Fellow AOP teammate Emerald found the below article in the April 2009 issue of Good Housekeeping.  Thanks Emerald!!!

 

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What Thin Women Know

They don't diet, don't count calories, and don't deprive themselves.

Here's how to do the same--and lose your muffin top.

By Valerie Frankel

I wish I had a dime for everyhour I've wasted thinking about my weight, Obsessing about food, ruing spectacular binges. Like many perpetual dieters, my thoughts about these subjects always played the same notes guilt, shame, panic. Those negatives were a heavy load on my mind--and my body.

That restrictive dieting mentality doesn't actually slim you down--and it certainly doesn't make you healthy. After consulting with experts, poring over the research, and quizzing all the skinny civilians I know. I concluded that the naturally slender among us actually, think themselves thin.

I've spent the past few years trying to transform myself into a thin person (with some success). But my brain remained the final fat frontier. So even though I've stabilized at a weight I'm generally happy with, a couple of months ago I decided that I could definitely stand some improvement, both above and below the neck (and especially around the middle). I made up my mind to learn to think the way a thin person does. Based on my research and a few gut guesses, I came up with the following rules to test-drive.

1. When eating, focus on the food

Don't let distractions--TV, e-mail-take away from the experience.

2. Let hunger happen

A pang is not an emergency signal from your stomach or a call to shovel food into your mouth. It's a gentle reminder to eat.

3. Indulge--deliberately

Go ahead and eat that (one) cookie, as long as it's exactly the one you crave.

4. Slow down

My skinny daughter, Maggie, and my slim husband, Steve, linger over meals and take breaks; I tend to plow through my food, utensils flashing, until every bite is gone.

5. Exercise every day

Thin people exercise the way heavy people diet. It's what they do, have always done, will continue to do, as a part of daily life. Fat-thinkers see exercise as, at best, an unwelcome temporary chore to grunt through until the day after the high school reunion.

6. Socialize on your feet

Thin people make plans to "do something." Fat-thinkers make plans "for dinner."

7. Give yourself a break

Overeating or skipping a workout does not send thin people into a panic. They forgive themselves, accept imperfection, and instantly resume their lives. Fat-thinkers slide down a shame spiral that leads to pig-outs, sloth-and more guilt.

8. Exercise for fun!

Like kids, thin adults feel the innate joy of movement and activity. They seek out new and exciting ways to get their limbs moving and hearts pumping.

9. Create a space in your mind where negative fat-think thoughts used to be

If you didn't brood about dieting or being overweight, how much mental room would you gain? Thin-thinkers have the mental expanse to daydream, plan outfits, rehearse important conversations, write funny Facebook updates, and who knows what else.

I determined to spend three weeks seeing whether following these rules could make me a mean, lean-thinking machine. But I reserved the option of customizing them a little so they'd work for me.

Week One

I needed a gauge to see if thin-thinking really worked. I don't weigh myself anymore, but I've been keeping tabs on my size by putting on a pair of black leather jeans-size 10-about every month. As I pulled them off the hanger to get a baseline, I realized that a lot more time than usual had passed since I'd checked the fit.

One leg in, then the other. The leather slid over my hips, but when I buttoned them, yikes! Muffin-top spillage galore. Since my last try-on, I'd gained at least five pounds.

Instantly, my heart raced. Not good! How had I let myself balloon like this? I felt the panic response, and remembered Rule 7" Give yourself a break. "People don't expect perfection in any other area of their lives," Ed Abramson, Ph.D., an eating and weight-control expert in Lafayette, CA, had told me. "But if you think like a typical dieter, there's no forgiveness. A slip-up or a pound gained equals unworthiness."

Relax, I thought (thinly). I tried a few deep breaths and then decided it would be easier if I unbuttoned my tight pants first. Thin-thinkers, if they gain a few pounds, shrug and move on: I would do the same. No stewing, no shame, no worry about losing the weight. I put on stretch jeans and got on with my day.

Not only do thin people not obsess over their lapses, they just don't have the same complicated emotional relationship with food that perpetual dieters do-and they're better off for it. "It's unhealthy to think of food as bad or dangerous," explained David L. Katz, M.D., an associate adjunct professor of public health at Yale University. Equating a cookie with pure evil will bring on deprivation thinking (not allowing yourself to eat certain foods--or at all). "If you skip meals, all you'll be able to think about is food. When you do eat, you'll binge--and that's a pattern commonly associated with obesity."

Well, yes. Any dieter worth her low-sodium salt knows that you should never let yourself get too hungry, right? You run the risk of falling into a blind, food-shoveling trance and regaining consciousness in front of an empty fridge, covered in barbecue sauce, wondering, How did I get here? But, as it turns out, that doesn't have to happen. Thin-thinkers don't fear hunger or freak out when they feel it, so they're fine with waiting until their next meal--and then they don't binge, I learned from Judith Beck, Ph.D., a cognitive therapist. By contrast, "people who struggle with weight are often afraid that hunger will be intolerable" Beck told me. "They imagine their empty-stomach pangs will get worse and worse unless they eat. I asked people who feared hunger to go without eating for up to six hours and record their sensations on a discomfort scale, rating it from the annoyance of a mild headache up to the pain of childbirth or surgery," she explained. "Even between hours five and six, when the subjects had empty-stomach hunger, their discomfort levels ranged from 'none' to 'mild.'"

Rule 2 was "Let hunger happen." So I, too, had to accept that a little stomach rumbling wasn't bad or scary or agonizing. On Sunday night, I was roasting a chicken for dinner. Only problem: I forgot to turn on the oven. An hour went by before I realized dinner would be long delayed, and I was already peckish--the perfeet opportunity to reenact Beck's experiment myself.

"Hunger is intermittent," Beck had tipped me off. "It might last 10 minutes, but then it goes away." So when my younger daughter, Lucy, complained that she wanted dinner, I figured if Lucy and I could wait out our hunger, it might not return until the chicken was done.

How to distract ourselves? By applying Rule 8: Exercise for fun! Thin-thinkers equate activity with happiness. Lucy herself often chose fun over food. I flashed to a summer morning in Maine at Steve's family's lake house. I'd prepared a fabulous breakfast-bacon, eggs, French toast-but Lucy blew it off, racing out the door to go swimming instead and never looking back. In that same spirit, I suggested we break the no-TV-before-dinner rule and play Wii while we waited for our meal.

Lucy was thrilled, and we played Wii tennis, match after match. She beat me badly, but we both won by laughing, bonding, and even breaking a sweat. When the oven timer went off--it seemed like no time--we didn't want to stop. Our hunger had become a nonissue.

Week Two

This was going to be a stressful week: I had two lunches scheduled and a looming deadline. Applying Rule 5, "Exercise every day" would be tough with so many time-consuming commitments. I doubted I'd make it to the gym once.

"You don't have to go to the gym if you infiltrate your day with NEAT," said James Levine, Ph.D., M.D., an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Er, did that mean cleaning my house? It could, actually. NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which means any movement that doesn't necessarily require a sports bra--walking up and down stairs, washing dishes, taking out the garbage, folding laundry, even simply standing up. Dr. Levine recently conducted a study to, as he put it, "intricately measure the movement of typical Americans. Eighty-five percent don't exercise at all, and we wanted to know how some are so thin. We found out that they're in constant motion--ambling, pacing-for an extra two and a half hours per day. Even if you just spent that time walking at one mile per hour, that would burn an extra 300 calories daily." Calculators out: Burning an extra 300 calories a day would total 31 pounds in a year for me.

You know NEAT people. They're fidgety, dashing this way and that, jumping out of chairs and off couches, taking after-dinner walks. Dr. Levine liked my idea of standing up whenever I was on the phone. "Even better, pace," he said. "And don't shop online. Walk to the bookstore; walk around at the mall."

Immediately, I called the editor I had a lunch meeting with the next day. While I paced, I said, "How about, instead of eating, we go shoe shopping?" A good idea, I thought, to squeeze in NEAT-ness, and also apply Rule 6, "Socialize on your feet." But my lunch date nixed the shopping expedition in favor of sushi (what kind of women's-magazine editor was she?).

Next day, the lunch was fine from a professional standpoint, but not from a thin-thinking one. I attempted to follow Rule 4, "Slow down," but I found it impossible with a plate of exotic deliciousness before me. I forcibly excused myself to the ladies' room mid-meal, but when I returned, my editor narrowed her eyes and asked if I was OK. I wondered if she thought I'd been purging. Flustered, I said I was fine. "I'm not bulimic; I'm thinking thin!" I wanted to add, but I was too busy eating.

My next lunch date was with an old friend who loved the shoe-shopping idea. Bonnie and I socialized on our feet, and then, happily, in our new boots. Small glitch: Shopping made us hungry. Real empty-stomach hunger. Bonnie wanted pizza. I suggested that we wait 10 minutes until the feeling passed. She looked at me like I was insane and pulled me into a nearby restaurant. On the way home, I gave myself a break for eating three slices.

By the weekend, all the activity (NEAT and otherwise) had left me exhausted, and I just wanted to zone out in front of the TV--but I knew that would severely test thin-think Rule 1: When eating, focus on the food. For two weeks, I'd been struggling with the no-distractions eating mentality. Usually, I read the paper at breakfast, scan e-mail at lunch, and flip through snail mail at dinner. But "if you're distracted while eating," Beck warned me, "you won't focus as much on enjoying the food, and you may eat more, faster. You have to learn to eat mindfully, even during family conversations." She recommended that for several days I practice savoring every forkful, slowly, by eating alone, TV off, music off, computer off, no reading material within 15 feet.

I had hit-or-miss success with mindful eating. The morning newspaper habit was deeply entrenched, and too pleasurable to give up, but at dinner I put the mail out of reach, listened more than talked, and managed to concentrate on every bite. At night, however, tired and with the TV on, I was vulnerable to mindless munching. "Would I say, 'Don't eat at all while watching TV'? That's harsh," said kindly Dr. Katz. "So go ahead-but pick just one snack. If you move from one to another, your appetite will be stimulated by all the tastes and textures, and you'll eat more and more. If you stick to one snack, you'll be satisfied with less."

He recommended creating a list of about 10 wholesome foods for TV watching. On a given night, I'd select whichever struck my fancy and eat only that. I kept in mind a 2006 University of Texas at Austin study that concluded overweight and obese adults ate more fat and meat than their normal-weight counterparts of the same age and height, who consumed more fruit and fiber. So my list included grapes, apples, clementines, frozen fruit bars, shredded-wheat squares, whole wheat Goldfish crackers, and popcorn-just air-popped.

Verdict? It worked! My bowl of cheddar Goldfish close at hand, I put on a movie, lay back on the couch, ate, and zoned out. Bliss. When the ending credits rolled, I realized I hadn't paused the flick to get more crackers once. Ordinarily, I would've assumed that I'd just been enthralled by the plot and acting, but the movie wasn't that good.

Week Three

Due to a combination of religious and national holidays, my daughters were home from school for three days this week. I was sure a thin-thinking mother would see the short vacation asan opportunity to have active fun, and bond NEAT-ly doing cool stuff together. I could hear Dr. Levine's advice in my head: "Kids love being active. Take them for a long walk. Go to a museum. Do an art project."

A fat-thinking morn would see an excuse to go out to lunches, catch movies, hang out on the couch reading or playing computer games. Yuck. What a terrible picture, right? Absolutely horrible.

The truth: A few days of loafing with the girls sounded fantastic. I was reminded of Rule 3: Indulge-deliberately. I'd initially conceived that rule to be about food, but I expanded it to include activity, too. The girls and I spent an entire day hanging out, ordering in, doing absolutely nothing active, or even useful. And, oh yeah, we indulged in cookies, too. I had more than one. Considerably more. But by the end of the day, I was bored. I'd wasted a day; I'd eaten way too much; and I didn't feel good-physically or emotionally. Nor were the girls any better off.

The next day, I aspired to combine the vacation vibe with active fun. We all liked the idea of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge into Chinatown in lower Manhattan--a walk of two and a half miles from our apartment-and then having a dim sum lunch of dumplings and pork buns. The walk was fun (and NEAT) and took the edge off the dumplings.

The last day of their break, Maggie suggested that she and I go for a jog. We laced up and ran to a nearby park to do laps. Maggie encouraged me to mix up my slow-and-steady pace by sprinting the last section of each lap, an interval-training technique she'd learned on her track team. I thanked her for the tip-she was clearly pleased with her own running and coaching prowess, and even said, "I'm proud of myself!" Is there any sound sweeter to a mother's ears?

Flush with that success, I decided to try one more time to eat slowly. We were going to our favorite local restaurant, Pete's, for Sunday dinner-the last meal of my three-week think-thin project. I ordered my usual, fried calamari on field greens, which I often finished scarfing down before Steve and the kids had made a dent in their burgers.

Tonight, I put my fork down every five bites, and deliberately did not pick it up again until I'd taken as many sips of water. I noticed that our favorite waiter kept shooting glances in the direction of our table. Finally, he came over and asked me, "Is something wrong with the salad? You're barely touching it."

Totally embarrassed, I stammered that it was fine. How did I usually eat it? Like a starved dog thrown a scrap of meat? Steve registered my reaction and said, "Get over it, Val. No one is judging you."

He was right. The only person judging the speed of my eating was me, and only because I was forcing myself to go against my natural tendencies. I wasn't savoring every bite; I was anxious about eating too fast. Enough, I decided. I'll pause when I'm done with my salad, before I steal french fries off Lucy's plate.

The Test

Would the leather jeans be looser now, after my time spent thinking thin? I'd dipped into my fat-brain many times during the past three weeks, and I didn't feel thinner.

As I took the jeans off the hanger, I realized I'd forgotten to apply Rule 9: Create a space in your mind where negative fat-think thoughts used to be. I'd hoped that all that thin-thinking, relaxing, not-obsessing, and exercising for fun would clear room in my mind for new ideas to develop. Brilliant plots for new novels or great magazine articles, or startling insights into marriage, parenting, friendship. But with only three weeks under my belt, I realized, thinking thin wasn't automatic for me yet. "It takes three months to make a habit," Dr. Katz had told me, "and six to make a lifetime commitment." So once I finished refining my thinkthin rules and went on autopilot, I could look forward to more mental space for fabulous new ideas.

Until then, I had my rules to cling to: No matter how the jeans fit, I would not panic, I resolved. One leg, then the other. Slide over the hips. And the waist? Not loose, as in falling off. But, yes, they were looser, comfortable, easy to take deep breaths in. Yay! And, whew.

For me, one of the hallmarks of fat-thinking was that thrill, relief, and joy whenever my clothes got looser. Perhaps some not-thin thoughts are forever. But that's OK, I decided. No matter how you think about it, feeling good about yourself could never be bad for you.

Valerie's Revised Rules

1. Go ahead and read the paper at breakfast, but then don't check e-mail at lunch.

2. Hunger is OK--it's not scary or, as it turns out, painful.

3. Indulge whenever you really want to, but earn it first.

4. Eat at your own pace, but don't get seconds.

5. Exercise at the gym when time allows, but get out of your chair every chance you get.

6. Socialize by doing--and then eating. Twice the bonding.

7. Don't worry if you gain a pound--no one cares, and neither should you.

8. Exercise for fun when it really is fun. Try new classes, games, and routines instead of falling into a rut.

9. Wisdom isn't instant or automatic. Like thin-thinking, it takes time and practice.

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This article originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Good Housekeeping.  It has been reprinted here with permission of the author Valerie Frankel.  For more information about Valerie and her work, visit www.valeriefrankel.com. 

Thanks Val!