The Writer's Guide to avoid to much over indulgance at the RWA Conference

Here we are just a week away from the RWA conference. I’ve worked hard to lose the 12lbs for the conference. I have missed my goal, which I might make by Monday when I’ll be driving down to L.A.

Now the challenge of not to over eat, over drink and over indulge in more chocolate then I need in a lifetime. I plan on staying on my diet plan, or stay pretty close to it. Because I’m staying at a friends condo, I do have access to a kitchen, which means I will prepare some of my meals. Most likely it will be breakfast, since I’ll be at the conference hotel the majority of the day. I’ll be meeting with friends for dinner and drinks here and there. I’m really not going to worry too much about it since I’m there to have a good time.

Plan on gaining weight. Travel creates stress hormones that can cause the body to retain water, which translates into blotting. Air travel especially is fantastic for this little bad habit of our bodies. Being away from home, eating at odd hours can also cause those same stress hormones to explode. Add putting foods in your system you haven’t eaten in a while, along with high sugar deserts and alcohol, plan on gaining at least 5lbs, even with exercise. The good news, when you get home and back to your normal routine, it will all go away very quickly.

How to avoid too much weight gain:

• Eat a balanced breakfast. I know I sound like a commercial. Make sure part of the breakfast contains some kind of protein. Eggs, with toast and fruit, will keep carvings down, and the hunger at bay. Protein is the most important part of this because it balances your glycemic index.
• Avoid too much caffeine. I know I’m talking to a bunch of writers, whose life line is coffee and chocolate. Caffeine can stimulate the appetite, which if you allow yourself to get too hungry and can cause some over eating of the wrong kind. Like chocolate. Essentially what it does is cause your sugar to drop, which translates to feelings of starvation.
• If possible carry a little healthy snack in a purse. Nuts, with trail mix or fruit. It helps with the carving by keeping the sugars in your body balanced.
• Drink tons of water. At every opportunity drink water. Carry a bottle with you in your bag. Again it helps keep the body flushed and sugars balanced.
• At the RWA luncheons, try to keep it balanced. I’ll eat usually a vegetarian lunch, so I can get extra vegetables for the day. Then eat a regular meal at dinner for the protein. I try not to eat all the pasta on the plate, especially if its covered in white sauce. If there is a choice between white and red, go with the red. The same with wine, red is healthier. 
• If you can resist the rich deserts the hotel offers at the luncheons and dinners, pass them off to someone else, or just send the waiter away with it. 
• Alcohol. Think this, for every drink, drink as much water. It will keep the body flushed and sober. Don’t drink to excess, hangovers are another diet killer, and the water retention will really show.
• The chocolate. Dark chocolate has the least amount of sugar and is actually good for you. Try to stay with that if possible. Nibble small pieces if you can't resist and slowly. 

The main thing have a good time, and try to practice some of this while having that good time, and you'll come home less blotted. One thing to remember, if you can stay away from processed foods, do it. It will add to a already stressed body. Eat healthy greens and fresh fruits when available. If the hotel your staying at will bring a refrig up to your room, take advantage of it to store healthier foods. I don't eat dairy. So for me to avoid dairy at conferences at times can be a challenge, which is why I like to have a refrig where I can keep my coconut creamer, almond milk, and the breads I eat that aren't whole grain. Yes, I don't eat whole grains. I try to stay gluten free if possible.

Eating at a convention is a challenge if your trying to be good. Enjoy yourself and make that u-turn when you get home. For now do the best you can and don't stress, because stress hormones will set your glycemic index on it's head and ask your body to store fat. The best advice, remember don't spike your sugar, because you'll crash feel tried and hungry..Keep it balanced. 

The Writer's Guide to Exercising while at the RWA Conference

If there is one thing you count on while at the RWA National conference, there will be a gym and/or a pool in your hotel of choice. One of beauties of modern hotels these days, they have gyms and almost always have a pool. While at the conference, use them! If you’re doing great on your diet and losing weight, as you incorporate exercise into your life, take advantage of the gyms in the hotels during vacations and summer travel. 

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of conferences. There is a lot of stress radiating through the air. I’m one of those personalities that absorbs the stress and emotions of other’s like a sponge. I feel the desperation filtering through the air, as writers all juggle for that magic moment of acceptance from peers and requests from a dream agent. To deal with the stress, exercise is my best remedy.

My plan to keep on my exercise schedule is to rise early, run or swim before breakfast. That’s easy for me, since my eyes open with sunrise. I’m going to try not to stay up too late. Drinking alcohol won’t be a problem, since I’m not staying at the hotel and will be driving back and forth. Need I say more.

To take extra time in the morning to either run or swim, will help wake up the body for the day. Both can burn a lot of calories ingested the day before. Swimming for 1hr can burn up to 600 calories. Yes, just an easy breaststroke will burn calories, because of the pull of the body through the water. It’s the best resistance training there is.

Running for 1hr at an easy pace can burn up to 600 calories. Just make sure you break a sweat. If the gym is busy and the equipement full, run around the building outside a few times. L.A’s air quality is notoriously bad. Just keep that in mind.

While at the conference, scope out ways to burn calories. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Go for walks outside in between workshops. Give yourself a little me time to de-stress. You might not lose weight, but may not gain any either.

Next week is the last week prior to conference. How to eat without over indulging, especially in all that chocolate!   

The Writer's Guide to a Stalled Diet

One of the biggest problems most dieters face is the stalled diet. The reason behind this is your body has suddenly become use to your diet and exercise program. It’s settled in, you’ve lost weight, and now it seems like your just maintaining your new weight.

The first part of your diet is the greatest weight loss. Part of it is water, and then the body adjust to no more fatty rich foods, and the weight comes off. Then suddenly stops. You stay the same weight for weeks.

The best thing to do, if you’re not doing this already is eat six small meals a day. Look at your caloric intake, what you’re allowing yourself in calories, and divide into six. Say if you’re eating 1200 calories a day, you have six 200 calorie meals a day, with lots of water in-between. Yes, you’ll be running to restroom often. But you need to flush the system of toxins released by your sudden healthy eating.

If you’re already doing the six meals, try this. Reduce any other fatty items you can in your diet and reduce carbs. That little piece of chocolate might have to go for the time being. Then increase your caloric intake with a healthier item, or replace less carbs with lean protein. Yes, increase, do not decrease calories. Then add, if humanly possible another 15mins of aerobic exercise, such as a longer faster walk or run. The body will kick start again and the weight will start to come off once more.

It’s important to stimulate your metabolism with healthy food. By not eating enough of the right food, the body will hang on to the fat. It’s often called the ‘starvation mode'. For a dieting body to go into starvation mode, it takes a long time of not eating enough, or not eating enough of the right food. The body has a mini rebellion and refuses to let go of fat.

To get the body going, add more healthy foods to your diet, increasing the caloric intake and reduce carbs or anything with added sugars. The body will automatically respond, by working to burn those calories, which in turn burns fat. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way with fatty foods. If you increase your caloric intake of foods that are high in sugars and fat, like a fast food hamburger, all you do is feel sluggish and bloated while the body tries to fight through the garbage to digest it. Once you get done, you feel like crap, and hate yourself for eating it. The moral of the story don’t try to stimulate the metabolism with unhealthy food. The key is feeling sluggish after eating too much of something unhealthy. The body is trying to tell you something, like its fighting to digest it.

How to solve the problem:

• Increase caloric intake with healthy food.
• Reduce carbohydrates and increase lean protein.  
• Increase meals to six a day.  
• Eliminate any remaining fatty food from your diet.  
• Reduce dairy products.
• Increase aerobic exercise.

Another reason for stalled weight loss, is gaining muscle weight. If you are working out in a gym in combination of aerobics, machines and weights, most likely you're gaining muscle. This is a good thing, because muscle is smaller, but heavier then fat. If this is the case, start to measure yourself, and that's were you'll see the changes, not on the scale. Still look at your diet carefully, to continue to decrease size you might need to reduce carbs and add more protein in the form of lean meats and protein shakes. Read the labels on protein shakes carefully, they can be high in calories and sugar for energy.

Next week the detox or cleanse. Do they work? 

The Wrtier's Guide for Preparing for a Diet.

Preparing for the diet is a necessary evil to see success.

RWA national is around the corner, and here I am preparing my body for a diet. Yes, preparing. After doing a lot of research on why diets fail, besides cheating on the diet itself, I found it is more about the body’s reaction to the sudden lack of junk and fatty foods. It is one of the biggest reasons diets fail. We’re actually putting our bodies and mental attitude under a lot of stress by sudden denial of everything bad for us, which we often love. It’s a love/hate relationship.

What to do?

Take a look at when it would be a good time to start a diet, and start to mentally and physically preparing in the weeks prior. Most diets started on January 1^st fail by the 15^th. Look at the date, it’s January 1^st, a good time for new beginnings, but possibly the single worst time to start a full blown diet. The weeks prior to New Year’s Day, we party hard, drink too much, over eat foods we normally don’t eat, we're way off normal schedules, are placed in stressful family situations and travel. Then we celebrate the end of the year and think the next day we’re going on a diet. It’s a recipe for failure before it starts.

First sit down a take an honest look at your diet. Not the holiday one, but the one you eat everyday. That is the diet that has caused you to slowly gain weight. Write down everything you’ve eaten normally and add up the calories. It is a sobering experience to see the blaring abuses in the form of way too much caloric intake.

This is when you pick an actual start date for the diet. Don’t make it the next day. Pick a reasonable date one month out. First, pick out the highest calorie item. For me it was wine. I loved to have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. Alcohol is the biggest diet killer. I started to slowly bring down my intake of wine to two glasses a week. Then what followed was the slow elimination of processed foods. I’m lactose intolerant, so I only gave up hard cheeses, during those weeks. No dairy, was the easy one for me. While I was getting rid of bad things, wheat or gluten's, were slowly being eliminated. As I did this over a month, with the reduction of one thing at a time to get where I felt I was ready to hit a diet full on, I had lost five pounds.

If you are contemplating a detox prior to a diet, prepare your body in the same way, with slow elimination of bad foods. You'll have much better results from the detox. You will lose weight with a weekend or three day detox, but-will gain it back as soon as reintroduce regular meals, even diet meals. Just keep that in mind. And research detoxes or cleanses carefully, there is a lot of really crazy ones out there. I like Dr. Oz's, because you still take in calories. Plan your detox on a quiet, uneventful weekend. Don't do it when you are attending parties, family gatherings or any stressful event.

As I went through this process of preparation of a detox leading into my diet, I mentally prepared myself for the actual diet. This is an important if you’re deciding to go on a strict limited diet. To try to give up everything at once puts both physical and mental stress on you, which can add up to failure. It’s a slow process to become a healthier eater, and requires patience. You've got to plan every meal, and know what you can eat when you go out. Check out menu's on-line before you go to a restaurant. It's all about being prepared. As for parties, I simply go with the flow, don't expect anything special for your diet or ask for it. It's your choice to be on the diet, the world doesn't care.
 

To help with my mental attitude, I cut out pictures of dresses I’d like to wear to National, and tape them in a place where I’d see them daily. For me it was inside my medicine cabinet. I’ve reminded myself daily, I’ve really started late on this, and so I won’t be at my goal weight, but will at least be half way.

Now take a look at diets that have worked well for you in the past, and examine why they failed. Be honest, was it you or the diet. I’m a yoyo dieter, and I can say without a doubt, I’m the reason for failure. 

The hardest diet for me is the low carb, or Caveman diet, but-it worked the best for me. I’ve found success with it in the past. It’s just I hit it too hard out of the gate, and the diet collapsed under the stress. It’s not an easy diet, every meal has to be planned, and eating out is difficult.

Now I’m on my caveman diet, and doing well, because I prepared myself both physically and mentally for it. With this particular diet, I was prepared for the headache from the lack of carbs, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time I did it, because I’ve slowly eliminated high sugar items over the past month. 

Why the caveman? I like meat and love vegetables. The combination is a good one for me. It does require a lot of planning and cooking, both of which I don't mind doing. I also have the support of other family members who are on the diet, and inspire me with their success. I find it to be a very clean diet also. I buy only grass feed meats, and organic veggies. It's an adjustment, but I'm making it work, because of all the preparation.
  
As for exercise, I’m allowing my body and lifestyle to adjust to the diet, before I start to add a normal exercise routine. It's about the stress of trying to do everything at once. Build up to it.

I'm not a nutritionist and am not indorsing any diet. If you have medical problems and are on medication, talk to your doctor before attempting any strict diet or exercise. Pick out a diet and exercise program that works for your physical conditioning and lifestyle. 

Next week, adding exercise.