Today when I was dressing for water aerobics class, several ladies asked if I had lost weight.<\/p>\n
“Yes, I have!” I said. “Fifteen pounds in about two months.”<\/p>\n
“Wow!” they said. “You look great. How’d you do it?”<\/p>\n
So I told them. And now, for free and with no obligation, I will tell you.<\/p>\n
There were\u00a0no expensive diet supplements, no elaborate meal plans, and no secret superfoods.<\/p>\n
I decided that my biggest problems were nervous eating and portion control. And that the missing ingredient for me was stick-to-it-iveness<\/a>.<\/p>\n So I made my own food plan with my own rules. The plan\u00a0that works for me is\u00a0this:<\/p>\n I eat all the\u00a0vegetables I want.<\/p>\n I eat at least two portions of raw vegetables and at least one portion of raw fruit every day.<\/p>\n I drink all the herbal tea I want – unsweetened of course. It helps to calm me and avoid nervous eating.<\/p>\n I drink green tea instead of coffee on weekdays; less caffeine, and I avoid all the milk calories. I still have my latte on the weekends.<\/p>\n I drink eight 8-oz. glasses of water every day.<\/p>\n I mostly eat whole foods. I avoid preservatives and additives.<\/p>\n I don’t eat anything with added sugar. My only sweeteners are a teaspoon of honey with my almond butter, a tablespoon of brown sugar on my oatmeal, or 1\/4 cup of dried cranberries as a snack, or fresh fruit with my yogurt.<\/p>\n I don’t eat more than 1\/2 cup a day of rice, potatoes, or pasta, or (rarely) two slices of bread if I have a sandwich.<\/p>\n I eat a high-protein breakfast.<\/p>\n I eat three meals plus two or three snacks a day.<\/p>\n A snack is something like an apple and a piece of cheese, or a tablespoon of raw almond butter with a teaspoon of honey, or a third of a cup of cottage cheese.<\/p>\n I eat dinner at least four hours before I go to bed.<\/p>\n I do not eat anything straight out of the container. I put it in a small bowl or on a plate.<\/p>\n I don’t eat seconds of anything except vegetables.<\/p>\n I measure or weigh the portion for anything that is more than 100 calories per serving. That means I eat one ounce of tortilla chips and I weigh it on a scale.<\/p>\n I eat small portions of meat – 2 to 4 ounces – and only one or two portions of meat\u00a0per day.<\/p>\n I eat no more than two tablespoons of butter per day. Most days I don’t have any.<\/p>\n I limit\u00a0my alcohol intake to 10 ounces of vodka per week, which amounts to six drinks total on the weekend, and I mostly mix it with club soda and lime.<\/p>\n I exercise at least 45 minutes, five times a week.<\/p>\n I consciously work at relaxing and calming myself throughout the day.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2003, which I think is the last time that I weighed what I weigh now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today when I was dressing for water aerobics class, several ladies asked if I had lost weight. “Yes, I have!” I said. “Fifteen pounds in about two months.” “Wow!” they said. “You look great. How’d you do it?” So I told them. And now, for free and with no obligation, I will tell you. There … read more A diet that actually works<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[109,931,622,934,34,932,933],"class_list":["post-7852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-109","tag-diet","tag-exercise","tag-fat","tag-food","tag-nutrition","tag-weight-loss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7852"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7870,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852\/revisions\/7870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}