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Hi All,
Judy and I have enjoyed sharing our Serotonin Power Diet blogging with you. We want to make it as easy and fruitful as possible to get the support, practical tips, and inspiration you need for your weight loss success. To that end, we invite you all to join our Facebook Serotonin Power Diet fan page if you haven't done so already. There Judy and I are available to answer questions and help fine-tune the program for you to get your best results. We gladly welcome any and all feedback. On our facebook page, we also post tips, client stories, and news about our diet. We hope that this more interactive format will result in an active dialogue among its members - not only with us but amongst yourselves. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boston-MA ... 809?ref=ts We welcome your stories, questions, and comments - chances are, if you're experiencing something as you follow The Serotonin Power Diet, chances are there is at least one other person who is, too - there's no need to feel alone out there on your journey. We wish you success in all areas of your life! - Nina & Judy | permalink | related link |   ( 3 / 237 )There is a wonderful story about a soldier who traveled through Europe during a time of great famine. He would come to a village and announce that he was making soup from a stone. After placing his “magic” stone in a cauldron and filling it with water, he would wait until the water boiled, taste the “soup” and then announce that the result was delicious but would taste even better with a cabbage. So someone would bring a cabbage and throw it into the pot. Then the soldier would mention that an onion, a carrot, some salted beef, and maybe some potatoes would make the soup even more delicious. One by one, the villagers put their meager stores of food into the pot and soon there was enough good tasty soup to feed the entire village. You don’t need a “magic” stone to turn water into a soup that feeds you and your family for pennies. But you do need some vegetables, potatoes, rice, or broken pieces of pasta, and some leftover beef, chicken or ham or fish to turn the water into a meal. For some reason, soup is a forgotten food in many households. Yet it is cheap to make, feeds many, is low in calories and high in vitamins, minerals and very filling. And of it can be made in an almost unending variety of flavors. I went into Google to look up vegetable soup recipes and found to my astonishment that over a million are listed (actually 1,550,000). And this was just vegetable soup. Once you have tried all these recipes, you can move onto tomato, chicken, carrot, lentil, onion, mushroom, mushroom and barley, blueberry and Italian wedding soup, to name just a few other varieties. The great thing about soup is that its major ingredient is water or stock. Years ago stock had to be made from scratch from meat or fish bones along with a variety of vegetables that were thrown away after the stock was made. Or you could open a can of chicken stock or peel the foil from tiny cubes of pressed MSG masquerading as dried chicken or beef soup. However nowadays, you can find boxes of a variety of stocks, from vegetable to fish, that form the basis of the soup. There are also boxes of soup such as squash, tomato, corn or carrot. These are usually fat-free, and with the addition of your own ingredients scrounged from the bottom of your vegetable bin and leftovers, can be turned into your own personal creation. The winter seems like an obvious time to pull out that big pot and start something simmering. Winter weekends, when the weather or early sunsets keep you inside, is the time to start. If you cook like Rachael Ray you can just grab everything you can hold from the refrigerator and stagger over to your counter. After some peeling or slicing, throw the ingredients into the simmering water or stock. Let the soup cook as long as possible on a low heat and before serving toss in herbs, spices, maybe a splash of wine or lemon juice plus salt and pepper. Soup is amazingly forgiving. It you put in too much of something, add water to dilute it. If it is too watery, let it cook to evaporate the extra liquid. But don’t limit soup to the cold weather. A fish chowder, or a cold cucumber, fruit, or beet soup all make wonderful main courses for warm summer nights. Just add a salad and corn on the cob from the farmer’s market and crusty bread. Best of all, eating soup is a wonderful communal and informal activity. Perhaps it is because it is hard to eat soup quietly; there is a small amount of slurping that goes on. Some eaters just up-end their bowls to drink the remnant of the broth rather than using spoons. Maybe it is because you can’t eat soup quickly and so enjoying it leaves time for conversation and stories. Or maybe it is because so many of us associate soup with our mothers or grandmothers. Chicken soup for what ails you, tomato soup when it is cold and wet outside, a savory French onion soup or minestrone on special occasions are all part of our memory banks. So keep the stone in your pocket and get out the pot and fill it with water or stock and add whatever you like from your refrigerator and pantry. Cook, stir and enjoy. | permalink | related link |  ( 3 / 261 )One of the most frustrating aspects of trying not to gain weight is to keep track of what you weigh from day to day. It should be easy; just hop on the scale and look. But as many of us know, scales can give false readings. Some scales are absolutely unreliable. There is a scale in my gym that should be accurate. It is a doctors’ scale with a horizontal balance. But if I lean back a little I weigh 6 pounds less than if I lean forward. My daughter and I bought the same type of bathroom scale but I like hers better because I weigh 3 pounds less on it than on my own. And then there is the time at which you weigh yourself. Mornings before you eat breakfast are considered the best. But what if you ate a late dinner the night before? It may have been low in calories but high in bulky, high-fiber foods that are still occupying space in your intestine and confusing your scale. Or say you had something with a high sodium content like tomato sauce or celery. Your body may be retaining water, which will show up as pounds on the scale. And as every woman knows, PMS can add weight. Another option is looking in the mirror. If your body seems to look the same, you can be pretty confident that you have not gained weight regardless of your scale’s fickle read-out. Or can you? I was discussing this with a friend who told me a minor horror story of mirrors and weight. She had sublet an apartment for a few weeks on an extended business trip. There was one large mirror over the living couch and a tiny one in the bathroom. So naturally she would look in the large mirror after dressing in the morning to see if she looked okay for work. To her chagrin, she saw that her face looked quite round and her hips seemed to be expanding sideways. She didn’t think she had gained weight but the mirror was telling her otherwise. One day, she told me, she changed her clothes three times because she looked so fat in the mirror. Fortunately for her state of mind, a cousin came to visit and noticed the mirror. “This looks like something out of the fun house,” she said. “It really distorts your image, doesn’t it?” So much for mirrors telling you what your weight is. My husband suggested using belt holes to tell if your weight is steady. He said that if you have gained or lost weight, where you buckle your belt will change immediately. But as I pointed out to him, women don’t tend to wear belts every day and some never wear them. And also there are men who wear suspenders (think Larry King) or whose belts go under their bellies rather than around their waists. Still, it really is important to have some way of measuring your change in weight, either up or down. Although small changes in weight from day to day are normal, larger changes over a few weeks should be recognized. Sometimes an unexplained loss in weight signals an underlying medical problem and should be noted. Weight gain could also be a symptom of a medical problem, a side effect from medication such as antidepressants, or more commonly, a sign that calorie intake, exercise or both have changed. At this point scales may still be the most reliable way of monitoring your weight despite the problems these devices present. But many people, including myself, use another strategy. This is the jean method of weight monitoring. Jeans (or some other article of clothing that fit you just right when your weight is in your optimal range) should be tried on regularly. Every two weeks or so is sufficient. If you find it is tight, this means that either you have gained weight or you put them in the dryer on high—and the former possibility is more likely. Be careful about your eating and exercise for the next two weeks and then try them on again. If they fit the way you like, then you know you are back to the weight you want. | permalink | related link | ( 3 / 190 )Within a few weeks, the weeks of spring/summer celebrations will begin. Graduations, reunions, Mother and Father Days, engagement parties and weddings will crowd the calendar. Many of these events require dressing up and looking one’s best. And that means, of course, losing those five pounds that you have been trying to get rid of since January. Who among us has not taken out an article of clothing neglected for many months and asked ourselves if we can still fit into it? Or perhaps you have purchased a dress to wear for a special occasion. Unfortunately, now it is a little too tight but you assure yourself that you will lose the weight necessary to fit into it by the time the event rolls around. However, if the day is fast approaching and your clothes are snug around the waistline and hips and sitting down threatens to open some seams, you may decide that a crash weight-loss plan is needed. A week of starvation ought to take care of five pounds, right? Starting Monday you will live on nothing but lettuce, ice water and vitamin pills, exercise for hours and sit in the sauna. (And of course wear a pair of tight pantyhose when you put on the dress.) Usually a really strict diet for a few days does get rid of 4 or 5 pounds, although some of it is just water. The problem is that by the end of the celebration for which you may have semi-starved yourself, you probably gained it back. A few glasses of wine, an hour or so of eating high-fat appetizers or a prolonged brunch will start the arrival process of the pounds you worked so hard to remove. But worse events usually follow. After a week of deprivation, many of us eat more than usual. Days of self-discipline are often followed by a few weeks of culinary self-indulgence, especially if the next affair for which you have to look good is not coming up right away. And those who may stay on a diet for weeks in order to look terrific for a wedding or class reunion will often take a picture of themselves on the day of the event so they have visual record of when they were thin. I cannot count the number of weight-loss clients who told me that they never weighed as little as the day they got married. But does a strenuous weight-loss program always have to be followed by a quick weight gain? Couldn’t the five days and five pounds of weight loss be the starting point for a permanent change in weight, exercise and life style? We all know people who after years of smoking finally gave it up after an illness prevented them from smoking for several days. Why couldn’t the first five pounds lead to several more being lost, along with a commitment to fitness, regular exercise, and healthy eating? The key to doing this is to prevent yourself from feeling that culinary self-indulgence is justified after a week of disciplined eating. The easiest way to keep from eating highly caloric food as a reward for losing five pounds is to give yourself a sense of emotional contentment that does not depend on eating a pint of Häagen-Dazs ice cream or a Big Mac. There are two easy ways to do this: one is to elevate the levels of the contentment chemical in your brain and the other is to find non-edible ways of making yourself feel good. Serotonin is the brain chemical. It gives us a feeling of emotional stability and tranquility. You can’t eat serotonin nor get your brain to make more of it by taking medication. But you can increase serotonin simply by eating sweet or starchy foods by themselves, with no protein. The best way to do this, the day after the diet, is to eat a snack late in the afternoon. An ounce of pretzels, or 2 cups of popcorn, a small bag of Twizzlers, a cup of crunchy breakfast cereal or 6 small graham cracker squares are sufficient to make your brain, and you, feel content by boosting serotonin. (And as a value-added benefit, serotonin will also decrease your appetite). Eating a carbohydrate snack every day will keep you on the emotional feel-well track and decrease your temptation to reach for a high-calorie food. The second thing to do is identify things you like to do that give you pleasure and enjoyment. Too often we reach for food as a way of taking a break, decreasing the tedium of a particular task or doing something for ourselves when we have been doing too much for others. But there are so many other ways of making yourself feel rewarded that do not involve calories. I give my dog a tummy rub and massage and that small thing alone makes me feel relaxed (and my dog as well). Yesterday I was walking the same dog and a young woman came jogging by me singing loudly. She was listening to her iPod and I don’t think she realized how loud her voice was. But there was a big smile on her face as she ran past and it was clear she was having fun. A friend ‘s idea of total relaxation is to do the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. And true joy comes when he can finish the one on Sunday, the hardest of the week. Serotonin and fun are unbeatable combinations to keep off that weight so that you will look, and feel, wonderful whenever the next celebration occurs. | permalink | related link | ( 3 / 159 )The February 25th issue of "First" for women magazine has helped us spread the word about the power of carbs, and serotonin, to help you lose weight and feel good about yourself. Out this past week, Judy and our book are featured in the cover story. We hope more and more people, as a result of the article, will stop depriving themselves of the carbs they crave and need...and still be able to lose weight. Many of you have already shared your experience with friends, co-workers, and family members who see the difference in you. We appreciate your support of our program as well as your desire to help those around you. We all know the thrill of stepping on the scale seeing the numbers go down, fitting into clothes you haven't worn in years, and getting compliments from family, friends and co-workers. But let's face it: no matter how much serotonin you have on board, losing weight at times can be difficult, lonely and discouraging. This is where getting support from others is so important. (And in these winter months, you may have to reach out even more.) Helping others can help you, so remember that when you need a little support: you're giving someone the opportunity to help you. It's a win-win situation all around. Thank you for sharing your stories with us and helping to create an ever-growing Serotonin Power Diet community. We want to extend a special thank you to Virginia Hill for sharing her Serotonin Power Diet success story with "First", including "before" and "after" photos. Keep those stories coming, reach out on our online community forum, and continue to build your own support network wherever you can. Doing so will make your weight loss that much sweeter. | permalink | related link | ( 3.3 / 23 )Next |
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