Dakota Beacon

Halloween and its candy has passed. Thanksgiving with all its scrumptious food went into the history books. Christmas and New Year’s feasting lie ahead. How are you set for calories? Acquiring more than you can burn? Weight gain through the Holiday Season becomes a problem for many.

Need motivation? Visualize this. A four-stick package of butter weighs one pound. Imagine carrying several packages of butter around your waist. Get the idea? Not good!

Do you live to eat, or eat to live? Poor eating habits reflect unrestrained indulgence, possibly a lack of self-discipline, or both.

There are reasonable ways to modify eating habits leading to healthy weight. Whether dieting or maintaining weight, regressing to poor eating habits ultimately sabotages healthy weight.

The importance of fiber and water in any diet cannot be overemphasized. Fiber helps slow the entrance of glucose into the blood stream thereby extending the sensation of satiation. Fresh fruits, vegetables, berries, most nuts, whole grains, and cereals are all great sources of fiber.

Drink plenty of water. Water combined with fiber keeps you feeling full between meals. Water also becomes essential when consuming a high fiber diet in order to "keep things moving." As such, water helps flush waste products from your system including fatty material.

Eat meals slowly. Give the fiber a chance to "do its thing." High fiber foods take longer to chew. This "tricks" the body into realizing that satisfaction is on the way. Eating slowly buys time for the body to register that the food you've already swallowed is providing fulfillment.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away – and keeps the "hungries" at bay. Apples as a high fiber food take longer to chew giving your body and your brain time to register that you are feeding your craving. One study suggests that people who ate 2 to 3 small apples a day tended to loose significantly more weight than those who did not eat apples.

Flaxseed provides a good appetite suppressant – particularly milled flaxseed. As with apples, the more fiber consumed at a meal, the slower the rise in blood sugar thus staving off the effects of hunger hormones. One ounce of milled flaxseed renders 8 grams of fiber. Besides eating flaxseed as an appetite suppressant, flaxseed also is an excellent plant source of omega-3 fatty acid. Additionally, the National Cancer Institute demonstrated the positive effects of flaxseed in lowering LDL, the "bad" cholesterol.

Oatmeal remains an old standby. It's low on the glycemic scale and high in fiber. Nutrients enter the blood stream slowly leaving the feeling of satisfaction long after eating breakfast.

Try soup as a choice. Select broth-based soups in lieu of cheesy soups. Vegetable soups offer another good source of fiber together with water.

Eat a small garden salad at the beginning of a meal but beware of the creamy dressings. Salads have long been known to decrease the appetite. Salads also slow down the sugars entering the blood stream. Soup and salad consumed before the main course of a meal justifies its own rationale.

Another trick: eat a small handful of pine nuts one half hour before mealtime. Pine nuts contain a polyunsaturated fat called pinolenic acid. When eaten, this chemical triggers two hormones that suppress the hunger urge. They tell the brain that the body is no longer hungry. At least one study indicated that consuming a small amount of pinolenic acid in the form of pine nuts before a meal may reduce food consumption by up to 35%.

When attempting to lose weight, emphasize protein (beef, pork, poultry, and fish) over starch. Protein remains the building block of body cells. Starch, on the other hand, converts to sugar which, in turn, produces fuel for energy. The body, however, will store excess sugar as fat. Not so with protein. It stands to reason that starch and sugar consumption should be limited or avoided when desiring weight loss.

Get plenty of sleep. Give your body a chance to rejuvenate and repair itself. During waking hours your body expends energy incurred through the stress and strain of activity. During sleep the body’s cells rebuild and replace themselves preparing for the next bout of activity. Another great benefit to be had when sleeping -- you don't eat. Snacking becomes the great enemy of weight loss or weight maintenance. Go to bed early to avoid snacking.

With a little planning one can master “waist” management.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).