Elaine's Blog:
Following the Just Tell Me What to Eat! Plan

Action or Maintenance Stage

3 months (12 weeks) and 11 pounds

I'm almost half way to losing 25 pounds and every pound counts. With each pound lost, I feel more like myself and more in control of my life. I'm moving at a faster pace along the stages of change (transtheoretical or TTM) model proposed by Prochaska originally to describe the stages which people experience as they quit smoking and more recently applied to dietary change (Prochaska JO, 1979). I found this article by Caroline Horwath, PhD, a nutrition researcher whom I respect, who affirms that the transtheoretical model is applicable to increased fruit and vegetable consumption (Horwath, Nigg, Motl, Wong, & Dishman, 2010).

Don and I have been on this routine for three months or 12 weeks. I think we get the hang of it now, but before I read the book, I was stuck in the contemplation stage. I mean stuck. Even though my good clothes didn't fit, I was embarrassed to present myself as a chubby health educator, and my cholesterol and blood pressure were high.

It was his recipes and probably also the challenge he proposed to me to write this blog for you that moved me into the preparation and later action stage. Some things have stayed the same in this 12 week period. We still have a couple of drinks on Grace's porch on Friday nights. We eat out once a week or so. We still have our wine with dinner. But I have acquired new behaviors. Now I am in touch with how I FEEL when I eat and find myself eating less. I stop eating when I feel full. I eat 1/2 portions of what I'm served at a restaurant many times because Don and I SHARE one entrée. I eat salads for lunch.

I make sure I drink a whole bottle of water before I leave work for the day. I snack on roasted cashews or an apple. We traveled for two of the 12 weeks and intuitively followed the eating out advice we later read in Week 6 of the book, Just Tell Me What To Eat!.

Now I'm somewhere between the action and maintenance stage. I hope I never fall back into a place where I'm just contemplating eating more fruits and vegetables, or a Mediterranean-style diet in general. I don't think that will happen as long as Chef Tim keeps creating recipes. Even if he never created another one, we have all his recipes on DrGourmet.com and we (as a society) are definitely not going backward in terms of the Internet being a part of our daily life. So we have the recipes. Good recipes. We have his book, which puts some of his recipes together with his good advice. If we keep cooking five nights/week, maintaining the proper caloric intake and exercise a couple of times a week, we should be able to maintain an appropriate weight.

References:

Horwath, C. C., Nigg, C. R., Motl, R. W., Wong, K. T., & Dishman, R. K. (2010). Investigating fruit and vegetable consumption using the transtheoretical model. American Journal of Health Promotion : AJHP, 24(5), 324-333. doi:10.4278/ajhp.071218138

Prochaska JO. (1979). Systems of psychotherapy: A transtheoretical analysis. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole.