Dieting Hacks, so now everyone can look like a Heather Graham

Everyone has their own inner, super-fit Heather Graham, you just need to find her. So in a bid to strengthen Other Letter in the waistline reduction and diet space, we offer these new, earth-shaking dieting hacks — the same ones actors and actresses use when they need to lose forty pounds in two weeks before a shoot.

Guys are thinking: Does this mean I need to wear thigh-high-hemline dresses to stay fit? No, not at all, leave those to Heather. Mostly, the key to looking fit, is eating wholesome food, and not being a couch potato.

Here’s the skinny of an Other Diet: eat the government, recommended serving sizes. Have fruit in your diet, it is very beneficial for your health, and is also low in calories. Drink flavored seltzer instead of empty-calorie soda. Alcohol is loaded with empty calories, so drop the home delivery of booze, and avoid it entirely. Try to get in as much exercise as you can, a walk several times a week might be sufficient; and try to limit desserts to one day a week, say, Friday or Saturday.

While I am not a licensed dietician, I’ve managed to keep my weight normal for height and build. What has worked for me, may work for you. Key points here are reiterated in this blog-post format.

Does Heather Graham know that a diet has been named after her? There are women that just knock your socks off. She’s one of them. Ms. Graham stays very fit. So without further ado, a tribute to the brilliance, and the well-kept full figure of the screen idol of an age.
Avoid crash dieting. Your body requires a steady intake of nutrition to remain healthy.
Lose the weight. Watch your diet. Eat plenty of celery (peanut butter spread on it is optional). Be vigilant of the importance of balanced nutrition. Look great.
A key to successful dieting is only eating when you’re hungry, not when you are angry, lonely, or tired. (In Twelve-Step, there is the concept of HALT, do not engage in problematic behavior due to being hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.) My body fat is less than one percent, and I credit this to daily workouts, body is my temple bull. Actually, I’m in decent shape. Define “decent”? I could play middle linebacker for the New York Giants, but I choose not to because, well, I don’t know. Am I full of it? Come on, New York Giants? Geez, yeah, I’m Lawrence Taylor. Am I giving away my age? How ’bout those Yankees? Those Red Sox? Those Habs? (I was drafted, first round, first pick, of the New York Giants, but I don’t want to brag. Except for a nagging knee injury, I would have made the Pro Bowl at the end of my rookie year.)
Do you eat to live, or do you live to eat? If you could live inside your kitchen, would you? If you’re on I-80 from New York to San Francisco, do you stop at every CinnaBun along the way?
If you’re a snacking fool, only snack enough to make it to the next snack.
You’re thinking midnight snack. Do you go the banana, the grapes, or the apple sauce? Okay, you had a light dinner, so you’re thinking all three. But you’re still hungry. Do you go the peanut butter, or the cheese crackers? Most say the peanut butter, but I was shocked to learn that the cheese crackers are lower in calories for a standard serving size. What does this all mean? I dunno... Okay, I do. Eat produce before the white stuff: flour, sugar, or rice.

When you would love to do some heavy snacking, I’m thinking triple fudge brownies, try to get your mind off of food (but avoid the porn). Get out of the kitchen. Music, and bopping around your living room, can get you away from the refrigerator. You can also lock your refrigerator with a padlock combo you’ll never remember, but you still have to eat the next day. Dig?
Consider eating two slices of pizza, instead of four.
This is just advice, which of course, you don’t have to take. (The old joke: What does everyone give, and nobody takes? Advice.) I lost thirty pounds a few years back, and this is how I did it.
If you have any doubt about the wisdom or value of these suggestions, ask or see a doctor, but it is not like I am recommending open-heart surgery — I am trying to prevent it. And if you don’t feel like exercising, don’t.
Maximize the time spent holding out between snacking. Many snack twice an evening. Gad zooks! (You heard me.) Supplant all that potato chip intake with banana, pear, or apple. Potato chips have their place — mostly with anorexics in facilitating weight gain. Wholesome snacks also include pickles, and peanut butter, although the latter is not zero calorie like the pickle. Grapes are especially effective in quelling late night urges for snacking. They’re sweet, and very, very low in calories. Otherwise, do something to take your mind off of food. You can listen to music, watch some TV, or find something to read.
Here’s a nice treat: Add one part, pure cranberry juice, to two parts, apple juice.
Choose pizza instead of burgers. As a dairy product, the cheese has protein. The tomato sauce is made of tomatoes, which as a vegetable, has vitamins and minerals. The pizza is built over a crust of bread, or wheat. This has carbohydrates to provide your body’s cells with energy. At the other end of the fast-food spectrum, cheeseburgers are high in animal fat, fried in grease, and are by no means a healthy diet choice. Another aspect to consider is that cows are far up the evolutionary tree, and killing them for burgers, is inhumane. Get the fish sandwich instead. If you find yourself at Burger King, or Wendy’s, on Fridays during Lent, meat is off limits, so fish sandwiches are offered. McDonalds offerings tend to be greasy, and designed for the younger, fast food addict. For instance, Wendy’s has baked potatoes, which McDonalds have never carried. There are a few who claim that McDonalds is great nutrition, and to criticize it, is equivalent to libel. What do we call these idiots? We call them obese.
CBS News, a respected news source, lists the top-ten fast-food restaurants. Unfortunately, CBS gets plenty of ad revenue from McDonalds, on the order of millions upon millions of dollars every year, so their favorites list has to be biased in the red and yellow clown’s favor. McDonalds, generally seen as a joke to people who watch their diet, is ranked eighth. Archrival, Burger King, doesn’t grill-fry their burgers like McDonalds does, they broil them along a conveyor belt. Wendy’s also isn’t listed, and they sell baked potato and chili.
Soup and salad (or boiled veggies) makes great, nutritious and delicious, diet food — especially in Autumn and, even more so, in Winter.
You need to try Trader Joe’s Turkish, Organic Apricots. A generous serving size of six has only 100 calories. For all of us out there watching our waistline, these are better than candy without all the calories. They have a sweetness, and tanginess, that somewhat resembles marzipan, the almond-paste candy. There is a sodium phosphate version that will last indefinitely, but the organic version is healthier.
Is there anything to say to the morbidly obese that they haven’t heard already? I’d only add that you have to shed those pounds to stay alive. The fear may be that you don’t look so light-of-foot, and some idiot will make a very stupid remark. If they do, that’s their sensitivity problem, not yours.
You have incorporated every step listed below into your diet, yet still you tip the scales at a deuce and a half. You’re 300 pounds, yet you don’t play nose guard for the New York Giants. You power eat because you’re locked into a job, and a mortgage, and a spouse, that will, in concert, eventually kill you. You know this, and the only thing stopping your eminent demise is eating ungodly sums of carbs, specifically chocolate in bar, truffle, and baked form, like into brownies with fudge frosting, topped-off with fudge everything else. Then what do we do, Other guy? Well, have you considered therapy administered by a competent psychologist, psychiatrist, or State-licensed Tarot card reader? Because if you don’t, you will explode from over-eating. People explode, it does happen (Mister Creosote in the movie, The Meaning of Life, is just one example). If the above therapy professionals seem like too much hassle — for instance, you live in Kentucky, or anywhere else in the deep South, where there aren’t any mental health professionals, only fortune-tellers — then you may get the support you need from 12-Step Overeaters Anonymous, or Weight Watchers.
Fright is the best laxative, although dried fruit such as dried plums, or prunes, work well, too. Fresh fruit may be even better as it’s, well, fresher than dried.
This being the beginning of summer, do our thoughts turn to summer romance? No, of course not, June and July mean that cherries and nectarines are in season at the grocery. July means it is time for home-made strawberry shortcake; and August, if you’re out on Long Island, means the best corn and beefsteak tomatoes on Earth (sorry, just stating facts). In the Autumn, apples and cider are at peak flavor. Many types of produce can be found at farm stands, or their “near” equivalents such as grocery stores.
People who take care of their health, have little need for doctors. If you exercise, and eat healthy food, you will most likely have a long life. If you avoid fatty foods, and sugar-filled desserts, don’t smoke, as well as avoiding alcohol with all its empty calories, then you will be healthier, and more importantly, happier. If you need to smoke weed or drink alcohol to make you happy, your issue isn’t being happy, it’s needing weed or alcohol to make you happy.
Put a bag of oranges in the refrigerator, at least a day before you squeeze the juice. This way, the juice can be drank cold immediately. Any squeezed juice left in the fridge will spoil within a few days, because it isn’t pasteurized.
If you want the finest in citrus refreshment and nutrition, then fresh-squeezing a bag of oranges is the way to go. If you thought Tropicana was the king (or queen) of orange juice, they just handed their juicing crown to you (Pinball Wizard reference). Sorry to say, but Tropicana OJ isn’t even orange juice compared to fresh-squeezed. I’d suggest getting a citrus-juicer from Black and Decker (not because of any marketing affiliation, but only because I like their product line). Then I’d also suggest you get it from Macy’s, and not Amazon, because Jeff Bezos has enough of our money... Then one more note from all of us veterans before as we say, you “get juicin’”: Drink the juice within a few hours of squeezing, because fresh-squeezed isn’t homogenized or pasteurized so it’ll separate and spoil very quickly.
You have just finished juicing a bag of oranges, and now you need sipping mentoring. Here we go: sip, sip, sip. Or four sips in a row, not three, it’s your call. Two sips, if you’re nursing it. Put the glass on the table. Catch your breath. Repeat until the refreshment has been drank. This may sound rigid, and it is, but we don’t need gulpers here. Dig? Never mind.
A beer, wine, or liquor habit has the same effect on your waistline as a McDonalds habit. They are both regular ingestion of empty, nutrition-free, or nutrition-minimal, calories. Although alcohol is the one which will give you a serious beer belly, because alcohol is physically addicting while McDonalds typically isn’t. If you live for a buzz, if it is where you find your comfort, and how you reward yourself, then you are completely messed up.
The reason that fruit is superior to chocolate from a dietary perspective, is that chocolate must be jacked up with calorie-intense, cane sugar to compensate for the tasteless flour, the bitter chocolate, and the fatty butter. Fruit has mild and naturally sweet fructose, not sucrose. A weekly chocolate treat is not such a big deal, the only ones who should partake of dessert more often are those like Duchess Kate, and other skinny-ma-rinks.
Losing weight can be much easier for some than it is for others. Is this because people who are overweight, have given up all hope? Or is it because they just don’t know how to eat? Or are they too passionate about food? Or are they under extreme duress, and possibly, require medication that they aren’t getting? Or are they taking meds that make them gain weight? There’s a cost-benefit, are the meds worth the weight.
Pineapple, apples, pears, mangoes, citrus (oranges, mandarins, tangerines, and clementines), and berries (blue, black, straw, and rasp), are superior to chocolate. Okay, chocoholics may not agree with me, but baked sweets have highly-concentrated sugar, shortening (butter is a form of fat), and flour (empty calories). Chocolates also have a bit of a caffeine kick. Fruit has fructose, which is not as strong as sucrose, and it has dietary fiber for digestion. Fruit can be eaten after or during a meal until you’re completely full. If you that eat much in chocolate, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a diabetic, and have your body sugar completely messed up. Desserts are actually concoctions of doom and destruction, to the obese they sure are, at least...
Fruit juice is superior to soda, which only rots your teeth, and is a quick route to obesity. Cola drinks have caffeine, and this is addictive. As always, follow serving size suggestions, because while fruit juice is healthy, and it is sweet because of relatively-safe fructose, it also has calories.
You’ve applied the principles here, and you lost, say, two-hundred-pounds. You are at, or near, your target weight. So where do you go from here? If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you got. Yet, there may be temptation that will throw off your diet regimen. For instance, I bought Muesli, the Swiss mountain cereal. Muesli is delicious, seriously so, it is a reason to hop out of bed in the morning, and rush to the breakfast table. Muesli might throw you a curve ball though. The average serving size is dense, it’s compact, and it’s a third the size of a regular cereal serving. Little did I know I was eating three bowls of regular cereal, and I gained two pounds in about five days. The lesson then, is to be careful what you add to your diet, because you may wake up a deuce, or a double-deuce (400 pounds), without any explanation (outside of a recent incident, I’m 153). Remember, Muesli is not a controlled substance. It is up to the individual to monitor intake.
You are poised before your refrigerator about to make a decision. On one shelf is a triple-fudge, triple-layer cake, and on another is a bunch of grapes (or say, a pear, nectarine, or apple). In deciding which route to choose, you think: “They’re about as sweet, I had a difficult day, and my boss screamed at me all day. I’m going with my go-to, the layer cake.” Okay, where did you go wrong? (Besides working at a lousy company for a lousy boss, that is.) Do you know why your clothes barely fit you anymore? Why you wear a mumu? Fruit is so much better for you than diabetic-coma-inducing, desserts. Fruit is mildly sweet because of its fructose, while the layer cake is jacked up with energy-jolt, cane sugar in maximum-tolerable doses. Your good friend, the layer cake, also has flour which is essentially empty calories; it has shortening like butter, and that’s another source of calories; and it has chocolate which is a bit like caffeine, and can be as addictive as heroin or cocaine (okay, there are people who need caffeine to live and breath). In fact, chocolate is now a controlled substance administered by the Food and Drug Administration. Your good friend is making you avoid bathing suits, and the beach, just like you avoid walking by your boss’ office when she’s throwing things again. If you still must hang out with your good friend the layer cake, do it one day a week, like on Friday.
The overweight (or the “heavy,” six of one, half dozen of the other) will tell you that they’ve always been heavy, and nothing is ever going to change this. Yet ask them how many times a week they eat dessert? Once a week will shed pounds; regular multiple portions need to be avoided. You’re likely not returning home from a concentration camp. Junk food tells your body that you hate it. Yet drinking a full glass or more of a sweet beverage such as half a glass of fruit juice with unlimited seltzer refills, is good for the mind, body, and soul. If you do all this and you still are heavy, you have an endocrine problem, and you need to immediately seek medical attention. Take an ambulance to Bellevue immediately, please. That cough, too, call 9-1-1 and get it checked out at Bellevue.
If you would like something filling that will never pack on the pounds, have you tried zero-calorie (or five-calorie tops) flavored-seltzer? You can drink unlimited and satisfying portions that will never add an inch to your waistline.
As the leader in the diet and nutrition space both domestically, internationally, and anywhere else, it is our responsibility to inform you of produce, especially fruit. You’re thinking: “I’ve heard of fruit, but don’t know enough about it to ever have included it in a competent purchasing decision. If only I knew more. I’m an American, yet somehow I feel left out...” Well, then, consider this: fruit is mildly sweet (pineapple may be the sole exception), but contains fructose, and doesn’t contain the concentrated sugar, the sucrose, found in abundance in desserts and chocolate. Besides the cane sugar, desserts typically contain fattening flour and shortening (like butter) as well. Between those three ingredients, you’re getting a high-calorie hit. Fruit has nearly the same sweetness with much fewer calories, plus because it’s organic, it contains vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin C, and even Vitamin A.
If, for whatever reason, you feel the overpowering desire to break your diet, and continue eating past a full meal, then have a bowl of salad. Salad has practically zero calories, even with dressing. Another true dieter’s friend are fruit and vegetables. Both have vitamins and minerals, and fruit is really what you should be eating instead of fattening chocolates and other sweets. Bakery sweets can contain inordinate quantities of shortening and sucrose (typically from cane sugar), which is the hard stuff compared to fructose, which occurs naturally on the vine, or tree.
If you are irregular, you might consider these natural, healthy options: prunes, whole or as a juice; Kefir, or pourable yogurt; probiotics, or intestinal micro-flora, available in yogurt, other foods, and capsules; psyllium, fiber capsules; a diet rich in dietary fiber; and even water; but now check out Magnesium supplements. The latter may be the strongest of the lot. Borrowing from early Saturday Night Live scatological humor, is Magnesium, Super Colon Blow Cereal, instead of just Colon Blow Cereal? This is best taken with a meal, or a light snack of fruit before bed, as it will work overnight. (While Magnesium is a dietary supplement, you may want to ask your doctor about your concerns, and his or her recommendations.)
If you are irregular, one food that might help is Kefir, or pourable yogurt. This is available in either whole milk or low-fat, and flavored or unflavored, varieties. It has twelve active cultures which are known to help the digestive system process food. Yogurt is similar, but it generally has just six active cultures. Drinking water might also improve regularity, but Kefir is a significantly more advanced, and effective, approach.
If the urge hits you for a triple fudge, banana-split sundae, do something else that can also make you feel good, but without: getting arrested; going out of your mind; or being sent to the poorhouse. I was thinking of maybe going for a walk, others were thinking of getting intimate with sheep, dropping a grand on video poker terminals, or seeing how much blow their brain can withstand.
Exercise is not always the best answer to undesirable weight gain, because it can be a zero-sum game. One thinks: If I exercise for an hour, I can have a very big dessert. By that calculus, you never get ahead, and if anything, you can gain weight because you exercise. The battle of the bulge is won at the kitchen table, not in the weight room, or on the track. There may be many who say I am wrong, that plenty of exercise meshes well with plenty of food, but most of them are offensive linemen for the NFL.
When women starve themselves to lose weight, it does the opposite of what they hope. They get uglier as they become skin and bones, not prettier. The prime example is Taylor Swift, she’s so much better looking now than she looked just three years ago when her face seemed drawn, and she looked anorexic as if she just escaped a concentration camp (this was when Kenya’s attacks on Taylor were most severe). Once a woman fills out — but before she looks heavy — she has reached her ideal weight, and her appearance is at its best. This assumes, of course, that her job is not a very high-stress one where she herds cats or supervises chimps.
If you really have the urge to pig out, but you really cannot afford to pack on any more pounds, then go for a bunch of grapes (15 grapes have 54 calories), and three pineapple rings (70 calories per Trader Joe’s package). Wash this down with unlimited, zero-calorie seltzer, the flavored variety, or just have the plain. Assuming you don’t finish off an entire vine of grapes, this entire snack will have 124 calories. Plus, grapes have anti-oxidants, and so do pineapples. Think about these facts the next time you are about to make another artery-clogging, midnight burger run. (Go with someone, or you might get picked up.)
Weigh yourself on a scale every day. This way you will notice when your diet is working, and when it isn’t.
Eat the recommended serving size. These follow medically-established, caloric and nutrition guidelines for any adult. The nation can eat these serving sizes and feel full and healthy. You aren’t any different than the nation.
Try to get off of desserts, especially daily ones, except maybe on one designated day of the week, say, Friday.
Zero-calorie seltzer, and the naturally-flavored sub-species, is for most people, more refreshing than plain water. While naturally fructose-sweetened, and vitamin-rich fruit juice is good as well, these have calories, and should not be drank in unlimited quantities. Liquid calories have the same fattening potential as solid ones do.
Gaining a few pounds during the winter can be adaptive as insulation against the cold weather. The only problem is losing these pounds once the Spring arrives.
McDonalds menu items should be put on the list of controlled substances. These are addictive, and have the potential to kill people, especially when eaten on a regular basis. In the winter, exercise opportunities are much more limited, yet bowling or mall walks are always an option (ocean-swimming is limited to Floridians, and ax-throwing to Jerseyites). There are many among us who do not emerge alive after spending a winter getting most of their calories from, say, empty ones at Mickey Dees, and their deep-fryer as well as the greasy grill.
This being the holidays, you’d be better off to resist the temptation of gluttony, by avoiding those omnipresent desserts and second portions, because gaining five-plus pounds will be a major chore to shed come spring.
When dieting, or keeping your weight in check, it might be said that “white is wrong.” White being: flour, rice, sugar, and pasta. I’m not so sure I entirely agree with that, but there’s your fairly-inclusive list of calorie-rich carbohydrates.
People who eat like gluttons, aren’t limiting Thanksgiving-style dinners to Thanksgiving Day.
If you overeat to mask unhappiness in your life, An Other Diet won’t make you happy. True, being thinner can lead to a happier you, but in and of itself, a more buff you isn’t going to make you do back flips of happiness out of your bed every morning.
Your diet supports your weight. If you weigh two hundred or more pounds your diet supports or maintains this weight. You eat like a two hundred plus pound person. You need to have the diet of someone weighing 150 pounds, or thereabouts. (Editor’s note: I am not entirely certain that eating like a 150-pound person will turn a 250-pouond person into a 150-pound person.) Those overeating have parts of their meals they should be avoiding: multiple portions, especially high-fat servings, or ones laden with cream; desserts; forty ounce sirloins; etcetera. Remove the dietary excess and the bodily flab will disappear. You can lose the weight without training for the decathlon, or the Boston Marathon, neither of which is an option if you get winded going down to the mailbox.
There are occupational hazards getting in the way of being trim. If you work in the restaurant industry, you’re tempted into overeating by being around food all day. People with high stress jobs can overeat as a coping mechanism — eating feels much better than how their job makes them feel. These professions can have all of the responsibility, yet the incumbent is powerless to effect key job metrics. They’re responsible for all of the effort, but can effect little, or none, of the results. Being the manager of a big league sports franchise, a store, or anywhere else, fits that pattern. Wall Street traders also come to mind. In a bear market, there isn’t any trading strategy where you’ll make profit targets. Their boat rises and falls on the same waves that the rest of the boats in the industry do. No one has a competitive advantage, so in a down market, there are few bonuses. Sales work has a similar issue. In a down economy, salespeople cannot hit their unadjusted targets. First responders deal with despair when fielding their tragic, never-ending calls on their radio, ones which they can never hope to slow to a halt. For all, food is a salve.
Your date, Rose, picked out this lovely Eat-’til-You-Drop restaurant, the Szechwan Palace, down in the Village. You are not yet familiar with power-eating, and all-you-can-eats, but before you can even wag your chopsticks, out comes a food cart with a two foot-high mound of Fried Rice and Jumbo Shrimp Surprise. At this point, you can either have a plate and call it a night, or finish the mound, and ask for “free” seconds, and thirds, and on and on, until you look like Mister Creosote in Meaning of Life who projectile vomits like a fire hose (don’t worry, that’s the most vile part of this vital dieting example). Rose told you to pace yourself, go in head down, and take regular breaks for air. But instead, knowing it was all free, excluding nominal feeding trough surcharge, you had the staff and fellow diners on their feet cheering you on. Waddling out of the Til-You-Drop, Rose notices that you are visibly fatter in your jowls, and rear end, than when you entered this fine, Asian dining trough. The lesson here, among others: Free food is not necessarily “free.”
Avoiding toxic chemicals and just as toxic people is the key to longevity — as well as not eating like a hog, drinking like a fish, or smoking like a chimney... Organic foodstuffs is healthier both for you, and for the environment, because organic agriculture is sustainable agriculture. The earth is not depleted by being charged up with inorganic fertilizers. Organic food is never the byproduct of man-made chemicals manufactured in a factory as inorganic “food” can be. 7% of organic produce samples contained pesticide residues, 38% of conventional ones did. The reason organic food had any pesticide residue at all is because the previous farm owner used pesticides, or the farm next door still uses them.
If you aren’t vegan, and buy eggs or poultry, try to get cage-free, or even better, free-range, and organic (where the chicken feed is organic). Their “humane” slaughtering can be instantaneous, but they should at least be able to have some semblance of a natural, healthy existence, as their ancestors all did a hundred years prior. Otherwise, they are only meat or egg machines. Free-range rearing produces healthier livestock, which means more nutritious meals on the dinner table.
Men have a reputation, sadly well-earned, of being only interested in a woman’s looks. Yet, warmth is very important in any relationship, who wants to be stuck with a bitch. That, and conversational ability, as well as career prospects — given the modern, two-income household — count for much. Women have a better chance of finding their sweetheart, if they learn how to stay trim (they can learn very important basics here). If a woman becomes happier and healthier, this can very positively effect her appearance. If a woman overdoes dieting, is anorexic, or is not coping with what’s continually thrown her way, then it will effect her physical appearance. I have actually seen this in a woman. Once she was on a steadier, healthier course, she came into her own, and she was feeling better about her life, the change was startling, her face and body filled out, and she was suddenly as beautiful as a model. The lesson might be for the too thin, to go to your bread and butter, bread and butter.
After you have been on an Other Diet for several months, you may notice you no longer lose weight. Instead of happily getting on your scale for another positive report, your weight loss has leveled off. This is fine, but is no longer worth mentioning to anyone. You no longer expect back flips from your friends and family when you tell them of your latest victory in the Battle of the Bulge. This likely means you have reached your equilibrium weight. Personally, I am now at a weight I am very comfortable with, and I have stopped losing weight, but I haven’t changed my diet. My caloric intake, based on Recommended Serving Sizes, is enough to support and maintain my current weight.
If you are not regular, what you might like to try is all-natural, Psyllium fiber capsules. BE SURE TO READ THE LABEL to make sure you’re taking it properly. For many, take 2-5 capsules, 1-4 times a day with at least 8 ounces of water, a tall glass in other words. If you take other medications, you should take this two hours before or after you take those. If it does not work by the seventh day (or sooner, depending on severity or painfulness of symptoms), I would seriously suggest that you see a doctor. I would go this natural route over Ex-lax, or the dreaded enema.
Add probiotics to your diet. All those bacterium in yogurt, Kefir (pour-able yogurt), and yogurt smoothies, are what you need more than life itself. These put beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract. There are generally between six to twelve types of these bacterium in each cultured product. Remember those yogurt commercials where the Russians in that village all lived past 130 years of age?
If you often do not have the time to create Michelin Three-Star™ meals, but you also feel that booking on down to the McDonalds every other day may be why you’re called “the waddler,” why not try frozen pizza? I mean, you’re already called, “the waddler,” what do you have to lose? The vegetarian variety is healthier than the pepperoni, meat-eaters variety, with less of an environmental footprint — besides eating less fat, the ASPCA and PETA will also be grateful. I’m partial to the Trader Joe’s variety, but you can likely find a good version anywhere.
Per a very recent National Public Radio (NPR) report, the French government has put carbonated water into water fountains at public parks (they call it fizzy water).
These are a few great cheeses: Gouda, Monterrey Jack, and a variety I just tried and liked recently: England’s Blue Stilton. Then from British culinary heritage there’s Cotswold Double Gloucester (double because it’s aged longer and so is stronger than single Gloucester). Of course, you could go French gastronomy with creamy Brie, Camembert, or the sharper, Roquefort, which is great sprinkled on tomato salads with Ranch dressing. Enjoy a single one-inch cube with crackers, with wash it down with seltzer, plus essentially calorie-free mango, and pineapple spears. Cheese may be held in low regard by dieters, a questionable indulgence. Regularly eating large slabs of these fromage treats, and you will be spending your every Saturday night with Internet porn.
Although your body might compensate, drinking cold liquids tends to cool your body, because what was originally in the refrigerator is now in your body. Past September (pencil in your calendars) is the time of year for herbal tea, or hot cocoa.
Okay, fast food, if you think of your body as a temple, McDonalds is the ninth circle of Hell raiding your temple. We all know about the opioid epidemic? A Big Mac is the fast food equivalent. It is dipped in suet and it is just as addictive as morphine. I cannot claim I know exactly where the other outlets stand vis-à-vis nutrition, but I would have to say, a distant second is Burger King (McDonalds fries their burgers, BK broils theirs), followed by Wendy’s, and maybe Taco Bell is not as bad because it is less of a burger joint. Sonic Burger, In and Out Burger, are suspect as well. They resemble Krispy Kreme, but instead of dipping your heart attack on a plate in sugared frosting, you can watch through the window as they dip your burgers in grease.
When you are near your goal weight, you can start loosening up the reins. Your goal weight is the weight you had always dreamed you could be again. This was before you drowned your sorrows when your cat died. The goal here is not to become a waif-like super model who’s ready to chew off the nearest hand they see at the post-Milan Fashion Week. No, it is time to stop losing weight, and begin to maintain it.
I just heard on NPR (National Public Radio for those checking in from Russia) that there are two kinds of heavy people, healthy and disease-resistant, and unhealthy or sickly. I’ll admit, heaviness does not make for the most physically attractive person with either kind. I’d say the difference between health outcomes results from diet — shoveling down high-fat McDonalds for many lunches and dinners, versus scarfing down spaghetti and meatballs regularly. One will die before their time, the other may not. Neither of them are much of a challenge in a wind sprint.
Buy a cycling machine that can realistically simulate the Tour de France. While you’re at it, get a Stair Master, or just go all out, and make your home gym better than the commercial ones. Build a wing off your den to keep all the plates that will rival any NFL training room. Over the long haul, you’ll save thousands in gym memberships where you always find yourself canoodling with people: whose hygiene habits are highly suspect; who have blood dripping out of their nose, originating from some strange white powder; and who leave syringes on the locker room floor because they’re steroid junkies, making you always wear sneakers in the shower there, or else you’ll step on the hypodermics and get Hep-C.
If you’re not doing so already, incorporate fruits and veggies into your diet. These have virtually no calories, and fruits, like a sliced apple, make an especially good substitute for chocolate layer cake and baked Alaska, or Fudge Jubilee. Learn when certain produce is available in the grocery. Strawberries are at peak flavor in June, tomatoes and cherries in July, and corn in August. In all honesty, when these are at peak flavor, these are at least as delicious as candy — and you can eat them in unlimited portions.
It’s late, and you have the munchies. How can you snack without busting your diet, without tallying up hundreds of official diet points, and without looking like you moved next door to a McDonalds? While not approved by any known dieting organization, we suggest the following: seltzer (we like lemon-flavored, although there seems to be novel flavors now every week at the grocery), a summer-seasonal nectarine (we like organic), and this, class, a generous cube of smoked Gouda (avoiding the temptation to consume the entire, cheese hockey puck). Near midnight, this is pure snacking heaven. Only snack enough to make it to the next snacking session. Think enough provisions to make it to the next Appalachian Trail hostel, Ashley Judd.
Wash your food down with water at least partly, skip the caffeinated, sugared water altogether (aka soda).
Tea, especially the herbal variety like South African Rooibos & Honeybush, makes an excellent substitute for a thousand-calorie milkshake.
Alcohol means plenty of empty calories; if you really need a buzz, run up and down your stairs twenty times (for bonus points, wear ankle weights).
Better still, exercise at least once every day, even if it just means twirling your pencil around your fingertips, or walking back and forth on your living room floor.