Before I hit my 30s, I could eat pretty anything I wanted and not have to worry about it. I had very little concept of how that might change after I got a little older and had kids. In fact, Bruce often warned me while I downed half a bag of cookies and Doritos in one sitting that it wouldn’t last forever. “Whatever,” I said, “Then I guess I will enjoy it while I can.” Well, “later” has arrived. Along with an extra 10 pounds. The weird thing is, if anything, I eat much healthier than I did in my early 20s—mostly organic, preservative-free foods and absolutely no fast or junk food. And yet here I am. I guess this is that metabolism slowdown thing everybody talks about.

Before this summer losing any kind of weight had been a complete mystery to me and I didn’t have a clue where to begin. At the same time, I also knew I was NOT going to “diet,” which I’ve always thought is kind of bogus and temporary. However, I did make a few simple changes that have helped my drop six or seven pounds so far. If anyone is interested, here’s what I did (I skipped the weight-loss tips everybody already knows, i.e., avoiding fast food, tons of sugar, etc….I think those are no-brainers, no?):

1) Shop at Trader Joe’s
Count yourself very lucky if you happen to live near one of these. Not only will you pay 1/2 of what regular grocery stores charge for the same thing, you will get a much higher quality version with no preservatives or other artificial crap. They also have ten times more organic choices than any grocery store. More importantly, they don’t really have a whole lot of super high calorie stuff, since by design they are selling mostly wholesome, unprocessed foods. (If you DON’T have one near you, some of their stuff is on eBay).

2) Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry
I am guilty of this once in a while, and this means I often start gravitating towards the sugary stuff. Bad news.

3) Don’t buy it
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? This is one of the #1 rules I failed to get over the last decade, and I don’t know why it took so long. If you don’t bring it in the house you can’t eat it. One or two cookies isn’t inherently evil, but the fact is if you have them in the house you’re going to eat them, and if you’re like me it’s probably going to be more than two. If I’m trying to be good then I can’t even have them in the house.

4) Exercise more
This was the hard part. A year ago, I thought going to the gym once or twice a week was a lot. Ha ha—it isn’t. This allowed me to mostly contain things, but not actually lose anything. If you actually want to lose, you have to step it up to at least three or four times a week; basically every other day. And this means a minimum of 45 to an hour of exercise. Doing it incrementally helped. It wasn’t as hard to go from two days a week to three as it was to go from nothing to twice a week. Having an mp3 player to listen to helps to stay motivated as well. That said…

5) Keep the momentum going
You will have bad days. Do not take it as a sign to stop, just go to the gym anyway and do what you can.

6) Drink more green tea
I have to be very careful with this because of my IC. But I have gotten to the point where I can do this every other day with little to no problems (fingers crossed). This is good, because the tiny amount of caffeine does help give you that itty bitty boost in the gym and a little less appetite without overdoing it. Not much, but every little bit helps. And it is so much kinder to your system (and your tooth color) than coffee.

7) Snack on dried fruit
I usually crave sugar right after a decent sized-meal. Historically I would then grab half a dozen cookies after lunch and dinner. Instead I’ve been substituting Trader Joe’s dried fruit instead and it seems to keep the insane cookie cravings at bay.

8) Listen to your body
Once I really got going with the exercise and not giving in to sugar cravings all the time, I found myself getting full much quicker. This was weird at first. But instead of wolfing down your usual amount, listen to your body. Stop. Just stop eating when you are full.

9) Eat less
I thought this part was going to be absolute torture, and I was going to go around feeling hungry, deprived and pissed-off all the time. But amazingly, this seemed to happen naturally when I implemented all of the above. Once you start shaving off just a tiny bit of your usual amounts and exercising more, you body adjusts and doesn’t scream as much.

10) Enjoy the snowball effect
The recipe for losing weight is simple: burn more calories than you consume. Once you start losing a little weight it actually gets easier! You body doesn’t fight you as much and you feel better overall. So it gets easier to keep doing it once you get the ball rolling—it’s just a matter of getting the ball rolling.

And that’s it. Of course there are setbacks…I have had at least three colds the girls have brought home from preschool since I started the above program this summer. But since I’ve been exercising, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that even after being sick for a week, you don’t quite go back to zero. It’s easier to get up again after you get knocked down. And that’s pretty awesome. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have my handful of granny prunes before I go to bed.

Further Reading: Potatoes Not Prozac
Links: Crossfit | Dietblog | The Daily Plate

* P.S. Congrats to my fellow twin mama friend that’s lost 10 pounds recently (you know who you are!)