Organization Quest

The 1/3 Rule: Cut Calories and Save Money, Too

I don't recall exactly how or when I came across the one-third rule, but I've been using it for years:  basically, almost anything with a liquid base (and even some things, like re-fried beans, which aren't liquid) can be diluted with plain old tap water by 1/3 without affecting taste or quality all that much.  Examples:  orange juice--in fact, I can barely drink the stuff straight from the carton anymore.  Soup.   Ketchup.  Salad dressing.  Balsamic vinegar.  By adding 33% more volume, you automatically reduce the calories/carbs by one third as well, for a save calories-save money, win-win proposition.

The 1/3 rule works for non-edibles as well:  Dishwasher liquid, laundry detergent, bleach, window cleaner, ammonia, body lotion, shampoo, conditioner--the 1/3 rule works with any number of common household, cleaning, and grooming products, and is a great way to painlessly reduce spending.

Re-Thinking Conventional Food Storage for Diet-Friendly Results

My best friend once told me that my refrigerator kind of freaked her out.  It wasn't a cleanliness issue; rather it was my disregard for conventional rules about what-goes-where. Case in point:  I've never understood the whole "crisper" thing for storing fruits and vegetables.  Haven't refrigerator designers ever heard of the old adage "out of sight, out of mind"? Or maybe refrigerator manufacturers are in cahoots with the convenience-food industry; I wouldn't be surprised if Dateline or 60 Minutes  end up doing an expose showing the CEO of a major appliance maker dressing down product engineers for making the designated vegetable storage area too accessible.  "If someone wants an apple, make 'em work for it," is what the appliance magnate will be caught saying on the grainy undercover video tape.

If you're on a diet, the last thing  you want is to be on your knees, struggling to open a cheap plastic drawer so you can to dig through a cluttered, uninviting mess only to find a poor, bruised-and-battered plum crushed at the bottom of an 8"-deep heap of fruits and vegetables. If you're going to eat healthy, then you gotta make it easy, folks.  I may walk a mile in a thunder storm (or more likely: whine and plead until Alpay walks a mile in a thunder storm) to get my favorite double-chocolate muffin, but if I'm going to be good and have a few lousy celery sticks, I better be able to grab them without a lot of drama.

Happily, making good-for-you food inviting and accessible is easy; it just takes re-thinking where things go and how things are stored in the fridge.  We use a variety of bowl for this purpose--small ones for quick snacks like cherries, figs, cut vegetables, and cucumbers, which we eat Turkish-style (peeled and sprinkled with salt and fresh lemon juice, sliced length-wise almost to the end,then wrapped in a napkin so you can holdand eat it like an ice-cream cone).  For vegetables that are more often used as ingredients--onions and peppers, eggplants and tomatoes--we use a large, shallow bowl (see photo at the beginning of this post).  And what about the awful crispers?  Actually, we've found them to be very useful for storing fresh, loose-leaf spinach, which has a tendency to wilt and get yucky if stored in plastic bags.  We just wash the crisper drawer and lay a paper towel on the bottom, and fill with a quantity of spinach that would do Popeye proud.

 

Organizing and Weight Loss: The Feng Shui Connection

I first heard of Feng Shui shortly after graduating from college, when I worked in an office that had been meticulously designed according to Feng Shui principles, on order of the owner of the company.  There were mirrors in unexpected places; there were mobiles, there were fountains, there were bells.  There were very strict rules about what colors went where and which way your desk faced. The American Heritage dictionary defines Feng Shut as "the Chinese art or practice of positioning objects . . . based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi that have positive and negative effects." At the time I worked in the Feng Shui designed office, folks, I was not a believer.

This changed when I met Regina Leeds, author of the wonderful One Year to an Organized Life series, as well as her original Zen of Organizing book.  Back in the day, Regina was hired by ivillage to lead the Get Organized group, and she is nothing if not a born leader--which is to say, she inspires and motivates others to be their best.  For Regina, organizing is not about a perfectly arranged sock drawer; it's about how the order you create for yourself makes you feel.   One's physical surroundings both reflect and impact one's life experiences--those "positive and negative effects" referred to above.  Chief among the life experiences impacted by one's surroundings is health, and that includes body weight. On the ivillage board, Regina would say: stalled on a diet?  Let go of the physical clutter.

This I desperately wanted to believe, if only because I imagined it would be a lot easier to organize my house then stay on a diet.  I've since decided the opposite is true, but never mind.  The truth is, the more I work on organizing, the less work it is to maintain other healthy habits.

Why is this, exactly?  I've often puzzled over this.  Here are some ideas about what's behind the Weight Loss-Organization Connection:

When certain chores and systems are in place, it makes sticking to your diet a lot easier.

This is especially true of meal planning, which includes grocery runs and cooking meals, as there seems to be a direct correlation between cooking your own meals and successfully staying on a diet.  However:

Diet- and fitness-specific errands and chores are not isolated activities.

For instance, your ability to successfully prepare and cook a healthy meal is impacted by any number of things.  If your kitchen is a mess--if you can't open the cabinets without dishes or cans of food falling down, if your counters are piled high, if you can't find appropriate containers or knives, if your fridge smells or is so over-stuffed that you can't fit new supplies, it's not going to be easy to whip up a nice, quick, healthy meal.  This leads to:

Control begets control

I don't know about you, but when things are out of control, a pint of Chubby Hubby ice-cream looks awfully good.  We're talking comfort food here. But when your place is clean, when you know where things are, when the order in your home lifts your energy and you feel happy and calm when you open a closet or drawer or cabinet rather than feeling stressed or burdened or overwhelmed by disorder,  that is the very definition of "comfort."  Which brings us to:

Being organized makes healthy rewards easier--and more rewarding

In my book, a bubble bath is much more rewarding than a late-night snack--but only if I don't have to scrub out the tub first. 

When you're organized, you're more efficient with your resources, the surplus of which can be re-invested toward your goal.

When you're organized, you tend to have more time and energy, because you aren't wasting them on trying to track things down, whether it's a number or your favorite sweater.  And we've seen time a-plenty here on the Quest how being organized saves money, if only by not duplicating purchases of things you can't find. Any time or energy you save can be put to use--by exercising, by keeping a diet notebook, by cooking healthy meals instead of grabbing things out.  Likewise, any money you save can be re-invested in exercise gear, gym memberships or yoga classes.

Procrastination Experts to the Rescue! Finding the Time to Exercise (or do anything else)

One of my very first posts on the Quest had to do with procrastination--and referred to a book by psychologists Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen of the same name.  One of the fascinating ideas Burka and Yuen explore is the way procrastinators experience time.    They offer a number of strategies that are specifically designed to address common misconceptions, pitfalls, and time-wasting patterns that are common to procrastinators. 

One such strategy is the "un-schedule,"  a method developed by psychologist Neil Fiore and detailed in his book, The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play.  "The un-schedule is a weekly calendar of all of your committed activities," explain Burka and Yuen (B & Y).  One of its main advantages is that by honestly assessing how you expect to spend your time, you can see how much time you really have available to work towards any particular goal.

I've found that the "un-schedule" is  useful for things I don't want to do and am thus absolutely, positively convinced I have no time for--like exercising.  Convinced I don't have a single hour in an entire week to take a swim, lift some weights, or take a yoga class, I made a quick spreadsheet and started filling in the time. 

Following the direcitons in the book, I wrote down everything I could predict doing in the coming week, no matter how trivial. "If you always watch the evening news, Monday night sports, or other favorite television programs, put them down, " B & Y advise. I don't watch the evening news or any kind of sport, unless you count watching Patti Blagojevich, Sanjaya, and a couple of the Baldwin brothers hang by their arms until they fall in an attempt to get immunity on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!  "Remember, we are not asking you to write down what you should be doing," B & Y write, which means I can actually feel virtuous admitting my Celebrity addiction. True, this meant I had five hours a week to watch has-beens, also-rans, or, in the case of Patti, a never-ran, bicker and eat live bugs. So?

In the end, even after taking into account time toted up watching Celebrity, as well as surfing, sleeping, and the rather ambigious "fun weekend activities" in addition to working, writing, commuting, eating, and doing (rather minimal) housework, I still had a good 7 hours available to schedule in some exercise.  Guess it's time to start looking into that yoga class, after all.

 

Above: The shaded areas indicate potential time to work on a particular goal--i.e. exercising.

Below: Download  your own "un-schedule" (pdf reader required)

Download Unschedule blank

The Refrigerator and Pantry Makeover: How One Nutritionist Does It

One of the goals of any diet/lifestyle plan is to replace junky food choices with healthier ones.  Some people advocate clearing the fridge and pantry of all offending food if you can,  provided thatother members of the house won't be goaded into felanious acts of defense and revenge after you actually throw away perfectly good Cheez-Whiz.

 I myself favor the Clean Slate Approach, but then, moderation in thought and deed has never been my strong point.  There's something to be said for a reasonable, gradual replacement of junk food with nutrittrous choices:  for one, you waste less.  Second, you give yourself and your family time to adjust to a new way of eating. 

I especially like one nutritionist's strategy for creating awareness and preparing healthier habits: David Grotto, RD, LDN, and author of the book  101 Foods That Could Save Your Life  advocates a fun system of colored-coding the items in your refrigerator and pantry with stickers. "Food items that reinforce your health goals are tagged with green stickers and ones that should not be replaced are tagged with red stickers," Grotto explains on his website, nutritionhousecall.com.   Seeing the "red flag" foods in this way gives you time to reflect on your choices and come up with alternates with which to replace them.  In any case, Grotto's technique gives a new spin on pantry- and refrigerator-cleaning that makes the prospect of dieting almost kind of fun.

Getting Your Family On Board With Your Weight Loss

 Let's face it: as much as your family and friends may want to support you, your diet is no fun for them.  Yes, what they have to gain is a healthier you, and they're on board for that.  But in the process, they lose their (check all that apply) cake-baking, beer-swigging, candy-commiserating, happy-hour-celebrating, 5-course-meal-preparing, pizza-loving, all-you-can-eat-buffet-going, donut-toting, late-night-take-out-ordering special someone they've come to love and know.  And the change is tough to swallow.

I'm lucky: one of the things that has been enormouslyhelpful in the last few years in getting and keeping my weight off is that Alpay rarely brings home anything that would tempt me. 

There's a dual strategy at work here:  on the one hand, the treats he does bring home are things that I don't particularly like:  Coconut gelato, for instance, which even the kittens refuse to partake, even though they loveice-cream. What else is on the okay-to-bring-home list?  Any kind of candy that has the potential to stick in one's teeth:  Jolly Ranchers, Starburst, taffy, caramel, Snickers.  Vinegar-flavored potato chips.  Honey in all its sticky permutations. Wretched smoothies with tapioca balls the size of bull testicles.  Something called "Turkish Delight" which, take my word for it, is a misnomer.   Or worse: some kind of rancid sour cherry frozen concoction which I refer to as "barf" even though I'm not supposed to because it makes Alpay mad when I do (i.e. "Would you like a little barf with your tea, sweetheart?")

If Alpay wants something he knows will tempt me, there's any number of strategies he employs:  often times, he'll get something out so I won't be tempted by it at home.  Or he'll bring something home when he knows I'll be out, choosing small or single-serving packages so the evidence (and temptation) is gone by the time I get home.  There are times when nothing can tempt me--when I activate what I call my Will-O-Steel and he can indulge to his heart's content with my blessing.  And there are times when I'm frankly off the wagon--either for a planned "cheat day" or during a period I've decided to give myself a break or loosen restrictions.  But even during such times, we try to keep treats to single-size portions--a fresh-baked cookie from the bakery opposed to a family-sized bag of Oreos; a single-serving bag of chips rather than a large one. Learning how to negotiate the requirements of your diet with the needs of non-dieting friends and family, as well as figuring out how to include occasional treats without going overboard, are just two of the many challenges for which you will need to strategize on your journey to a healthier lifestyle, and make excellent topics to address in your diet journal.

Tomorrow: how a nutritionist gives refrigerators and pantries a (quick) diet makeover

Above: First course for a recent special (diet-conforming) dinner.

The Secret of My Success: The Diet Notebook

 

All right, I know: there's a bunch of you out there who are saying: that's her trick? A diet notebook?  Are you kidding?

Stay with me, folks.

It's no magic bullet.  But with consistent use, a diet journal can be one of the best tools for keeping you motivated and on track.  Think of it as your own, personal diet coach, pointing the way as to what's working and what's not, celebrating your successes and providing objective feedback regarding any slip-ups: 

 

A diet journal is useful not only in review; it's a place to plan and strategize. In my case, I tend to do fine at home; it's when I go out that I find it hard to resist temptation. So I made a list of things I could get when I eat out:

The Journal Format

Here's what I do:  On the first (left-hand) page of my diet journal, I note the date, write down my weight, and take my measurements.  I then flip the page; on the left side I note what I eat and any exercise I do that day.  On the right page, I write about anything I want, as long as it's diet- or fitness-related.  Successes, challenges, failures;  ideas, observations, epiphanies, connections, fears.  It doesn't matter.  It's okay to whine.  It's okay to brag. It's all good.

 

I flip the page and continue the journal part on the right side.  On the left is the day's "strategy and reward page," which is my favorite part of the journal.  On it, I  plot out my goals (what I'll weigh, what size I will be, what I'll be able to do or wear by a certain date).  I'll think up low-cost, low-carb treats with which to reward myself, cut out and paste inspiring images from magazines, make gratitude lists and grocery lists alike, copy quotes I like and write down menus (prospective or retrospective) and record recipes:

 

When I have a good week, I enjoy logging my record of virtue, and when I have a bad week, I use my diet journal to figure out what went wrong and why.  Did I let myself get hungry?  Was I bored?  Stressed?  What choices would have supported my goals? 

Some ideas for topics to get you started on your own diet journal:

• Why do you want to lose weight or get fit?
• Have you ever been fit?  If so, what was your life like at that time?  Is there any way you can emulate some of those behaviors or re-create some of those conditions?
• If you've never felt fit, why  do you think that is?  What life-conditions have impacted you in this way?
• What is the #1 thing you can do to help yourself out to meet your goal?  Are you willing to do this?  Why or why not?
• What is the #1 thing the person or people closest to you can do to help you meet your goal?  Can you share with them what that is? 
• Look through cookbooks or recipes online that are compatible with your chosen diet.  Do you see any menus or recipes that inspire you?  Write them down or print them out and paste them into your journal.
• Visual what your life will be like when you meet your goal.  Do not use the conditional tense ("I would look great and have tons of energy"); use the future or even the present tense ("I will look great and have tons of energy" or "I look great and have tons of energy").  Feel the difference?  Imagine your goal in juicy detail.
• Brainstorm ways to inject something enjoyable into your day: bring into work fresh flowers cut from your own garden; give yourself permission to play solitaire or read a good book; have a long chat with a friend; take a  bubble bath; give yourself 15 extra minutes in bed in the morning; take your child or children to the park and put chores on hold for a whole day. 
• Come up a list of fitness milestones and healthy rewards to celebrate them.
• When you come up with a strategy that works for you, write it down.  At some point I realized that I really can't  "feel" if I'm full until I stand up. If I'm in a restaurant, I might stand to put on or take off a coat or sweater. Once I started employing the strategy of standing up and figured out a way I could do it without feeling silly, I overcame a huge hurdle and overcame a particularly stubborn plateau.
• Record all the good stuff happening to you on this journey: greater stamina, better test results, improved blood sugar, concentration, or attitude.  Observe any healthy choices you make and give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done!

 

How To Find The Right Diet/Life Plan for You: Researching Your Options and Thinking Outside the Box

Planning your successful weight loss is a lot like organizing any project:  in order to be successful, you need to research the options, decide on a budget, determine your goal and create a timeline.  You'll need to pick up a few techniques and establish strategies to keep you on track and motivated.  And you definitely need to develop a reward system--one that doesn't set you back on your timeline.

Perhaps the single component--besides determination--that has the greatest impact on how successful you will be is choosing the plan that best suits you. 

This can be tricky: after (rather futile) years of trying various plans, I finally got to the point where I tried the one plan I thought was least likely to work for me--Atkins.  As a nearly a life-long vegetarian, I didn't see how a diet of meat-meat-meat-and-fish could possibly work for me.  I was willing to start eating fish and fowl but no meat, which believe me, was radical enough.  I decided to give it exactly two weeks--the amount of time to run through the first stage of the plan, called "induction".  If in the end, it didn't work out, well then, that would be that.  I would resign myself to a life of wearing mumus and join Costco so I could buy double-stuffed Oreos in bulk.  

And so I did induction.  I cheated a little--I had a few non-induction foods like nuts and strawberries--but I didn't cheat a lot.  I had no foods not on Atkins' on-going weight loss list--no bread, no pasta, no potatoes.  No bananas, no sweet potatoes, no rice.  No sugar!  No cookies, no cake, no candy--are you hearing the violins yet?   No sweets of any kind, unless you counted the strawberries, which I certainly didn't. But I did eat as much  as I wanted of the permitted foods.  As my friend Lisa's boyfriend said:  if you're hungry, have a chicken breast.  If you're still hungry, have another.  This became my mantra.

After a few days, I noticed that I no longer craved sugar.  My blood sugar stabilized;  I didn't get shaky and desperate before meals.  Snacking lost its allure.   I was rarely hungry, and never starving. 

At the end of two weeks, I got on the scale.  Although I already felt a ton better--better rested, better nourished, more energetic, less bloated, and my pants seemed noticeably looser, too--these benefits didn't have much sway over me at the time.  Forget about "life plan": at this point, Atkins was a diet, whose main permissible food group was one I didn't like. Blood sugar be darned, I wanted to see weight loss. The more the better.  I got all worked up imagining a lousy pound or half pound loss after all that time.  Or worse: that with all the butter, cream, cream cheese, mayonnaise, and blue cheese dressing I would have gained weight, a prospect I was not ready to accept if it didn't include the consumption of cake.  I got on the scale, prepared for the worse.

I'd lost 12 pounds.

Already then! I was on board.

If I never before thought it would work because I was not a meat-eater, I didn't take into account all of the components that made it surprisingly compatible for the way I do like to eat and to live.  I'm not big on counting things--calories, "points", etc--and on Atkins I don't (although some people do find it helpful to count carbs).  I'm also not big on meetings, fees, or weight loss groups, and Atkins doesn't require any of these.  I don't mind cooking, and actually like vegetables--most of which you can, in fact, have on Atkins--although I'm not crazy about most fruit (with the exception of berries), preferences that are compatible with Atkins. Perhaps the two things that sold me the most on Atkins is that one, I can't stand being hungry, and two, I can't stand "diet" food or dainty, diet-like portions.  I'm a hearty, food-loving girl.  

As you consider for yourself what plan to follow, it's important to think of your natural preferences, but it's also important to think outside the box. If you keep running into failure, maybe it's because you keep trying the same type of thing, thinking that that's your ticket when really you're barking up the wrong tree.  Never mind the mixed metaphor--you know what I mean.  If you've been convinced no- or low-fat is the way to go but the scale isn't budging, maybe it's time to try a low-carb approach instead.  And vice versa: if low carb just doesn't make you feel good, try a low-fat approach. 

It's unlikely that you'll find the perfect diet for you, and so the goal should be the next-best thing:  an eating plan that you can live with.  This is to encourage you not to get hung up on every detail of a particular diet, but access the suitability of a plan overall.  I would have never tried Atkins if I'd focused on the fact that meat is a big part of the plan for most people.  But with a little research (i.e. finding out that vegetables are in fact encouraged and part of the plan) and a little bit of compromise (eating fish and poultry) I found a plan that worked for me by providing lots of fresh, delicious, non-diet food in non-diet portions.  But Questers, everything has a cost:  I go months without having so much as a piece of bread, and haven't had a single Oreo in years.  It's also true that on Atkins my grocery bill went up and I'm most successful when I spend 10 or 15 hours a week cooking.

What are you willing to give up?  What aren't you willing to give up?  Try identifying the top three things on each list and then go to webmd.com's Diet A-Z page, which has the low-down on over 50 plans, including such unlikely prospects as "The Cookie Diet" and "The Fast Food Diet" in addition to old standbys like Weight Watchers, Pritikin, and of course, Atkins. Do your research, keeping your preferences, your budget, and the time you have to prepare meals in mind.  Be willing to consider eating in a way you hadn't before imagined--the change may very well prove to be the break-through you've been waiting for.

 
Yum!  Pretty and festive.  And yes, you can eat pansies! They're sort of peppery--and delicious!

This Week on the Quest: Planning for and Organizing Your Successful Weight Loss

No one I actually know ever asks me how I got so organized, although I admit the prospect ranks as one of my favorite fantasies.  When people ask me for advice, it's usually about how I lost weight a few years ago--and manage to keep it off.

 

Above:  Mother's Day 2001.  I actually got much bigger than this, but stopped weighing myself at a certain point, and destroyed the pictures from that time. Migraines were a constant problem, and sometimes my back hurt so much that when I was at work I'd actually go outside to cry.

Below: picture taken today, June 6 2009.  Happy, healthy, and grateful to be pain-free and strong.

 

The way I lost weight (Atkins) may not work for you.  What I try to tell people is how I lost weight really isn't the point; the focus really should be how you can meet your own fitness goals.  And that's something I think I can help you with. 

Mind you, I'm no expert--and I still have a good 30 pounds to lose myself.  But there are three things I do know for sure:

1. Any work you do to improve your fitness will reap benefits 10 fold, not only for how you look, but how you feel--both physically and mentally--as well as how much energy you have, what you are able to do, the quality of your relationships, your stamina for work and for play, the degree to which you can experience joy, and how you approach life;
2. There is an absolute and undeniable connection between fitness and organization--between excess "junk" and excess "junk in the trunk"; and
3. You can do it.  Absolutely.  You can!

I know: if you've been struggling with your weight, you have doubts on all three scores.  You may be so focused on the appearance aspect of losing weight that you block the motivation you could be raking in from Non-Scale Victories (NSV)  to keep you on track and focused on what's really important, which is your health. Maybe you've tried--and failed--so many times before, you doubt you can ever put this weight thing behind you.  And certainly there are a good number of you out there thinking: why, exactly, is she writing about losing weight on an organization blog?  Fair enough. It's my job to convince you of the fitness-organization connection and share some concrete strategies to help you achieve your fitness goal via a little organizing.

So this week we'll look at free, on-line weight loss resources and trackers and check out a nutrionalist's technique for taking stock and cheat-proofing your refrigerator and pantry.  We'll look to Feng Shui to consider the impact that disorganization has in terms of dieting and review an ingenious strategy for finding time to exercise by tweaking a trick from two psychologists who specialize in helping people overcome procrastination.

I'll also share--in delicious, calorie-free detail (with pictures!  of course!) the #1 secret-of-my-success--and guess what Questers?  It doesn't cost a dime!