8 Ways to Lose Weight without Dieting or Exercise

Well, kind of.

Have a lot of weight to lose? Need a jump start?

I lost 45 pounds in just 4 months with Medifast, a program based on low calorie, low fat, low carb meals. It’s easier than counting calories on your own and it really does work. I used it to get my weight where it should be and I follow the tips in this article to keep it there. Learn more about my experience here.

Throw away your fad diets. If you’re serious about losing weight, there are only two things that matter: calorie intake and exercise. Consume fewer calories and get more exercise and you will lose weight. It’s as simple as that.

Reducing calories and increasing exercise doesn’t mean dieting and hitting the gym. Here are eight things you can do to lose weight without making major changes to your diet or lifestyle.

1. Drink water.

Glass of WaterWater does several things that can help you lose weight and feel healthier:

  • Water can decrease your appetite by fooling your stomach into thinking it’s fuller than it is. If you’re hungry, try drinking a glass of water and waiting 20 minutes. You may not be hungry anymore.
  • Water has no calories and no caffeine, so it’s a great alternative to other beverages that contain one or both.
  • Water is vital for a number of bodily processes, including removing waste, carrying nutrients, regulating body temperature, reducing fluid retention, and keeping bowel functions normal.

Different sources recommend different amounts of water in your diet. One source I found suggested 64 ounces a day. Another suggested 48-64 ounces a day. Still another suggested 1 ounce for every 2 pounds of body weight — so a 150-lb person should drink 75 ounces a day.

2. Eat only half.

Half plate of FoodOne of the problems with American food portions — especially those in many restaurants — is that they’re just too big. The next time you’re faced with a huge plate of food at your favorite restaurant, eat just half of what’s on your plate. Take the rest home in a carry-out bag. Not only will you eat less food, but you’ll have a free meal the next day.

When you cook at home, make smaller portions. Pay attention to portion size on prepared foods and only cook what you and your family need. While leftovers are nice, it’s all too easy to eat all the food you prepare instead of stowing some of it away in the fridge for the next day.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: the less I eat, the less I want to eat. It’s almost as if I’m shrinking my stomach so it needs less food to feel full.

3. Snack with fruits and vegetables.

Fruits and vegetables make great snack foods. Not only are they good for you, but they’re often very low in calories. They’re also easy to prepare — especially when eaten raw — and taste great.

FruitsSome fruits to keep in mind:

  • Apples
  • Blueberries
  • Cantaloupe
  • Grapes
  • Honeydew Melon
  • Orange
  • Peach
  • Pineapple
  • Raspberries
  • Strawberries
  • Watermelon

VegetablesFor vegetables, try:

  • Broccoli
  • Carrots
  • Cauliflower
  • Celery
  • Cucumber
  • Dill Pickles
  • Lettuce
  • Tomato
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Zucchini

And, in case you’re wondering, I’m talking about fresh fruits and vegetables here. The good stuff. Leave the cans on the shelves where they belong.

4. Say “no” to dessert.

No DessertBoy, is this a no-brainer. If you’re accustomed to eating dessert after dinner, just stop. Instead, reach for a piece of fruit. Fewer calories and better for you.

5. Park in the farthest parking space.

Parking LotHow much time do you spend cruising for a parking spot close to where you’re going? Did you ever think that that time could be better spent walking from a parking spot on the other side of the lot?

Park far away. Then walk to where you’re going. It’ll only take a few minutes and you’ll be giving your body an extra dose of exercise it wasn’t expecting to have.

An added bonus: You might actually find a spot in the shade.

6. Get off on the wrong stop.

Walk from the BusDo you take a bus or train to work? Instead of getting off at the stop closest to your workplace, get off one or two stops before or after it. Again, you’ll be treating your body to some extra exercise.

Sure, it might take a few minutes more, but you can always catch an earlier bus or train. And imagine the new things you’ll see along the way.

7. Take the stairs.

Take the StairsOnly need to go up or down one or two floors? Avoid elevators and escalators. Take the stairs. More exercise squeezed into your busy day and only your body will notice it.

8. Walk your kids to school.

When I was a kid, I walked to school. Rain, snow, heat — it didn’t matter. Four blocks to elementary school, eight blocks to junior high school, and a full mile (with uphills and downhills both ways) to high school.

Walk to SchoolWhile I realize that times are different and many parents are concerned about the safety of their kids, you don’t need to drive your kid to school to ensure his or her safety. Take a walk instead. You’ll get exercise and make sure your kid gets some, too. You’ll also have some quality time to spend with your kid on that walk.

Want to make it really count? Take the dog along, too.

Do the Math

My doctor told me that 3500 calories equals a pound. That means that knocking 500 calories off your daily diet will result in a loss of 1 pound a week — without increasing exercise. But if you add exercise to the equation, you can drop weight a bit more quickly without sacrificing your health.

You’ll also develop some healthy habits that’ll stay with you for the rest of your life.

Got more tips? Share ’em in the comments. And please do let me know how you do with your weight loss efforts.

Dieting…Again

I really need to lose weight.

Without going into specifics, let’s just say that like the majority of Americans these days, I’m overweight. I’m tall, so I can “get away with it” — to a certain point. But I don’t want to. I want to be thinner.

Why I Want to Lose Weight

Please understand that this isn’t an appearance issue as much as its a health and practicality issue.

I had a friend who was overweight and constantly dieting. One day, she told me she didn’t care how much she weighed. She wasn’t succumbing to the pressure to be thin, just to make some man happy. (She was divorced.) So she stopped dieting and basically went to hell physically.

I don’t want to lose weight to make a man happy. My husband doesn’t seem to care that I’ve developed “love handles.” There isn’t any other man I want to impress. I’m forty-something. Those days of flirting are over.

But as I age, my weight is holding me back — almost literally. I have bad knees and the more I weigh, the more my knees hurt (or creak) when I’m walking up stairs or hills. I’ve always been short of breath when going uphill, but now it’s worse. And I can’t help but wonder how these extra pounds are affecting my overall health: heart, arteries, blood pressure. Stroke runs in my family on both sides. I don’t want to go there.

Then there’s the practicality side of the matter. Every six pounds is a gallon of fuel on my helicopter when I’m flying with a bunch of other fatties. I’ve done plenty of weight and balance calculations and I’ve realized that if you put a 250+ pounder up front with me and lightweights in the back, we’re going to be nose heavy. Being lighter would give me more flexibility with loading passengers, too.

In the spring of 2004 — just four years ago! — I weighed 30 pounds less than I do now. When I met my husband in 1983, I weighted 60 pounds less. (That was a bit on the thin side, in all honesty, but I wouldn’t mind going back there.) And for a while in college, I weighed 85 pounds less than I do now. (That was way too thin for someone my height and I was having digestive problems because of it.)

I want to go back to what I weighed in 2004. And I want to do it by March month-end.

What I’m Doing About It

Okay, so I’ve restated my “lose weight” goal as a New Year’s resolution. Big deal. I’ve been doing that for the past three years.

But now I’ve decided that I’ve really had enough. And I’ve begun watching what I eat.

You know, everyone says that Weight Watchers works. I know why. It’s because you look at every thing you eat and see the impact in terms of calories, fat, and other nutrition.

I don’t want to go to Weight Watchers, but I found an alternative. It’s a Web site called FitDay. I’d actually stumbled upon it at least a year ago, but a Twitter friend (@truecolor) mentioned it just the other day and I went to check it out again. This time, I decided to use it.

FitDay is a Web-based nutrition program, that is designed to help you meet weight and other nutrition goals. You tell it exactly what you ate and it tells you how many calories and other nutritional units you’ve consumed. You can set goals, specify additional activities (like exercise programs), and, of course, enter your daily weight. FitDay performs all kinds of calculations to tell you how your diet and exercise affect your nutrition and calorie burn.

Calorie BreakdownFitDay tracks all your data and prepares charts and graphs, like this one from the other day. I’m trying to keep my carb count low, since Atkins has worked so well for me in the past, and that’s why you’re seeing so many calories from fat. I’m going to try to shift those calories to protein. FitDay makes this relatively easy by letting you view the nutritional information from a vast database of foods.

For example, this morning I really wanted some oatmeal instead of eggs. But after consulting the FitDay database, I realized that a serving of oatmeal would put me way over my maximum goal for carbs for the day. So I stuck with a nice spinach, egg, scallion, and cheese omelet. FitDay gave me the total counts for my breakfast, which included two large cups of coffee with real sugar and 2% milk:

Today's Foods

Just seeing how each item I eat affects the overall picture of my nutrition is making me think twice about everything I eat.

So far, I’ve lost 2-1/2 pounds in 3 days. While it’s too early to make a call on whether this is working, it has to work — as long as I stick with it.

FitDay also has a PC-based application that you can buy, download, and use on a PC. I’m thinking of getting it for my mom, who has always struggled with weight. I’m not a PC user — I use a Mac — and don’t think it’s worth firing up Parallels just to track food when I can do it on the Web.

What I Think

While I’m not especially pushing FitDay — the Web-based program is far from perfect — I do think that it’s a useful tool for dieting.

What do you think? Have you tried any dieting tools that really helped you out? Share your comments here.

Real Stair Stepping

Exercise for butt sitters.

Before you read this, you must promise you won’t laugh.

Promise? I mean it now. Stop reading if you can’t promise.

Okay, so here’s the deal.

One of the occupational hazards of being a freelance writer is the results of spending long hours sitting on your butt in front of a computer. Like now: I’m spending about 10 hours a day, at least 6 days a week sitting on a padded, armless, wheeled swivel chair in front of my computer, working against time to finish my Leopard book.

(Okay, so right now, I’m not doing that. I’m goofing off by writing this. But you get the idea. And I’m still sitting in the same chair.)

As anyone in their middle years will tell you, lots of inactivity makes it really tough to keep pounds off. And I’ll tell you that for the past year or so, I’ve been adding pounds at the rate of two or three a month. Do the math. The answer is not pretty, especially on my waist, hips, and butt.

So I decided to add some exercise to my day in an effort to get my metabolism up and burn off some of the extra fat. But rather than drop everything and head out to the local gym where I can sweat among strangers and shower in a locker room on the rare instance I’m motivated to get in my car and drive there (which is not often), I decided to do some exercise at home.

I developed an exercise program to integrate into my work day. It includes a number of aerobic activities:

  • Weight lifting. Okay, so I don’t have a universal gym thing or even some weights. But what I do have is approximately 40 pounds of horse poop that has to be lifted off the ground and into a wheeled cart each day. The tool for doing that is a rake that resembles a snow shovel with tines instead of a blade. The motion is repetitive and takes about 10 minutes to complete. The cool down activity consists of rolling the two-wheeled cart down the paved driveway (which has a 25° slope) and 50 feet down a sandy steam bed to the compost pile. The cart must be overturned to be dumped. The wheeled cart (now empty) must come back up that steep driveway to conclude the exercise.
  • Power walking. Okay, so I don’t live anywhere near a track or mall or even a paved road. So I rough it. I walk down my paved driveway and around the edge of my property line, then up the steep (30°) dirt road to its intersection with the closest named road. That’s where my mailbox is. I fetch the previous day’s mail, turn around, and walk back. The challenge on the return trip is not to slip on the loose gravel. Total distance only about 1/4 mile, taking me about 15 minutes to complete the round trip. I do this only once a day. (No reason to walk all the way the hell up there in 100+° heat if there’s no mail to collect, is there?)
  • My StairsStair stepping. Okay, so I don’t have a stair-stepper machine. But I do have stairs. Yes, the real thing. There are 17 of them climbing up to our second floor. I walk up the stairs, make a loop around the coffee table in the room at the top of the stairs, go back downstairs, and make a loop around the living room. Then I do the whole thing again, without pause. Five to 15 times. Every two hours. Yes, it’s aerobic. I’m both out of breath and sweating (in my air conditioned house, mind you) when I’m finished. And I really believe that it’s making a difference, because each time I make a round, I can do one or two more laps. But it has convinced me that if I don’t lose weight soon, I’ll need new knees.

Other things I’m doing: eating smaller portions, eating less junk and more fruits and veggies, drinking a ton of water — in fact, I force myself to drink 12 ounces an hour. (Can I count the trips to the bathroom as part of my exercise routine?)

What else? When I get motivated, I go out walking with my friends Ray and Robbie. They’re in their 70s and walk the same 1.7-miile loop around their neighborhood every evening around sunset (unless there’s “electrical activity,” as Ray puts it). Their neighborhood is nearly deserted this time of year, so I can bring Jack the dog and I don’t have to keep him on a leash. The drawback is the bugs — little biting flies — and the humidity, which must be at least 25% this time of year.

My goal is to lose 30 pounds by March. It’s doable — but only if I keep moving.

Eating Habits

I think we eat well. Probably too well.

The other day, I had to journey down to Phoenix to meet with a compounding pharmacist about women’s health issues. Sheesh. Now that’s not something that’s normally part of my life.

As I’m aging, my body is changing. (Duh.) My metabolism has slowed down and it’s difficult to keep the pounds and inches off. But that’s only a small part of what I went to see the pharmacist for. The rest was that women’s stuff that starts becoming an issue once a woman gets into her 40s.

VeggiesThe subject of diet and eating habits came up in our conversation. I told her that we eat pretty well — perhaps too well. Our diet consists primarily of fresh food prepared at home. We don’t eat a lot of prepared foods at all. While we haven’t bought into the organic thing yet — mostly because it defeats part of the purpose when those organic foods are shipped 2,000 miles to get to our store — we do eat a lot of fresh vegetables. And since I’m one of those people who won’t eat fresh food after it’s been sitting in the fridge for a few days, we hit the local supermarket once every day or so to get a few things for our next few meals.

Variety is the Spice of Life. Or it Should be.

One of the disappointments we’re constantly struggling with is the lack of diversity in food available here at the edge of nowhere. Fresh fish is simply not an option — it all comes to Wickenburg previously frozen, no matter how “fresh” it looks in the butcher case. Veal is seldom available and, when it is, we can expect to pay $14.99/pound or more for it. Special cuts of meat — for example, veal shank (for osso bucco) or ground lamb (for one of Mike’s Armenian dishes) — must be ordered at least a few days before you want to eat it. Italian greens like the ones I grew up with — including escarole, chicory, and broccoli rabe — simply don’t make it to Wickenburg. I remember the first time I bought an eggplant in Wickenburg — the first time I’d ever seen one in the store. I had to tell the girl at the checkout counter what it was. She’d never seen one before. The supermarket recently stopped carrying the frozen edamame (soy bean pods) because they simply weren’t selling enough. Alex the Bird is very disappointed, since that’s one of his favorite foods.

What really kills me, however, is that they have these Safeway magazines in the store, filled with recipes. Lots of mouth-watering photos to really motivate me to cook. Yet in half the recipes on the magazine’s pages, there’s at least one ingredient that can’t be found in our local Safeway store.

Yet you can buy all kinds of beer in 12-packs and the “snack” aisle is completely full of every kind of chip you can imagine.

So although we eat well in general, our diet lacks the diversity we’ve had in the past.

And don’t talk to me about local restaurants. I’ll whine about that again in another post one day soon.

Why I’m Overweight

Of course, my problem keeping the pounds off is threefold:

  • As my metabolism has decreased, my food portions have not. Simply stated: I eat too much. This is unfortunate because I really do like to eat.
  • Since I spend the majority of my day sitting on my butt (currently working on two book revisions) and I don’t participate in outdoor activities this time of year — would you, with temperatures exceeding 100°F every day? — I don’t get enough physical activity (AKA, exercise) to get my metabolism back up, even a little.
  • The whole mid-life hormonal thing is further throwing my body out of whack, thus making it impossible to get a grip on what I need to do to fight back and start losing some of this weight.

Don’t Talk to Me about Dieting

Now I don’t want to hear the word diet as applied to that kind of activity where you starve yourself of one or more kinds of food (or all kinds of food) to drop pounds. I don’t weigh or measure my portions. I don’t count calories.

Recent studies have shown that dieting is not successful in the long term. You lose weight, you gain it back. It becomes a roller coaster lifestyle, with multiple sets of clothes so you don’t need to shop when your weight is back up or down.

I can vouch for this. Sure, I lost 20 pounds in 3 months on Atkins back in 2004. But since then, I’ve gained back 30 pounds. And let’s face it: not all diets are pleasant or healthy. What I need is to get my hormones stabilized and to change my lifestyle to eat less and exercise more.

The Silver Lining: Dining in Phoenix

One of the good things about going down to Phoenix for errands — like seeing this compounding pharmacist the other day — is the opportunity to eat out and enjoy something different. (Yes, it always comes back to food with me.) The other day, after finishing up my business, I drove through a dust storm to meet Mike down at the Biltmore Fashion Center. After a quick visit to the Apple Store to finally see an iPhone first hand (I wasn’t terribly impressed and I’m sorry about that) and a stop in the Williams Sonoma shop for a new martini shaker, we headed over to Tarbell’s on 32nd Avenue and Camelback.

Tarbell’s is a great little restaurant that specializes in fresh, local (whenever possible), organic foods. (They also have a great bar; when you ask for a Grey Goose martini, that’s what you’re going to get.) Mike and I shared a tuna tartar appetizer, which we’d had there before. The tiny bits of tuna were arranged on the plate with taro chips and ginger cucumber relish. Yum. For my main course, I hadpan-Seared Sea Scallops with organic butternut squash risotto, crispy sage, and roasted chestnuts. Mike had pan-Seared Alaskan Halibut and organic peach, spinach, and pancetta hash with smoked tomato sauce. These tastes were well matched and quite a treat from what’s available at home and in Wickenburg’s restaurants. For desert, we shared a warm, soft chocolate cake with pistachio ice cream. Very rich.

We finished dinner just before 6 PM — which is when the organic bakery in the same shopping center closes. We popped in and bought a loaf of fresh multigrain bread. One look at the ingredients told me we’d made a good purchase decision — I actually knew (and could pronounce) every ingredient! Imagine that! (I only wish I could remember the name of the place. But if you go to Tarbell’s you’ll see it in the same shopping center.) Oh, and did I mention that it was delicious?

Now don’t get the idea that I’m all hot for organic foods. I’m not. But I do like to know what I’m eating. And I also think that Americans buy too much food that’s shipped from somewhere far away when local alternatives are better for so many reasons. That’s one of the reasons I prefer shopping at small specialized stores — like bakeries and produce shops — than in huge name-brand supermarkets that truck in their food from who knows where.

Where Do You Eat?

Any suggestions for good restaurants with interesting food down in the Phoenix area? Don’t keep them to yourself. Use the Comments link or form to share them. I’m especially interested in learning about places on the west side of Phoenix, since that’s closer to home.

Quick Vanilla Egg Cream

Something different.

I spent most of the day cleaning out my closet, doing errands, and sending out take-down notices to file hosting companies illegally distributing my ebooks. It’s this last task that I found most depressing. There are hundreds of pirate sites out there and getting my book off one server is like stomping out a fire in hell. There’s always another fire to stomp out. Always. But I just can’t give up.

To cheer myself up, I thought I’d make myself a chocolate egg cream. But when I opened the fridge to pull out ingredients, my eyes fell upon the Jones Vanilla Cream soda. What would happen, I mused, if I mixed that with milk? Would I wind up with a vanilla egg cream?

I tried it. It worked.

The recipe:

  • 8-10 ounces milk. I use 2% because that’s what we buy at home.
  • 1 12-oz can vanilla cream soda. Jones works.

Put the milk in a very large glass. It should be only half full. Slowly pour in the pop, stirring constantly. Stirring is important; if you don’t stir, it will overflow. Pop in a straw and enjoy.

I think that if you used skim milk and diet soda, this might be low-calorie. But I don’t drink diet soda. I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners.