Would you like to know the magic list of foods that will help you drop weight like crazy? Me too. But something I’ve learned over the years is that there is no one-size fits all list of foods to eat. Recently I posted the link to an article in The Washington Post entitled, “This diet study upends everything we thought we knew about ‘healthy’ food.” Yes, I have a Facebook page for Joann The Life Coach, so get yourself over there and click “Follow” already! You’re missing out! Okay, back to the article. It basically shows research that concluded different individuals showed vastly different responses to the same food, even though their own responses remained the same day to day.
Jim was a “brittle diabetic,” meaning he was extremely resistant to insulin and could not rely solely on the insulin shots he took multiple times a day to control his blood sugar. He had to also manipulate his diet to help keep his blood sugar down. He dropped a lot of extra weight in the process because he was finding the foods his body responded to best. When we married, he insisted I need to eat the same way because he found this to be the best way to eat for weight loss and great health. Except, it didn’t work for me at all. Over the years, cooking with Jim’s needs in mind and learning what to add for myself to keep me stable was quite the balancing the act. We experimented over and over, and truly, what he did great with was almost the polar opposite of what I did great with.
So I spent a lot of time reading about various diet plans and the science behind them, and realized that there were different sets of digestion and food metabolism. No one eating plan would work for more than 1/3 of the population at any given time (my own estimate). So I was excited to finally see studies bearing this out. This is why I teach my weight coach clients to begin to make their own list of “fuel foods.” You probably already know foods that work well in your system, and you can discover more. It is a process you can go through to identify your OWN magic-bullet foods. It is not going to be the same list as anyone else’s, though you may share a lot of foods in common. How carrots act in your body may be the exact opposite for someone else.
Start making lists. List the foods you “fog eat.” Leftovers off someone else’s plate, chips out of the bag, eating in front of the TV. You get the idea. Then make a list of “Joy Foods.” Foods that just taste great and you love to “treat” yourself with. None of the foods on the first two lists are your fuel. Do you never get to joy eat again? Of course you can, but only 10% of your eating should be that. Now that you know what your fuel is not, you can start your list of what your fuel IS. Does it keep you feeling satisfied for a few hours? Does it make you feel like you have energy (not sleepy)? It is easy to stop eating before you are totally stuffed full? Do you drop weight or maintain weight when you eat it regularly? How do you keep track of it all? A new kind of food journal. Next week we can talk about that journal. For now, start making your lists!!!
If you want to work directly, one-on-one, with me; click on “Work With Me” in the menu bar above and schedule a free discovery phone conversation with me.
