NOT Gaining Weight is Easier than Losing Weight

Let’s face it; the holidays are more a Celebration of Carbohydrates than they are to celebrate our spirituality! As soon as the trick-or-carbohydrate fun is over, the push will start from the food companies to “carbohydrate,” in the name of Jesus and Moses (if it hasn't already begun). (Even the 25-hour fast of Yom Kippur is preceded and followed by high carbohydrate meals.)

If you’re on, or have been on a low-carb diet, you know how hard this festive season can be when you love cookies, pasta, kugels, bread, mashed potatoes and gravy, latkes, candy and a million other holiday treats.

So what happens? We gain weight. I used to average five pounds of weight gain over the two-month period, until six years ago when my husband and I embarked on a restricted carbohydrate lifestyle.  

You know how hard it is losing weight after the holidays, so why not keep it off and even lose some starting right now? Picture yourself on New Year’s Day with a resolution to “continue” losing one pound a week (that’s what I recommend in “The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here!”) instead of resolving to lose five pounds or more! If you started today, by January 1, 2017 you’d be 10 pounds lighter!

10 pounds is a lot of weight! In the book I told about wearing what I called “The Wake-up Collar.” Two, five-pound bags of flower, secured in the legs of a pair of my husband’s pajamas (I tied a knot in the bottom of each leg to create a pouch for each bag) worn around my neck I tried to walk my five-mile walk as usual. I COULDN’T DO IT! I had to leave the collar in the bushes half-way through the walk and come and get it with the car.

Here are a few of my many tips from The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here!

• Write down thoughts that come to you that try to get you to eat foods high in carbohydrates. Those thoughts are sabotaging and when you write them down, you expose them and at the same time stop them. Try it.

• On that same idea, write down the foods you pass up, instead of journaling what you eat.

• Have a talk with yourself whenever you feel sad about not getting to have what EVERYBODY ELSE is getting to have.

• Turn the contents of every bite into baby food consistency. No swallowing chunks! (Your teeth are the hardest substance in your body and they’re meant to grind up your food before you swallow, because there are no teeth in your tummy. Besides, all the fun of food is relayed to you by your tongue so let it play as long as you can.)

The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! tells about my two-year journey eliminating most carbohydrates from my life and how you can do it too. I lost 35 pounds, but more importantly, I am healthier than I’ve ever been and I’m old!

To get strated now, just tap on the cover.

Love,