Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Wedding Day Diets

You’re a size 14. You want to be a size 8 before your wedding. Now comes all the crazy dieting, starving yourself, frantic workouts. You drop the pounds like butter off a hot knife, but then it all comes back, or you just can’t make that stubborn last 10 pounds go anywhere, no matter what you do.

Sound Familiar?

Well, that’s because most of the diets available today are NOT designed for what you want. There are the fad diets that do work, but require massive changes to your lifestyle, like Atkin’s and South Beach, which inevitably cause you to fail, over and over again, because you are denying yourself the things you crave. You cut out sugars, carbs, grains, breads, etc. Then because you CAN’T have these things, that’s all you find yourself wanting. Your diet requires you to do 30 minute workouts 3-4 times a week, but with all the wedding planning going on plus having to maintain your usual daily activities, like keeping your job to PAY for that wedding, and cleaning the house, especially during the Holidays when you are surrounded by friends and family, and allll those delicious pies and sweets, those Diets just won’t do.

Sylver Weddings CEO, Stacy Everett, has studied several different diets, has tried many of them personally, like the Atkins Diet, and knows the pros and cons of each. She’s gone a step further and developed her own diet based on this study of hers, and can shed a full dress size in 2 weeks. She’s looking trimmer and fitter by the day, and has even begun a Food Diary on our Facebook Page to help other’s learn by seeing exactly what she’s eating, right down to the ingredients.

What she learned is that you gain weight for basically two reasons. Your body thinks it’s starving, or your Blood sugar is spiking crazily. Both throw your system into a Fat Storage Mode, making every bite you eat another fat roll somewhere. Your body has this great set of tools to help you find that perfect balance, no matter what your activity level is. The Main one is called HUNGER. When your body is low on energy, it gets hungry, when it has enough in it’s system to get you through for a bit, it’s no longer hungry. Simple, right? Most people don’t eat when they are hungry, and don’t stop when they are no longer hungry. We are driven by schedules and price points.

So lets make a schedule then. But before we do, I want you to understand a little more. Starvation makes your body store everything you eat as fat because it doesn’t know if you’ll get another meal, or when. This dates back to our hunter/gatherer stage in evolution. We built up stores of fat to survive the long winters when food was scarce. How do you combat that? By eating 3 balanced meals a day at regular intervals, and not stuffing yourself, and 2-3 small snacks between meals to see you through until the next regular meal. Most important is something we all learned in Elementary School. EAT BREAKFAST. When you skip this all important meal, your body is immediately thrown into starvation mode for the entire day. So even if you eat well the rest of the day, you’re just storing it as fat.  

Blood sugar spiking up high during a typical meal then dropping down super low between causes fat storage.  This part is caused by the types of food we eat and the portions of each. We tend to gravitate to sugary foods, or carb laden foods, both spike your blood sugar. That’s why Atkins works, it cuts that away, and encourages you to eat as much as you want. You’re not starving, and you’re not spiking blood sugar. BUT, you crave those things. So you fail. So choose better when you plate up. Choose more healthy options, like the lean meats and cheeses, veggies, and more water, and have fewer of the sweets and carb laden grains, like fruits and starchy foods such as Potatoes and pasta. Your snacks should be some fruit or veggie and some protein. An apple and Brie Cheese, or Celery and Peanut Butter. This combo will also increase your energy level, allowing you to be more active. 

The 3rd thing to remember is simply to stay active. You don’t have to actually exercise, but you do need to keep your body moving all day. If you sit at a desk all day at work, you can fidget, rock, or a great option is to replace your chair with a large exercise ball. It requires you to constantly balance yourself, which keeps your body moving.

OK, I promised you a schedule. So in case you need something more concrete than the basics above, you can refer to this schedule. Of course, you can move the times up or down based on your everyday schedule, but this is what our CEO uses.

7:00 am – Eat Breakfast
8:00 am – Yoga
10:00 am – Snack
1:00 pm – Lunch
4:00 pm – Snack
7:00 pm – Dinner
10:00 pm – Snack

Meals should be approximately  1/3 protein, 1/3 veggie, 1/6 fruit, 1/6 grain. Snacks should be approximately ½ fruit or Veggie and ½ Protein.
If you need some menu idea’s, be sure to friend us on Facebook, and watch for Stacy’s Food Diary Posts. Make sure to like or comment on them regularly to make sure they appear in your news feed though!

** The above diet/comments has not been approved by the FDA or any other source, it is simply what Sylver Weddings CEO has found to be true for her. Before starting any diet, we recommend you check with your Doctor or other health care professional.**

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