One Fit Geek

The purpose of this blog is to share what I found during my journey from being an average geek to being a fit geek. Some of my findings are obvious, common knowledge. But I also found that although many things are obvious and make sense, they will not do any good if not applied.

It is within this mindset that I will post my tips. Here is a first tip, to be filed under the Nutrition category.

When drinking water, drink ice cold water.

When drinking a protein shake in the morning, make it ice cold.

And when adding fruits to your greek yogurt, add frozen berries.

Ice cold drinks and frozen berries require more energy to be brought to your body temperature, resulting in a greater calorie expense. This is one of the tricks I have been doing and which worked great for me.

I have read a lot of different views about cheating on your diet. Some people have a cheat day and then they try to compensate the next day by starving . That does not sound like a good plan to me.

I also noticed that the definition of cheating varies widely.

After losing over 40 pounds and keeping it off for one year, I can tell what works for me.

I make it a rule to eat whatever I want once a week, usually on Saturdays when visiting family.
This allows me to avoid comments such as “What happened to you?”, “Are you sick?” or “You are not eating enough!”.

Having a cheat day gives your metabolism a boost. Your body knows it usually has enough and it will process the excess food without storing fat. You see a spike in your weight and then it goes away in one or two days. If your diet is too strict or if you eat too little for too long, your metabolism slows down or worst, it falls into survival mode. This is counterproductive to the benefits of your diet as you will begin to store fat again.

The above is true whether you are currently losing weight or you are into the maintenance phase.

An added benefit I found is that if you crave something during the week and you manage to hold on and resist, once you let loose and eat a lot of it you conclude it is not so good after all.

The most important part is to make planned, conscious choices. Not to lose control, overeat and declare it a cheat day after the fact.

Here is a simple tip on how we spent one week at Walt Disney World without gaining weight, even indulging in some ice cream and chocolate muffins.

Sharing. That’s it.

For every meal, we ordered one plate for the two of us. We did the same for the kids.

Do not get me wrong, the food is very good, they offer several healthy options but the portions are just way too big. By sharing every meal, we were satisfied and we had room for the occasional indulgences through the day.

We also brought in some snacks such as oatmeal cookies and granola / yogurt bars.

For one week, we did not care much about our ‘diet’. Since we were walking and standing from 8 AM to 8 PM, if not later, we ended the week off without gaining weight.

In fact this was our second visit at Disney. Last year, we followed the same plan and I ended up losing 5 pounds in a week. It should be noted that back then, I was already on my way from average to fit, while this year my weight is steady.

Here are my best tips for breaking the habit of snacking.

Delay – hold on for a while by creating a diversion

At first, when I felt the urge to snack, I would get down and do 10 push-ups. Not being in top shape, this was demanding enough to fend off the snack urge for a while.

Going for a walk also works very well for me.

Drink – drink water to fill your stomach. Black coffee and tea also do the trick.

Eat better – This one sounds general but I will explain. When you make better food choices, eat more fiber and whole foods, digestion takes longer and you feel satisfied for longer.

Mind power – This can be the most difficult tip to implement. Understand that most of the time, the urge to snack comes from habit more than from actual hunger. You have this image of cookies with coffee or tea. If you can convince yourself that you are not really hungry, then good for you. However I can tell that this does not work very well with me.

Instead, the best way I found to avoid snacks was to not get them into the house in the first place. Same holds true for the workplace.