by Rita Black
The Good-Bad, On and Off-ers: This is the most common of my clients. They eat a healthy diet most of the time. The problem is they are rigidly eating “good,” and when they eat something “bad,” they “go off” at the drop of a hat. They may be happily eating the 85 percent Food Mastery Zone healthy foods Monday through Thursday, and even burning the calories to release weight; however, the problem is once they go off their healthy eating plan, they consume far more than the 15 percent Buffer Zone calories and become a victim of their Carb Zombie. By the time they pull themselves out of their Struggle Zone, they have filled in any calorie deficit they may have created and so their weight remains plateaued or is slowly creeping up.Their Journey to Weight Mastery: When the Good-Bad, On and Off-ers begin to live life in the Food Mastery Zone and start using the Buffer Zone as a way to keep their mind flexible (there is no “bad” food) and their life flexible, they can live in the real world and enjoy being consistent. Instead of relying upon being “good,” they now focus on feeding themselves within their 85-15 Percent Food Mastery Eating Zone while staying in balance within their Calorie Budget for Weight Release. They can release weight while enjoying the flexibility of the Buffer Zone foods without awakening their Carb Zombie. They begin to feel in charge and confident from the inside out.
Stuck in the Food Struggle Zoner: This group feels totally addicted to refined foods and spends most of their time struggling with their relationship to them, especially those foods that contain sugar and flour. They want to eat healthfully, but because their body is out of balance with fake hunger and their Carb Zombie is controlling their mind always looking for the next fix, they feel a need for refined foods just to feel “normal.”Their Journey to Weight Mastery: In order to break free from the tyranny of the Carb Zombie and get back into the Food Mastery Zone, the Food Struggle Zoner needs to spend some time resetting their mind and body from the spell of too many refined sugars and carbs. When someone is in this Food Struggle Zone, I usually have them begin by what I call Hibernating the Carb Zombie by eating in mostly the 85 percent part of the Food Mastery Zone for three days to a week. What they begin to notice within a few days is that their mind is released from the food fog, and they begin to lose the crazy fake hunger. They begin to desire eating foods that allow them to feel even-keeled and sane. Again, this focus isn’t on being “good.” The focus is on “healing” the body into a state of balance. Once this is achieved, they can begin to explore more variety in the 15 percent Buffer Zone. However, I find that some people are much more carb sensitive than others and must continue to be extremely moderate with their relationship with foods containing sugar and flour.
You may find yourself in one of the client groups I have described above or maybe somewhere in between. Wherever you are is perfect and will change as time goes on. My journey to weight mastery evolved as I learned to tune into my body, self-correcting along the way and becoming more masterful as I went.
My Mastery Zone Evolution
I know for me when I was 40 pounds overweight I was living in my Food Struggle Zone—overeating sugary foods and refined carbs. Even when I was dieting, it seemed like most of the diet foods that I ate contained abundant amounts of refined ingredients. Some days 90 percent of what I ate was composed of refined carbs and carby-fatty foods. As I started my journey and began eating more nourishing and stabilizing foods, I felt better and less addicted. I released weight and felt like I had it down.
As I began tuning in even more to when and what I was eating, I became more aware of the foods that “took my mind away” and started to avoid them. There were still lots of great foods I could eat, but I no longer desired foods that controlled me rather than me controlling them. As I evolved more, I became more stabilized with food. I learned to focus on my calorie budget and became aware of the caloric content of foods. I had that idea of a budget: What was the food going to buy me? If I knew a food would stabilize me and keep me feeling even-keeled, it became more attractive to me, especially if the food kept me within my calorie budget. I quickly found myself being the person who could say no to a doughnut, not because I had to (because I was on a diet) but because I didn’t want the wasted calories from a food that gave my body a blood sugar spike and then crash and also might arouse my Carb Zombie. It was during this stage that I reached my ideal weight.
Nowadays I eat in a way I love where I eat healthfully with wiggle room in my Buffer Zone for living my full and social life. Sure, there are times when I tickle my Carb Zombie here and there and need to go through steps to put her back into hibernation. Now, though, I do that quickly and swiftly without self-recrimination or remorse. I understand how my mind and body work with food—I respect food and it respects me.
Now that you understand the mechanics of living within your Food Mastery Zone, let’s look at how you create your own Food Mastery Zone Eating Structure.
Build Your Food Mastery Zone Eating Structure
I am going to walk you through the three steps of setting up your Food Mastery Zone Eating Structure. Research shows that having a repeating daily meal structure with food helps with consistency because it becomes ingrained over time and removes a lot of the decision-making that pulls at our limited resource—willpower. We are going to get you started here and then review these steps before you head into your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice. You will then have the support during your 30 Days to begin implementing your new structure. The structure that you create is going to be unique to you and will evolve as you go along. I want you just to get into the spirit of experimenting and thinking about food in a thin thinking way. Please don’t worry about getting it perfect.
Make sure your Calorie Budget for Weight Release honors you and your life. We discussed this earlier, but I will repeat it because it is so important: Be careful to make sure your weight release goal allows you a Calorie Budget for Weight Release that is not so restrictive that you feel deprived. Yes, you can feel full and satisfied on 1,200 calories when you are eating quality foods, but lowering your calorie budget any further may defeat the purpose of finding a way of eating that you can live with long-term.
Divide your Daily Calories into meals and snacks. Start with where you need the most calories first. I advise clients planning their daily structure to ask themselves how much fuel (calories) they want for their biggest meal of the day. Then, they can figure out the number of calories to allot to snacks and other meals that stay within their Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release.
Here is how a few of my clients figured out their Food Mastery Zone Meal Structures:
Example 1: Robert has a Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release of 1,900 calories.
He works hard physically most days in his construction job, and he likes a big dinner.
Robert allocates 850 calories for his dinner. Within those 850 calories are a light beer.
Next Robert thinks about breakfast and how it needs to last until lunch, so he has 450 calories at breakfast.
Finally, with 600 calories left, he decides to allot 400 for lunch and 200 for an after-dinner treat of dark chocolate.
Robert’s Weight-Release Eating Structure
Breakfast 450 calories
Lunch 400 calories
Dinner 850 calories
Treat 200 calories
Total 1,900 calories
Example 2: Jody works in sales and does much of her business over lunch with clients. Jody’s Calorie Budget for Weight Release is 1,250 calories a day. For her, lunch is the largest meal of the day. Keeping things light at dinner works for her because when she comes home, she’s exhausted and doesn’t like to cook.
Jody puts aside 550 calories for lunch, which includes sharing a dessert (She uses the three-bite tool I mentioned.)
She has a 200-calorie protein shake at breakfast.
Jody has a 150-calorie protein-based snack before going to the gym after work.
She has 350 calories for dinner, so she plans to have something light, such as yogurt and fruit or soup with some raw vegetables with hummus or guacamole.
Jody’s Weight-Release Eating Structure
Breakfast 200 calories
Lunch 550 calories
Snack 150 calories
Dinner 350 calories
Total 1,250 calories
Do you see how each of these clients sat down with their Inner Coach and thought about their lifestyle to figure out what works best? This is how you create a way of eating that is going to support you and be sustainable in your life.
Of course, calories and what you eat vary from day to day, and the weekends might look entirely different. Having a structure gives your mind a daily roadmap with caloric milestones. Knowing that by staying fairly close to these parameters, you will be below your Calorie Budget for Weight Release gives you confidence, too.
EXERCISE: Build your Food Mastery Zone Eating Structure:
Take out your journal, or use the Build your Food Mastery Zone worksheet in the Index and work out these steps on paper to begin to get an idea of what your daily eating structure might look like.
NOTE: You may choose to leave out the snack or treat or even one of the meals. You may even choose not to use the terms breakfast, lunch or dinner. For instance, I often combine lunch and dinner and eat this larger meal around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m., and I call this meal linner. The point is to use the calories where they serve you best and remember this is a flexible structure. Try to make sure you don’t go more than four hours during the day without a little bit of stabilizing protein unless you can go longer without it jeopardizing your feeling of stability.
STEP 3: Use the 5-4-3-2-1 Servings Guideline as a way to get the minimum (and maximum) amounts of foods that will keep you nourished, stabilized, and balanced. The 5-4-3-2-1 Servings Guideline is an easy way to keep in mind the minimum and maximum amounts of all the food groups you need to stay nourished, stabilized, and balanced within approximately 1,200 calories. Those with larger Calorie Budgets for Weight Release can increase the protein, healthy fats, and vegetable servings accordingly. Your 15 percent Buffer Zone Calories would be a larger amount too, as we discussed in the previous section.
5-4-3-2-1 Servings Guideline
Five ½-cup servings (or more) of vegetables and fruits to get the nutrients and fiber you need. Vegetables are the easiest way to fill up at meals if you need a large volume of food to feel satisfied.
Four 3-ounce servings (or more) of protein to stabilize you and manage your hunger. Clients who start becoming imbalanced and are eating too many carbs usually are not getting adequate protein. Shoot for 72 grams or four 3-ounce servings—one protein at every meal and one for a snack. (You can eat more ounces of protein at one meal and less at another. This is a tool not a rule.)
Three 1-teaspoon servings of healthy fats will help you with satiety and add flavor. Again, three servings are a minimum amount based on consuming 1,200 calories a day. Eat some healthy fats at each meal because it will create satiety. If you choose not to eat grains, you can use those additional calories in healthy forms of fat. If you choose to eat more, be careful in the weight release phase because fat calories can add up fast!
Two ½-cup servings (or less) of whole grains and tubers can add fiber and bulk to meals. Some people are sensitive to whole grains and may find that eating too many creates imbalance and prompts cravings. This is something you can tune into over your 30-Day Thin Thinking Practice and adjust for you.
One small serving Buffer Zone food and no more than 15 percent of your daily calories can be used for many things over the course of your weight mastery. Three bites here and there of decadent foods, a small dessert, or a glass of wine is likely to be enough. Enjoy the freedom of having a less rigid dogmatic food plan that you can “fall off” of, but be mindful not to give your freedom away to the Carb Zombie by eating too much!
CHART U: 5-4-3-2-1 Servings Guideline within 1,200-Calorie Budget
In Chart U, I show you how the 5-4-3-2-1 Servings Guideline can stay within a daily calorie budget of 1,200 calories. The calories are approximations. Please understand that every day will look different and will not align perfectly with this chart, and some of you may choose (as we discuss in a moment) to leave out the two servings of whole grains or the single Buffer Zone serving here and there or altogether. The main point of 5-4-3-2-1 is to give you a simple way to remember the minimum servings of the 85 percent foods that will create a consistent foundation of feeling fed and even-keeled.
In the next chapter, Skill 4 Self-Monitoring, I will explain calorie tracking which will allow you to make sure that your daily food choices allow you to stay within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release. What we have just walked through are the tools to make sure you are getting enough of the nourishing and stabilizing foods you need to stay in the Food Mastery Zone.
Guidelines for your Food Mastery Zone Eating Structure
Now I want to walk you through three sets of guidelines for mastering hunger, cravings, and the Carb Zombie that will give you and your Inner Coach additional tools (not rules) to keep eating happily within the 85-15 Percent Food Mastery Zone Eating Strategy.
Master Your Hunger Guidelines
Hunger is a powerful sensation and a powerful word. When your mind hears “hunger,” you likely equate it with starvation or “not enough.” A true hunger signal is the body’s way of saying “Hey, I need a little nourishment here!” In addition to real hunger, there is also fake hunger that is created not by the need for food (Fake hunger might happen right after you eat a meal.) but by either fat thinking beliefs or imbalances in your body. I want to take a moment to look at tools to manage both types of hunger.
Manage your real hunger by protecting your “0.”
Many Weight Strugglers go way too long without food, hit “0,” and then experience profound overeating. When clients need my help with portion control or night eating and claim “I cannot stop eating once I start,” I know that eight times out of ten they are waiting too long to eat, sabotaging their success.
If you share this problem, two things may be at fault. One, when your blood sugar is low and you begin to eat, your body doesn’t register “full” soon enough, and you eat too much. Two, when you are seriously hungry, you’re likely to reach for anything that is easy, quick, and convenient. Usually that is fast and refined, high-calorie foods. This state of hunger is what I call “hitting 0,” meaning your gas tank is empty. Don’t let this happen!! Here’s how to avoid it:
Plan your meals ahead for the day. Weight Strugglers are notorious for forgetting about their need to stabilize themselves during the day or they hoard their calories in order to eat a lot at night. Both of these strategies end up with overeating at night. By planning ahead, you can make sure you keep yourself fed enough through the day but leave some room for a nice meal at night.
Stabilize yourself with four 3-ounce servings of protein (aproximatley 72 to 80 grams) a day or more. People struggling with weight are often undereating protein and overeating sugar and/or refined flour products. Eating that way keeps them victims of the Carb Zombie. If your Calorie Budget for Weight Release is above 1,600 calories per day, use the following equation to figure out how much protein to eat per day: 0.5 x your weight in pounds = minimum grams of protein intake per day.
Don’t eat refined foods, including snacks, or fruit on an empty stomach. If you do, your blood sugar will spike and then crash. Result: you feel even hungrier than before and so you continue eating. Plus, the sugar and fat hit the brain’s pleasure center, waking up your inner Carb Zombie.
Include protein in your snacks. It’s especially tempting to eat a sugary or otherwise high-carb snack at 4:00 p.m. when you are starting to get hungry. Having a refined, processed snack may only increase your hunger and leads you to eating more later. Beware, too, o
f food supplement bars. Many of them contain large amounts of refined carbohydrates, including sugar, and little protein.
Steer clear of refined carbohydrates for breakfast. Toast, processed cereal, pancakes, and waffles may initially fill you up, but chances are you will feel hungrier sooner in the day and be more prone to cravings. If you do want toast, have protein with it like an egg, vegetarian sausage, or some almond butter to stabilize the meal’s effects on your body and mind.
Eat protein and veggies at each meal. Consider a carbohydrate an optional condiment.
Look at menus carefully when you dine out. Choose foods that nourish and stabilize you with a few hundred calories. Think in terms of having a serving of protein (three to four ounces, which is typically the size of the palm of your hand), one or two servings of vegetables or a salad, and, if you like carbs, a small amount of a whole grain or bread as a condiment.
Manage your fake hunger by shifting your mind and stabilizing your body.
Here are a few tools to combat the sneaky fake hunger that takes away your power and sabotages your weight.
Avoid being a victim of feeling deprived. You’ve heard people say the glass is half empty or half full, right? The same goes with our perceptions of how much is enough on our plate as well. If you have been eating over your Calorie Budget for Weight Release and then begin eating within it, it may seem like you are taking food out of your mouth and you may feel victimized. If this resonates for you, shift your mindset. You want to look at the fact that you have powerfully made the decision to adapt to living within your body’s energy needs to melt away the excess fat and live life at a lighter weight. The food you eat within your calorie budget is enough when you:Have a calorie budget that honors you,, and doesn’t make you feel deprived (1200 calories a day or more).
