Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

There are better ways to avoid wasting food

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“I often eat things because I don’t want them to go to waste. I may not even like them that much, but they cost money and I don’t want to be wasteful.”

Can you relate?

One of our Weighless program members posted this in our forum this morning. We’ve heard hundreds of variations on this theme over the years. I shudder to think how many millions of excess calories are consumed every year by people who just can’t stand to throw food away. Or the kids who are being indoctrinated into this unhelpful mindset with things like the Clean Plate Club.

Don’t get me wrong. Food waste is a huge problem that deserves our earnest attention. But guess what? Eating food you don’t need–or don’t even want–does not reduce food waste.

It doesn’t feed starving children. It doesn’t recover the resources that were used to produce it. It doesn’t put the money back in anyone’s wallet. It doesn’t really even keep it out of the trash. It simply turns your body into the trash receptacle.

Once we recognize the sheer folly of eating food just to prevent it from being wasted, it opens up some really useful alternatives:

  1. We can truly commit to an essential Weighless principle: If you’re not hungry and/or you’re not enjoying the food, stop eating!

  2. We can truly commit to meaningful action to reduce food waste.

The best way to reduce food waste is to stop buying, cooking, ordering, or serving yourself more food than you want or need. (We have specific strategies for this in Weeks 3, 6, 8, 9, and 12 of our year-long program)

If you do find yourself with more food than you want or need, share it with a friend, stranger, or even with your future self. Split an oversized portion with your dining companion. Donate excess food to a soup kitchen or homeless shelter. Pack it up and put it in the freezer for later.

If none of that is possible, throw it away or compost it. If it feels bad to throw it away, let that motivate you to redouble your efforts to avoid the situation in the future.

It is everyone’s job to help reduce food waste. But it is not your job to be a human garbage disposal.

I hereby disband the Clean Plate Club.

What we cover in the Weighless Program (our Curriculum)

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One of the questions I frequently get about the Weighless program is what exactly we cover in our curriculum.  This was originally conceived as a year-long program, which gave us time to get into virtually every possible aspect of weighing less–from the biochemistry to the logistics to the all-important head game.   The program is now self-paced, allowing you to move through the material as quickly or slowly as you like. Your access never expires.

Here is a more detailed breakdown:

Module 1: The Weighless Method

The first twelve topics focus on the basic tenets of the Weighless approach:

  • Collecting data
  • Setting appropriate goals
  • Connecting to what motivates us
  • Eating and movement patterns
  • Planning tools and techniques
  • Lifestyle design
  • Habit formation

Module 2: Weighless Skills

In the next twelve topics, we start to refine and customize our strategies, including:

  • Meal timing
  • Exercise strategies
  • Sleep patterns
  • Mindfulness techniques
  • Managing appetite
  • Dealing with cravings
  • Assessment
  • Problem solving
  • Prioritization

Module 3: Weighless Living

The largest part of the curriculum focuses on skills and strategies that help us stay on track long term. In addition to working more deeply on all of the above, we dig into:

  • Stress management
  • Cognitive distortions
  • Lapses and relapses
  • Recognizing ego defenses
  • Identifying and defusing triggers
  • Unsupportive environments
  • Social pressures
  • Managing disruptions (vacations, holidays, illnesses, injuries)
  • Learning to indulge without overindulging
  • Tapping into sustainable sources of motivation
  • Creating comfort and pleasure
  • How to learn from and recover from setbacks

As you can see, it is a robust, comprehensive and exhaustive curriculum. But the most important thing is not all that you know by the time you complete it. It’s the opportunity to put these tools into practice, to get support when you fail, and to build a self-sustaining system.

If you’re ready to dig in, dig deep, and finally become someone who weighs less, we can’t wait to work with you.

Details on enrolling are here.

Related:

8 Ways to know whether Weighless is right for you

3 Ways Weighless will change your life

What it’s like to weigh less

 

Are you sitting on the sidelines of your life?

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As leaders of the Weighless community, Brock and I are not just here to give pep talks or give you something interesting to think about. We are offering tools that can help you create the results you want. But they have to be picked up and used.

So often we see people whose entire effort is comprised of completely passive activities: reading, researching, thinking, planning. All of those things have their place. But you’ve got to actually take some action if you want to see change happen.

If you’re thinking but not doing…

If you’re learning, but not taking action…

If you’re “inspired” but not actually moving…

…then you are sitting on the sidelines of your own life.

The only way to reach your goal is to get on the field. Yes, you might drop the ball or lose yards. But you can’t win (or lose!) by sitting on the sidelines.

 

The right (and wrong) way to use a diet tracker

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Is tracking your food and calories (or WW points) essential  to losing or maintaining your weight?  Or is it a toxic dieter’s mindset?

Neither.

Food and activity trackers can be useful tools when they are used to gather information.  You can learn a lot about how different foods and portion sizes compare in terms of how many calories they provide and how much they fill you up.  You can learn how your body feels after a 400 calorie breakfast instead of a 200 calorie breakfast, or how it feels to eat 100 calories worth of roasted potatoes vs 100 calories worth of potato chips.

You can identify which foods (or hours of the day) are contributing excess calories that keep you from weighing less. You can experience how much you need to move around in order to hit 10,000 steps a day, or get a reality check on how often you’re getting 30 minutes of exercise. 

All of this can be useful and empowering information.  

But if you’ve been weighing, measuring, logging, and tracking every bite and step for more than a few weeks, you’re probably not gathering much new information. Instead of being your tutor, your tracker can easily become the judge, jury, and executioner.  

  • Instead of considering your hunger level, you ask your tracker how many more calories you’re allowed to eat.  Hit your limit? Then no more food for you.  (Or, worse: off to the gym to burn some calories so you can eat more.)
  • Instead of choosing foods that you enjoy and that make you feel good, you use your tracker to choose the one that’s lowest in calories. 
  • Instead of developing your self-awareness and self-control, you’re outsourcing both of these to a device.

That’s the opposite of empowering. 

We hear from so many people who are SO sick of tracking but terrified to stop. They’re afraid that, without their tracker to them when to stop eating, they’ll never stop.

But listen: If you have the discipline to stop eating when your tracker tells you to, you also have the ability to stop eating when your stomach (or brain) lets you know that you’ve had enough. You can reclaim the authority that you’ve given to your tracker.  And there’s nothing more freeing than realizing that you can trust yourself to know (and do) what’s in your best interests.

Thoughts? Questions? Arguments? Post them in the comments below. 

Your love of baking is not the problem

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Our newest Weighless members have just begun their year-long program. They’re getting to know each other and sharing their stories in the member forum. And several of them have mentioned the same obstacle to weight loss:

“My problem has always been that I just love to bake,”  one said, prompting a rousing chorus of “Me too!”

Man, can I relate.  I was also an avid baker in my 20s. I baked bread, pies, biscotti, scones, biscuits, you name it.  Around the holidays, I turned into a one-woman cookie factory. I took great pride in my creations and got a lot of positive strokes from my friends and family.  Who doesn’t love the friend, sister, or co-worker that’s constantly showing up with fresh-baked bread and cookies? (At least, that’s what I told myself.)

I loved the science and chemistry, the feel of springy dough under my hands, the yeasty scent, the beautiful end product.   All the things that we bakers say we love about baking.

The problem was that I also loved to eat bread, pies, cakes, and cookies.  I baked a lot. I ate a lot of baked goods. With predictable results.

And I finally realized that if I wanted to weigh less, I might need to bake less.

The less I baked, the fewer baked goods I ate. With predictable results.

I still bake for special occasions. Dad gets a rhubarb pie every Father’s Day. I make Challah bread for Easter brunch. (Yes, I get the irony.)   And if I decide to make cookies for the holidays, I’ll choose just one or two of the family favorites instead of all ten.

And you know what?  My family didn’t stop loving me. My friends didn’t stop inviting me over. Holidays are still special. And I have found new ways to be creative in the kitchen.

Time that I used to spend feeding my sourdough, I now spend rinsing my sprouts. Instead of making cookies, I make seed crackers.  Instead of kneading dough, I’m pickling carrots. Instead of trying out new pastry recipes, I try out new soup recipes.

It’s OK to love baking, or cooking, or even eating. But when our pursuit of that activity becomes an obstacle to our well-being, it’s no longer a hobby or an enthusiasm.  It’s a way to abandon ourselves.  A way to excuse or justify poor choices.

Now, you may be one of those rare creatures that can bake up a storm and never over-indulge.  But if you’re more like me, you might want to experiment with the notion that that you can love baking just as much but do it much less often.  You might like the results.

Weighless or Precision Nutrition?

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We’re often asked about how the Weighless program compares to Precision Nutrition’s program. Both are 12-month programs that promise to create sustainable behavior change. Both incorporate nutrition and fitness. Both cost about the same.

Let me start by saying, I have a ton of respect for what John Berardi has created there. From what I’ve seen, the concepts and philosophy of Precision Nutrition are 100% aligned with our approach–although the name might suggest otherwise.

The name “Precision Nutrition” implies that they focus on getting exactly the “right” number of grams or percentages of various nutrients. In reality, their approach focuses more on making small sustainable shifts in habits and setting up the systems that support your goals: very much like what we do in the Weighless Program as well.

(This is the opposite of what we’ve seen of the Noom program, by the way, which promises psychology and behavior change but delivers the same old, doomed, calorie-obsessed diet.)

How Weighless is different

So, for those who have already tried Precision Nutrition, or are trying to do decide between the two, here are the three things that set the Weighless program apart:

Your Curriculum. In the Weighless program, we don’t just have a method. We also have a process for teaching that method. Our 52-week curriculum guides you step-by-step through an incremental, cumulative process of behavior change. You’re not only learning how to weigh less without dieting, you’re learning a method that can be used to create any change you’d like to see in your life.

Your Coaches. Brock and I didn’t just create the Weighless curriculum. We’re there personally, throughout the program, to help you understand, implement, modify, and problem-solve, and to offer insight, feedback, and support. We do not outsource this support to free-lancers. And unlike Precision Nutrition, we do not run a training or certification program for other coaches. Your success is our primary bottom line.

Your Community. In Weighless, you’ll go through the entire program with a small group of people (we’re talking dozens, not thousands)–all of whom you will know by name, and all of whom will be working through the same material at the same time. The private member’s forum (not on Facebook) becomes an information hub, a co-working space, and a place to connect with us and your fellow members. It’s available to you 24/7 and with members located around the world, the lights are always on. This tight-knit community becomes an invaluable source of support, ideas, and camaraderie.

Other questions? Need more help deciding whether or not Weighless is a good fit? Feel free to email us.

But I’ve tried so many times before

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We asked people to share the biggest thing keeping them from tackling their weight issues. And one answer that keeps cropping up is breaking my heart.

“I have tried (and failed) too many diets in the past.”

“With a history of yo- yo dieting, I already feel discouraged.”

“Knowing myself, I won’t succeed.”

Ouch. I get it. You’ve tried again and again to lose weight without success. Or you’ve lost weight and always gain it back. The thought of trying and failing again is just too painful.

But the alternative seems just as painful: simply giving up and accepting that you’ll always be unhappy with your body and your relationship with food.

But there is one more option. And it’s not simply to try again and hope that this time, somehow, it will be different. It’s to try something you haven’t tried before.

Instead of going on yet another diet to lose weight, you could start creating a life in which you weigh less.

You can accept that this process will involve a certain amount of failure. But if properly utilized, those failures can actually become stepping stones to success.

And just like mountain climbers clip into each others’ lines for safety, you can hook into a community and a system that will keep you from falling off the mountain when you slip, and hold you in place until you regain your footing.

This is what we do in the Weighless program.

Here’s the thing: Every single one of the people who has succeeded with us had a long history of failed attempts.

I’m so glad they didn’t give up. I’m so glad they decided to try one more time…but to try something completely different.

There’s a choice to be made

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I know it seems like a lifetime ago, but think back to before we were all plunged into this global pandemic. What was on your personal To Do list? What goals were you working toward? What projects were most important to you?

Are those things still important to you? Why or why not?

Does it still feel possible to make progress toward your objectives? Why or why not?

It may be tempting to use this disruption and uncertainty as a reason to give up on goals you have been working towards.  Or as an excuse to (over)indulge in things that move you even further from your goal. 

Alternatively, you can choose to find the ways in which this disruption offers an opportunity.

  • Cooking more at home means eating more nutritious meals.
  • Less commuting means more time to exercise.
  • Fewer trips to the grocery store means less impulse buying.
  • Not eating out equals less temptation to overindulge.
  • The loss of old routines is a golden opportunity to establish new patterns.
  • A change in employment status is a chance to pursue a new path.

You can decide which of your previous habits you want to return to when conditions allow and which of them you’ll shed for good. After all, not all of what we used to consider “normal” was good for us. 

How do I know that it is possible to grow and thrive in the midst of chaos and uncertainty?

I’m watching you do it.

In March, just as Covid was shutting down the world as we know it,  a new cohort was just beginning in the year-long Weighless program.  We’ve got teachers, parents, essential workers, business owners, furloughed workers, and first responders. And these people are KILLING it!  They aren’t making excuses. They are figuring it out.  (And if you can learn to weigh less during a global pandemic, there’s really nothing that can stop you.) 

In a few weeks, we’re planning to open enrollment for our next group. We don’t know how the current situation will affect enrollment.  We may have a smaller group than usual. And that’s totally fine.  In fact, it may be a bonus. Because these will be people who understand that conditions are never ideal and that health and well-being is not a luxury. And that right there is a powerful predictor of their success. 

In the meantime, I want to encourage all of us to use the challenges we are facing as an opportunity and not an excuse. 

Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash