In the second week of her series on health and weight, Paula Mee talks about keeping stock
If you're unfit, overweight and thinking about change, the first and most important thing to do is to figure out how on earth you got to your present weight. Too much food and not enough exercise, you may say.
But why? Why do you eat the way you do and why don't you exercise? These barriers need to be fully teased out before there can be effective change.
This is not an excuse to concoct a list of reasons for your weight gain. Neither is it about playing self-defeating mind games. Blame games often help us to wriggle out of being responsible for the way we eat, eg "My boss is so unreasonable, I usually came home and pig out all evening!"
They prevent us from really committing to change because basically we feel we're just not worth it or it's too late, it's too difficult or we have too much on. The "if only" game allows us to spend more energy daydreaming about a faster metabolism, rather than focusing on one small but significant change to shave off those calories - such as skipping dessert or having a frothy cappuccino as a little indulgence instead.
What you're looking for is a clear understanding of how and why you gained that weight, so that you just don't keep on repeating the behaviour.
Start by reviewing your weight history and your family history.
Did you have weight problems growing up? If the answer is no, losing any excess weight accrued as an adult may be easier because your weight gain is probably circumstantial.
On the other hand, if your parents and siblings are overweight, theyou may have a genetic tendency to become overweight and you may have inherited some poor eating habits as well.
However, you don't inherit body fat, you only inherit a tendency to collect it. You can control your own destiny.
Writing down what you eat, when, how much and why requires discipline but there's no escaping the facts when you invest some time doing this exercise.
Looking through your food diary, you can see certain patterns or trends. Are you actually hungry when you eat or are you just eating in response to some emotion? Are your portions too generous? Do you eat too often or do you skip meals and let yourself get too hungry later on? Do you eat a balanced diet containing the different food groups?
Do you sit down to regular meals or do you passively over- consume food while watching TV? Do certain situations trigger you to eat when you're not hungry? Do you choose too many high calorie or high fat foods? Do you overeat from one particular food group?
When you've kept your food diary for a few days and analysed it, don't be tempted to throw it away. Keep it and use it to remind yourself from time to time on your weight loss journey - just how far you've come.
If you've been on more fad diets than you can remember and never managed to maintain a comfortable weight, then the mere thought of dieting probably fills you with dread. All that deprivation! Think back over these fad diets and be honest with yourself about why they didn't work in the long run.
What foods do you really love that were not in the plan? To lose weight you have to live comfortably on fewer calories now, but it's vital that some of the calories you do eat come from foods you enjoy for long- term success.
Next week we will look at habits you have to break.
Paula Mee is a dietitian and co-author of the Health Squad Guide to Health and Fitness. Her e-mail at the Dublin Nutrition Centre is paula@dnc.ie