultry*
- Cheese* (100 calories, 8g fat for each ounce of full fat cheese)
- “Fat free” foods
- condiments* (butter, margarine, sour cream, guacamole, mayo, salad dressing, bacon bits, croutons, whipped cream)
- High calorie drinks: Soda, sweet tea, juice (150+ cals/ 12oz can), Milkshakes (a large chocolate frosty is 560kcal, 29g fat medium chocolate chip cookie dough Blizzard is 950kcal, 36g fat)
- Specialty coffees (Can have as many as 700 calories per large drink with whipped cream)
- Snacks from vending machines/food carts*
- Alcohol
- Peanuts/Sunflower seeds* (180 to over 200 calories per ¼ cup).
- Dried fruit (serving size: ¼ cup =60 calories)
- Fried foods*
- Whole milk* (Has 150 calories and 8g fat per 8oz serving versus skim milk has 80 calories).
- *High in fat
Healthy Snacks:
- A piece of fruit (pear, apple, orange, melon)
- Low-fat/Light Yogurt
- Raw Vegetables (Broccoli, celery, peppers, carrots, cucumber, string beans, snow peas, cherry tomatoes, Jicama) with low-fat Dip (Ranch, hummus)
- Half cup of low-fat Cottage Cheese & Fruit
- ½ Grapefruit
- ½ bag Air-popped light Popcorn
- Frozen grapes
- Veggie Pizza without Cheese
- Unsweet Applesauce
- Cooked Plantain
- ½ Lean Turkey Sandwich
- Gingersnaps
- Low-fat Mozzarella String Cheese
- Hummus & Toasted Pita Chips
- Baked Sweet Potato Strips
- Non-fat Frozen Yogurt
- Granola Bar
- Frozen Fruit Bars
- Cold Sugar-free Cereal & Skim Milk
- Low-fat Pita Chips
- Instant Oatmeal & Fresh Fruit
- Natural Peanut Butter on Celery
- Pizza Sauce on Whole Grain English Muffin
- Apple Butter on Toast
- Tomato Stuffed with Cooked Brown Rice
- Baked Potato Chips
- Fat-free Cookies
- Rice Cakes
- Toasted Pita Wedges & Low-fat Cheese
- Ice Milk
- Walnuts (1oz)
- Non-fat Plain Yogurt & Fresh Berries
- Vanilla Wafers
- ½ English Muffin w/ Fruit Spread (like Smuckers sugar-free strawberry preserves)
- Low-fat Crackers w/ Low-fat Cheese
- Whole Grain Breadsticks
- Green Salad w/ Low-fat Dressing
- 20-30 Baked Tortilla Chips & Salsa
- Baked Potato & Low-fat Cottage Cheese or salsa
- Fruit Canned in its Own Juice
- Fruit and yogurt parfait (vanilla light n’ fit yogurt with cut fruit and branbuds)
- Cooked Asparagus Spears w/ Lemon
- Apple Slices Sprinkled w/ Cinnamon
- Sugar-free Jell-O & Fat- free Cool Whip
- Fat-free Pudding
- Bean Dip & Veggies
- Zucchini, Pumpkin, or Banana Bread
- Potato Skins with Fat-free Sour Cream
- Soy nuts (3/4 cup)
- Edamame (steamed soy beans) with salt.
Reading Food Labels:
When reading a food label, there are a couple places you should look.
First, look at the total calories per serving. Then look at the serving size.
Make sure you multiple the calories in your food by the number of servings you are going to eat. So, if we were going to eat 2 servings of this food above, it would be 500 calories.
Then look at the Fat. For each 100 calories in a food, it can have 3g of fat to be considered low in fat (i.e. a 200kcal food can have 6g fat, 300kcal can have 9g fat, and so on.) This food above is not low in fat because it contains 12g of fat for 250 calories.
Also look at Fiber. Foods that have 5g or more fiber per serving are high in fiber. Fiber can fill you up more without giving you extra calories because you do not break fiber down the same way you do other carbohydrates, protein or fat.