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Fresh fruits

Hot cereal for breakfast

ambled or poached eggs with whole-wheat toast

Indulging on vacation is okay; just don't do it for every meal of every day. Instead, balance your indulgences with some healthy choices that you enjoy just as much. For example, I prefer fresh salmon over steak, so that's an easy choice for me. What are easy choices for you?

Although losing weight on vacation is possible, you may just want to set a goal to maintain your weight when you're away from home. Doing so helps you avoid unrealistic expectations so you can focus on the more realistic goal of not gaining a significant amount of weight (which is where balance and moderation come into play, as explained earlier in this chapter).

Parties

Parties often feature a wide assortment of food choices. Whether you're attending a work party, a graduation shindig, or a summer barbeque, you should be able to find some great traditional choices, such as the following:

Grilled, roasted, or baked chicken, lean beef, or pork

Seafood

Side vegetables (raw or cooked)

Three-bean salad

Bean dips

Artichokes

Olives

Nuts

Tossed greens salad

Fruit or fruit salad

Corn on the cob

Tortilla chips

Putting ideas into action: Balancing choices at a family barbeque

It's one thing to think and talk about balancing food choices, but actually doing it is another. With any luck, this common real-world example can help you get started.

Think of your average family barbeque. The foods available at this barbeque are potato chips, tortilla chips, fruit salad, hot dogs, hamburgers (with white buns), grilled chicken, potato salad, macaroni salad, and a tossed greens salad.

You can approach this event in one of several ways:

Choose all low-glycemic foods by filling your plate with fruit salad, tossed greens salad, grilled chicken, and a few tortilla chips.

If you really want a hamburger, have the hamburger with the fruit salad and tossed greens salad.

If the potato salad is calling your name, choose the grilled chicken, potato salad, and tossed greens salad.

As you can see, there are many ways to eat what you love and not go overboard with high-glycemic, high-calorie foods. It's all in how you balance your choices. When you get used to balancing your choices like this, you'll find it easier to lose weight and maintain your weight loss long term. You won't feel deprived because you can still enjoy the foods you love in moderation.

Chapter 13: Dealing with Weight-Loss Pitfalls

In This Chapter

Conquering food cravings

Saying good-bye to the dreaded emotional-eating habit

Finding ways to move past weight-loss plateaus

Weight loss is always more complicated than simply changing what you eat, which is why it can feel difficult to achieve and maintain. If losing weight were that easy, far fewer people would end up regaining weight after their dieting efforts. What makes losing weight so tough? Weight-loss pitfalls such as food cravings, emotional eating, changing habits, past conditioning, weight-loss plateaus, and faltering motivation. These pitfalls can even include some health conditions, such as insulin resistance and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), as well as a past history of having difficulty losing weight.

Awareness is often the first step to conquering weight-loss pitfalls. In this chapter, I explore some common pitfalls you may face in your efforts to adopt a low-glycemic lifestyle and go over strategies that have worked for many of my clients. The good news is your new low-glycemic lifestyle can become an important strategy for conquering some common weight-loss pitfalls.

Coping with Food Cravings

Food cravings can occur for a variety of reasons, both psychological and physiological. After you know why your food cravings are happening, you can take steps to deal with them more effectively. Some common reasons for food cravings (as well as how to combat them) are as follows:

Unstable blood sugar: This is probably the biggest physiological food-craving