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5 for Fighting

Metro Detroit experts tell you how to break through your weight-loss barriers, once and for all!

By Nicole Adamson

Everyone in Michigan knows spring is the season for road repairs, but for you, it’s the desperate time between failed New Year’s resolutions and swimsuit season. The construction barrels and posted detours you navigate on your weekday commutes are nothing compared to the weight-loss roadblocks in your daily life.

The good news is, there are ways – and there is time – to get around these obstacles before summer is upon us. We asked our panel of metro Detroit experts for sound advice on how to beat temptation, fit in fitness and lose the weight for good.

If you are extremely overweight or have any serious health concerns, seek your doctor’s advice before beginning any diet or exercise program.

Hunger Whenever you downsize your meals, you end up feeling famished. You’re willing to endure a little hunger, but your stomach is starting to sound like a broken muffler.

Zonya Foco: Counterbalance your “cut backs” with “add backs.” While you halve the portions of some things (such as one pork chop or one cup of pasta instead of two), double the size of the small salad traditionally served and the token spoonful of vegetables. Also, try beginning all meals with a cup of hot consommé or soup. Studies have shown that people generally consume 100 fewer calories for the entire meal when soup is included. Take this habit on for a year and you’ll melt 10 pounds.

Jonathan Ehrman: Most dietitians would tell you to focus on foods that will fill you up but won’t result in as high a calorie intake. Eating raw vegetables is a great way to achieve this. Exercise, in moderation, also tends to curb hunger.

Exercise-phobia If there were an exercise that could trim two inches off your waistline, two more off each of your thighs, flatten your tummy and tone your arms, you’d be all over it. But the world of fitness is a complicated place. Where do you start?

Meghan Taylor: Those who have led sedentary lifestyles simply should start moving. Take a walk around the block and gradually progress to circling the entire neighborhood and beyond. The key is simply to get your body moving and find something you enjoy.

John Sealey: Start out by doing two things: walking and doing crunches. Walking allows you to build up exercise tolerance and puts your body in fat-burning mode. Crunches help strengthen your core and support the back. The most important thing is to do as much as you can in the beginning, but eventually reach 45 minutes a day of walking on a daily basis.

Foco: Be a joiner! Join a Walk for the Cure group or bike group or water aerobics class or Curves, or something. I know a woman who has said, “I hate water, I can’t swim, I hate getting wet.” Then once they quit making excuses and gave it a try, they found their new love. Any type of physical-activity class is great.

Temptation You order salad and your husband orders steak and fries. The kids want to go out for ice cream. Someone brought doughnuts to work again. What do you do?

Ann Cobau: It is important to let those around you know that you need their support, and to be specific about how they can help you. Also, it might be necessary to avoid certain areas, such as the desk with the candy jar on it at work, and keep healthy snacks in your desk, so when you are feeling hungry, you are not tempted. And finally, in regard to parties and eating out, make a plan and stick with it.

Foco: No matter how hard you try to build a wellness culture in your own home and at work, there will continue to be temptations for the rest of your life. Remember this: Halve it and you can have it. It’s birthday cake time? Enjoy a delicious half slice. It’s your Grandma’s famous pecan pie? Halve it. (The slice, not the pie, of course).

Discouragement Three days of swearing off soda and fast food, and the scale hasn’t budged. You swing by McDonald’s on the way home from work and take out your angst on a Quarter Pounder.

Foco: Ditch the diet mentality and you will free yourself from this devastating diet prison. Do not start Monday on a new plan, weighing [yourself] every day, looking for the results. Simply target a few habits you know you have to change – your soda, your fast-food choices, late-night snacking, portions at dinner, including breakfast every day, exercising regularly – and commit to them for one year.

Taylor: It is vital to remember that you are not defined by the scale. Success also should be measured through the ability to be more active, [and to] develop strength [and] increased energy, not to mention happiness and simply feeling better inside. The help of a personal trainer and registered dietician can accelerate and amplify results. And one of the most powerful motivators is a family member, friend or colleague with like goals.

Ehrman: Each pound of fat is roughly 3,500 calories. Given this, the typical diet plan will only allow you to lose about 1 to maybe 2 pounds per week. And everyone reaches plateaus, at which time it is difficult to see results on the scale. You can look for other results, such as your clothes fitting better, or having more stamina/energy.

Emotional eating You reward yourself with a venti Frappuccino and cookie when you’re stressed out, and you battle boredom at work with chips and chocolate. Help!

Cobau: It is first important to identify those situations [and] feelings that cause you to either eat when you are not hungry or to overeat. Once you have identified those, think of what else you could do besides eating. Come up with at least five alternatives, write them down on a 3-by-5 card, and keep the card handy. When you are feeling the urge to eat when you are not hungry, or to overeat, stop, remember what you wrote on the card, and act immediately.

Sealey: Realize what you’re doing. If you have to, write down everything you eat. I require all of my patients to do this. Also, substitute foods such as potato chips with low-calorie foods, such as carrots, and foods that take longer to digest, such as almonds

Foco: Get into the habit of grabbing your headphones next time you grab for mood-altering comfort food. Listen to highenergy music when you need energy, or soothing music when you’re stressed.

MEET OUR PANEL

About the metro Detroit weight-loss experts who contributed to this story

Ann Cobau, licensed clinical social worker and certified group fitness instructor Cobau serves on the staff of the St. John Weight Loss Institute in Detroit and Shelby Township. She works with individuals and families in weight loss and fitness and has achieved her own goal of losing 100 pounds.

Jonathan Ehrman, Ph.D., associate program director of preventive cardiology at the Henry Ford Hospital Weight Management Program Ehrman holds a doctorate in clinical exercise physiology and is certified as an American College of Sports Medicine exercise specialist and program director.

Zonya Foco, registered dietitian, certified health and fitness instructor Foco is a nationally recognized expert on nutrition and wellness, author, and star of her own public television show, Zonya’s Health Bites. In 2004, Foco partnered with Health Alliance Plan to develop and launch its Weight Wise program.

John Sealey, D.O., board-certified surgeon A former family medicine physician, Sealey practices thoracic and vascular surgery at DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital. He also leads a weight-management program, working with individuals and groups and stressing behavior modification.

Meghan Taylor, personal trainer Taylor is head of the personal training department at Life Time Fitness in Commerce Township. She is certified as a personal trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine.