If You Are Stuck - Banish Your Trigger Food

It’s an old and infuriating story.  You are trying to lose weight.  It seems like you have always been trying to lose weight.  You’ve been trying for a year or five years or three decades.  You are bored to tears of your own internal monologue rambling on over-and-over again, “Someday, somehow I’ll lose the weight.”  

Something isn't adding up.  You are exhausted by your efforts, and one of the following statements may be true:

A. You are stuck and always have been stuck

B. You lost some weight but now you are definitely stuck

C. You are killing yourself at the gym and are still very, very stuck

If the fat you are trying to lose is actually fat and not just skin that you are irrationally fixating on… if you are carrying an extra 10 pounds or more… if you are getting exercise on an almost-daily basis… if you are doing everything right and you still can’t lose weight, it’s your diet. 

It is almost impossible to maintain weight loss without exercise, but it is even more impossible to lose weight in the first place without changing your eating habits for the better.  Unfortunately, trying to transform your whole diet, measuring every meal - calories in vs. calories out - can be both daunting and confusing.  Pause, take a breath, and consider whether you are truly prepared to make a tangible change in order to impact your body positively.  If you are, consider leaving the bulk of your diet alone and taking a simpler tactic.

It is much easier to choose one unhealthy ingredient and cut it out entirely than it is to overhaul your whole diet.  Find the thing that you know sets you off and sends you careening down the rabbit hole of a late-night binge.  Find it and banish it.  If you can do it for two weeks, you will lose weight.  If you can do it for three months, you will keep the weight off and begin to wonder why you were so married to it in the first place.  You are looking for your trigger food. 

Here are a few common culprits to consider:

1.  Sugar – This is the demon that haunts you in the night.  It is the number one trigger for most women.  We know it, and we love it.  It’s everywhere, and you can cut it out to varying degrees.  First option: simply stop eating dessert.  For some people, this is enough, but if you want to go further, look for added sugar in cereal, salad dressing, juice, bread, and just about everything else that comes in a bag, box, or bottle.  Seek it out and shut it down.

* Soda, sweetened tea, energy drinks, and other sugared beverages, of course, fall under this category too.  If you drink these everyday and stop cold turkey, you’ll cut thousands of calories a week from your diet.

2.  Wheat – Go gluten-free or at least wheat-free.  This will automatically remove from your diet the following: bread, crackers, pasta, cookies, cake, brownies, Twix bars… did I say that out loud?  Yes, Twix bars.  I have a problem.  Give me sugar and wheat flour mixed together (ex. cake and cookies), and I am powerless, howling at the moon for another, and another.

* You can always find rice bread or rice pasta, but they are not nearly as available or as tempting.  It’s unlikely you would eat them frequently enough to replace all of the calories lost by cutting out wheat.  I’m not talking about a low-carb diet.  There are many healthy carbs in the world, but wheat flour is so prevalent that cutting it out almost guarantees weight loss success.

3.  Alcohol – Sadly, alcohol has lots of calories, lots of empty, pointless calories.  Most of my clients have no interest in quitting drinking, so another, less extreme option is to go alcohol-free during the week, Sunday through Thursday nights.  If that means you are skipping one drink per night, five nights per week, you’ll create a calorie-deficit of 1000 calories per week.  You’d lose a pound in three to four weeks.  Also, alcohol tends to lower your resolve for cutting other things out (like fat and sugar), so if you avoid the alcohol, you might do a better job turning down the other crack-like substances in your life.

Other culprits include fried food, cheese, smoothies, and chips.  Any food that is dense with calories – sugar, fat, or salt - that you eat a lot of on a regular basis is a great place to start, especially if it is a food that triggers you to eat even more.

I speak from experience.  I have been stuck for years at a time.  I have worked out consistently, watched my diet and wondered how I would ever break through.  Finally, I cut out wheat and got incredible results.  Then I hit another plateau and had to decide if I was happy there or if I wanted to take it a step further.  I was still eating dark chocolate and miniature York peppermint patties every day (no wheat, damn it!).  I cut out the sweets and, within a week, went sailing past that very stubborn plateau with very little effort.  Since then, I have been able to put dark chocolate back in my diet without regaining any weight.

After avoiding wheat for months and sugar for several weeks, I went on a trip and ate bread and dessert again.  I couldn’t believe how awful I felt.  I’m talking nausea and headaches, lethargy and depression.  I knew these foods were addictive before I quit, but I didn’t realize how much they were dragging me down.

I still crave brownies after dinner.  I don’t know if that will ever go away, but I have found that if I can get through an hour without giving in, I can make it through the night.  If I really need something sweet, usually applesauce, grapes, or a small square of dark chocolate will do the trick.  I might be grumpy about it in the moment, but the payoff is priceless.

If you are stuck and unhappy, be honest with yourself.  Find the one food that is most problematic in your diet, cut it out for one month, and watch what happens.  At the very least, you will learn that you are not a slave to your cravings.  At best, you’ll see results and get inspired to radically un-stick other parts of your life.

If you are stuck and content to stay that way, proceed with your stuckness.  Own it!  Don’t waste your energy wishing things were different if you aren’t actually prepared to do something about it.  Go forth and be happy just the way you are.  Stay stuck and be proud.