I know that sleep is very necessary to being awake during the day. I also have heard that it is needed to properly lose weight and build muscle. Without sleep you body is just to tired and worn out to be strong and slim. I wish I would have listened to myself earlier. For the past week I have been forcing myself to go to sleep my 12:00 midnight. Midnight is the latest I could be awake until. I also forced myself to wake up at 7:00. I was making sure to get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep a night. What a difference it made.

You can see my current sleep habits from above, so let me give you a back ground in my old sleep habits. I would usually go to bed only when I was completely exhausted. I would stay up watching TV or Surfing the interned until about 2:00 of 3:00 in the morning. Then I would crash. I would get up in the morning after about 5 or 6 snooze alarms and go straight to work at about 8:30. This was my routine. Let me tell you, it was not working out. I was tired all day, I would eat a huge breakfast to try and get energy. I would get a Large Coffee from starbucks and just be a zombie all day. The coffee would stave off my hunger, but when it wore off I would gorge on fast food for lunch. I would be in a food coma for the rest of the day. I would hardly eat dinner due to the large lunch. Then came gym time. I say time because the time came and went. I was up for hours, and then I repeated the routine. I think I figured out where the weight came from.

 I decided to reevaluate my sleep patterns when I decided to lose the weight. I had always heard fitness folks talking about waking up at 5:00 in the morning and going running. They are trim and fit, so it might be worth it. I picked 7:00 because 5:00 is just too early. 7:00 also gives me enough time to get a 30 minute walk in every morning before work. I picked midnight to go to sleep just because I want 7 hours of sleep. It is basically arbitrary. I knew it would take time to adjust so I was prepared for that. I had previously trained myself to wake up early, so this was really just remembering that. It took me one week to get used to the routine.

Today is the first day that waking going to bed and waking up was like clockwork. I was out like a light at 11:45 and up at 7:00 sharp and walked for 30 minutes. I had watermelon for breakfast with a medium coffee. I had vegetable soup for lunch and a bean burrito (home made) for dinner. I then walked for another hour or so. I was not hungry all day, I only ate what I needed and I had the energy to walk over 4 miles. It is awesome!

Thought the week I could feel myself building in energy. It started out sluggish but better that before. Each day got a little better. I’m sure that my better eating habits and exercise contributed enormously to this feeling, but I firmly believe it would not last without proper sleep. Being well rested lifted my motivation by leaps and bounds. If I feel this much better while still being overweight, I can’t wait until I lose more.

Get more sleep… it is great!

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Dinning Out

Let me first start out by saying, i believe that restraunts are for enjoying yourself. They exist for the atmosphere and the food, and that is why you visit them. Restraunts are not for eating every day. I have two recomendations for eating out. The first is: limit you visits, and the second is: limit you portions.

Restraunt food may be high quality and it may be made with heathy ingredients, but it is not made to be healthy. The food is made to be delicious. Ill be fair and say that there are restraunts who specialize in healthy food, but they are sparce.  Restraunts use good stuff, but often they just use too much of it. It is evident in the large portions, buttery veggies and bottomless drinks. This is the fun of the restraunt. You get what you want and more. Some restraunts offer healthy alternatives, like salads or low carb items. But they suffer from the excess of restraunts mentality. Yes, they are good, just too much good.

Limit your visits: This is the easiest. Just limit the times you frequent restraunts. I would say eat out no more that twice a week, once if you can manage. Eating out is supposed to be fun and enjoyable. So when you do eat out, make it fun and enjoyable. Dont bother with trying to find the lowest calorie thing, everything is high in calories. Dont order you burger bun-less, unless you like it that way. A restraunt is a break, treat it that way.

Limit you portions: When you do eat out, limit youself. Restraunt portions are huge. It is really the size and ammount of food that gets you. Most restraunt offer half size portions. Take advantage of that. I also recomend splitting meals. If you eat out with a friend or another person, split a meal with them. You will eat alot less. You will realize how rediculously large portions are at restraunts. You will also save alot of money, about 50%, since you split meals. Mostly all restraunts will split meals for you, just ask them to.

I always split meals when i eat out with  Christin, my girlfriend. It has cut my dining costs by 50% and it has stopped me from stuffing myself at restraunts. I find it more fun when sharing, say a pizza or salad. We just interact more instead of stuffing our faces. Anyway, the way to eat out is limit your visits and limit you portions. Get either half sizes or split meals. You will save money and your waistline.

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Snacking for Weight Loss

Learning to snack effectively is a major key to losing weight. Correct snacking will boost energy, fight cravings and stave off hunger. Snacking effectively will also help in eating proper portions during meals.

A snack is a mini-meal between meals. Snacks are typically eaten between breakfast and lunch, between lunch and dinner, after dinner and after workouts. Snacks are small servings of usually one food, like an apple or piece of cheese. I will give examples of god snacks later. Snacks help fight energy lulls you feel after your prior meal is digested by keeping your stomach working. Snacking fights off cravings by and hunger by having you eat more regularly. Snacking will also keep you more full, so you are not starving when it is time for lunch or dinner. You will be more aware of you fullness when you snack between meals, thus you will not stuff yourself silly. The benefits of snacking are many. You get to eat more and more often, and you 
get its many benefits.

Good snacks are foods high in fats and proteins, or foods high in fiber. Examples of foods high in fats and protein are nuts, cheese and lean meats. Foods high in fiber are the ever good ruits and vegetables. A good snack is a handful (one serving) of nuts, a piece of beef jerky,  an apple or some carrots. Those are all good examples of effective snacks. You need to keep the  portion to one serving and have only one food. A snack is to hold you over until a full meal, so don’t over eat snacks.

Snacking has many benefits. They give energy, curb craving and hunger, and lessen the chance of  overeating during meals. Foods high in protein and fats or food high in fiber are good snacks.  Remember to eat only one serving of one food as a snack. Snacks are not meant as meals, they are meant as fillers to hold you over until meals.

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Manage your cravings

There are two types of cravings. They are recuring cravings and one-time cravings. Once-time cravings are the seemingls random need for a certian food. En example is really wanting a pickle one day, when you dont really like or eat pickles regularly. The other craving, the recuring craving, it the troublesome one. This is when you constantly want a food for seemingly no reason. An example is that you constantly want ice cream, or you want a soda at a spefit time every day. This is the craving that you have trouble with and that needs to ba managed.

Let me start off by saying, the once-time cravings are usually biological in nature. Meaning that you probably are craving it because the food has some nutrient in it that you need. It is adviasable to heed this craving. Since they are few and far between, it is ok to give in to them. The other craving is the detrimental one. This is the craving where you constantly want McDonalds french fries or chocolate chip ice cream. You have these cravings when you are not even hungry. You are just eating to satisfy you craving.

It is easiest to think of a craving like a mini addiction. You want the food for no other reason then to satisfy the craving.  You dont want it all the time, and you reaize it is a craving. That is why i call it a mini adiction. This mini addiction is fairly simple to break. It is simple but it oes take time and persistence. The steps to beat a craving are: awareness, deferment and routine.

Awareness: You must become very aware of you craving. You need to know what food you crave. This is easy most of the time because you usually crave one food. But if you crave something sweet or something full of carbs, you need to identify what you are most likely to eat when that craving hits. I, for instance, craved carbs. I looked at the food i ate when i satisfied this craving. They turned out to be mostly gold fish crackers. The second thing you need to become aware of is the times of you craving. You need to know when or what situations are present when the craving hits. Is it at 11:00 every day, or when you are watching TV?

Deferment: Once you are aware of when, where and what your craving is, you can now work on stoping it. Plan ahead and defer your craving elsewhere. If you crave chocolate, remove the chocolate from your house. Get rid of the food you crave. But this does nothing to the craving and it will make you nuts. You need to also replace the food with something else. There are many things to replace a craving with. You could replace it with a healthy food or a low calorie food. You could have a big glass of water. Some fay to brush your teeth. The mint flavor reduces the craving and you dont wnt to dirty you teeth. Find something that works for you. It will be difficult at first, so pick something that you will be able to do. You also want to have this replacement thing ready to go when your craving usually hits. If you are replacing a craving for a candy bar at noon with an apple, be sure to have that apple ready at noon.

Routine: The puropse of this to to retrain you brain. You need to do you deferment when ever you have this craving. Planning ahead makes it easy on you. Since you wont have to think about finding the deferment fod of thing it becomes mindless. Mindless is what you are looking for. Doing something mindlessly is called routine. You need to replace your craving enough times that is becomes mindless and routine. When that happens, your craving is gone.

I wont pretend that this is easily done. The first few times of replacing the craving is very annoying. You mail fail at it the first few times and give into the craving. Just stick to it. It will become easier and easier until the craving is gone. Take time to enjoy what you are replacing your craving with. The more you focus on your craving replacement, the less you think about wanting your craving. Stick to it and you will succede.

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Setting goals in your weight loss quest is a great way to achieve weight loss. Setting goals is also a great way to destroy your plans. How can I just say that? I sad goals are good and then turn around and say goals are bad. Effectively setting goals will greatly increase your successes. Ineffectively setting goals will cause failure. How do you effectively set goals? What are ineffective goals? 
Effective goals for losing weight are much different that traditional goals. Traditional goals may require planning and hard work. Weight loss goals require only persistence. In fact, when losing weight you only have two goals. Actually you need two types of goals. The first goal is you long term target weight or fitness level. The second goal is your weekly routine.

Long term target: Your long term target weight goal is the weight or fitness level you want to achieve for the future. This is the easiest goal to set. All you do is set a number you want to achieve in the future. If you want to lose weight, you goal is to be 30 pounds lighter. If your goal is to become more physically fit, your goal is to be able to run an 8 minute mile. Your goal here must be simple and attainable. If you set impossible goals, you are missing the point. Notice, you have not set a time frame. This is on purpose. Your long term target goal is only a point you want to reach. It takes the amount of time it takes. My long term target is: “I want to weigh 180 pounds”. I weighed 230 when I set this goal. Notice it is simple: be 180 pounds and attainable; 50 pounds is a weight that is able to be lost and is healthy to do so. Also, there is no time frame.   
Weekly Routine: This is the goal that takes the work. Actually the point of this goal is to make something that is hard into something mindless. Your weekly routine is the things you do in a week that will cause you to lose weight or get fit. If you wish to lose weight, you weekly routine will include exercise and eating good. If you want to get fit your weekly routine will include the same. To make this clear, I will describe my weekly goal. I wake up at 7:00 every day. After I wake, I go for a fast walk for at least 30 minutes. I come home, shower and eat a healthy breakfast. My breakfast is usually fruit, water or juice, and some toast. After breakfast I shower and go to work.  I make my own lunch. If I want a snack at work, it is fruit or vegetables. When I get off work, I go home and either walk another 30 minutes or lift weights. I then eat a healthy dinner. I go to sleep, no later than 12:00. That is a day. I do this every day. My goal is to do this for one week. I achieve my goal if I do this every day for a week. At the beginning of the week, I set the exact same goal. At first you daily routine will be difficult, and you may fail at your goal of doing it for the week. That’s fine… you have next week to achieve it. Eventually you will succeed at achieving you weekly goal. You just keep setting the goal and achieving it. The point of this is to get to the point that setting and achieving this weekly goal becomes routine, hence “weekly routine”. You want it to become mindless. You just want to be able to set this goal and achieve it week after week.

The two goal system is the only effective way to set and achieve weight loss or fitness goals. Here is an example of an ineffective goal. “I want to loose 2 pounds a week for 20 weeks for a total weight loss of 40 pounds” This sounds like a reasonable goal. But what happens if you miss a 2 pound mark? You have to loose 4 pounds the next week. If you miss that then you need to lose 6 pounds. Eventually you will need to lose an unreasonable amount of weight in that week. You will have failed. The problem was that you are stuck in a time frame and you have no routine. The same goal using the two goal system goes like this. “I want to be 40 pounds lighter. I will work out everyday for a week and not eat fast food” If you miss your weekly goal, by say missing a work out or eating McDonalds, you don’t need to work out twice as much or eat twice as less McDonalds. That doesn’t even make sense. If you mess up one week, you have next week to achieve the goal. Really, you goal is to make setting and achieving you weekly goal so routine that it is just that… routine. Think of it as practice. You practice setting and achieving you weekly goal until you are really good at it. 

Once achieving your weekly goal becomes routine you will notice yourself getting closer and closer to achieving you long term target. Eventually you will reach your target weight or fitness level. The beauty here is that you won’t have to stick to any diet or workout to maintain what you have succeeded. The actions you preformed to achieve your long term goal is already routine to you. It would be much harder to break your routine than to just continue doing it!

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