Drinks
Feeling really thirsty? Does a soft drink or beer sound good? When thirst
strikes, get into the habit of asking yourself, "Do I want to
lose weight?" If the answer is no, have your favorite beverage. But if
it's yes, then first drink a glass of water, or two if really thirsty.
Wait a minute, then ask yourself if you still need that soft drink or
beer. If it still sounds good, by all means have it, but if you can do
without it then skip it this time round. In this way you'll still be able
to have your favorite drinks, but in greater moderation than before.
During the day your main drinks should be water (plain or carbonated), tea, or coffee. By all means sweeten your drink with a level teaspoon of sugar if you have a sweet tooth: its 15 calories is what you typically burn in about ten minutes, and is a tenth the calories of an ounce of hard candy.
Tea, whether white, black, green, or ginger, is a powerful antioxidant. At one time it was believed that adding milk to tea reduced its antioxidant action, but several studies have reported no reduction in the strong antioxidant effect of tea when milk is added. White tea is no less effective than black.
Meals
Eat three regular meals a day. If you belong to the clean-plate club,
lose your membership. If you are served a large helping,
complain that it is too much, either out loud to the server, or silently by
leaving the excess food on the plate.
Snacks
By all means snack whenever you feel like it. But don't snack from an
unlimited supply. Instead prepare the whole day's snacks at one time, before
your first snack, say at breakfast time. This gives you a way to limit the
calories you get from snacks.
Chocolate
Although candy does not usually appear
anywhere near the top of most lists of healthy foods, dark chocolate
plays a special role in the candy world as having health benefits
quite unlike those of other candies. An ounce of dark (70%)
chocolate contains 300 mg of theobromine, a psychoactive stimulant
closely related to the 100 mg of caffeine found in a cup of coffee,
but fortunately (since there's three times the weight of stimulant in
chocolate as coffee) with less than 20% of its kick. Whereas caffeine
stimulates the central nervous system, making you more alert,
theobromine stimulates the heart, increasing heartbeat but also
dilating the blood vessels, with the net effect being a reduction in
blood pressure. Theobromine also dilates the bronchial passages in
the lungs, helping to relieve asthma symptoms and coughing resulting
from congestion in the lungs.
With dark chocolate you can't do things by halves. Aim for at least 70% cocoa solids. Much less than that and the additives, especially dairy products, tend to undermine chocolate's health benefits. Also be careful with any process aimed at reducing the bitter taste of pure chocolate, especially Dutched or alkalized chocolate.
Dark chocolate has its dark side. Like caffeine, chocolate can be addictive, though less so. Also at 160 calories per ounce (180 for milk chocolate), chocolate is a concentrated source of energy. It is therefore easy to eat a lot of it without immediately feeling full, and its great taste does nothing to discourage putting away a lot all at once. Once your body has had a chance to absorb the fat your setpoint will figure out that you've eaten enough, but you have to give it time to do so. This makes it imperative that you eat chocolate slowly. A good rule of thumb is to eat no more than an ounce of chocolate in two hours.
How much dark chocolate to eat in a day is a good question. Four ounces is over 600 calories, making that an absolute upper limit. However its psychoactive benefits can justify that much provided you give up other luxury calories such as beer, another legal psychoactive drug. Starting from a reasonable luxury budget of two ounces of chocolate and two beers a day, changing that to three ounces of chocolate and one beer for example would be a fair trade in achieving your weight objectives. Your choice, your weight.
Another source of concern, but not such an important one, is that the fat in chocolate is of the saturated kind. The customary health ranking of fat puts unsaturated fats at the top, trans fats such as in Crisco at the bottom, and saturated fats in the middle. However there are several kinds of saturated fat, and the dominant kind in chocolate is stearic acid, which unlike other saturated fats does not raise the level of LDL ("bad") cholesterol in your blood. With chocolate the calorie count is the main concern, not the fact that many of those calories are coming from saturated fats.
Little is known about overdosing on chocolate. On the one hand the effects of overdosing on theobromine are very similar to caffeine, including insomnia, nervousness, irritability, anxiety, and hypotension (excessively low blood pressure). Extreme overdoses of either can cause death. Fortunately the body metabolizes theobromine quickly, minimizing this risk. Dogs and cats metabolize it much more slowly, and a four-ounce bar of chocolate while quite safe for a human can be fatal to a small dog, while a one-pound bar of chocolate can kill a medium sized dog.
Alcohol
If you enjoy the occasional drink, keep
in mind that alcohol is a significant source of calories. A pint
of beer is about 200 calories, while a glass of wine is about 100
calories. Limit yourself to two beers or three glasses of wine a
day. Don't drink before driving or before 5 pm. If you enjoy hard
liquor allow yourself only two one-ounce glasses a week. If you
have an irresistible craving for more than that much hard liquor,
or for more than a couple of alcoholic drinks a day of any kind,
then you may be suffering from alcoholism. The medical profession
tends to regard this condition as a disease that can be injurious
to your health and whose treatment may require professional help.
If left untreated it can shorten your life significantly, as well as
making your company unpleasant to others while imposing a financial
burden on you and your family.
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