(Almost) Everything I Need to Know About Weight Management I (could) Learn From My Dogs!!

First of all, let me preface this story by saying that I already "know" more about weight management, physical fitness, and nutrition than many people with advanced degrees in these subjects.... What escapes me in real life is putting knowledge into (consistent) action. I realized this morning that if I took just one lesson from each of my lovable Boston Terriers, and actually put it into consistent action, I would have this whole thing whipped!!!



WHAT I SHOULD LEARN FROM BELLA - The Joy of BREAKFAST!!

We all "know" that breakfast is the most important meal, right??? But how many of us actually eat a good, healthy breakfast on a consistent basis? I just read a study where a group of over 1,000 obese women were studied for 36 weeks. The first group ate ONE HALF of their allotted 1,208 calories a day at breakfast, with half of their protein, half of their carbohydrates, half of their fat eaten in one sitting by 9 am. (WHAT TRAVESTY I thought to myself.... On Weight Watchers, I always saved at least half of MY points for after 9 PM!! On LA Weight Loss, I would save most of my fruit portions to be used for wine in the evening, and struggled just to get one protein, one fat and one carb into my food diary by mid morning.... On Jenny Craig.... Alright, you get the idea -- we could go on and one here with my various failures at various diets, but suffice it to say that I haven't managed to lose "that last stubborn 25 pounds" on any of them....)

Back to the research results -- the second study group ate a low-carb breakfast and only 1,064 calories daily for 36 weeks. At the end, the big breakfast eaters had lost almost 23% of their body weight, and the low-carb, low-calorie eaters has lost less than 6%. And how does this have ANYTHING to do with Bella??? Well this morning I observed her daily routine, where she bounds out of bed at the first sound of someone in the kitchen (let the record state that that "someone" is almost always my husband, NOT me), runs to her food dish, bounds back into bed (that would be me still in bed!!), licks my face enthusiastically and bounces around as if to say: "Breakfast, Yummmm, Breakfast, WOO HOO, Breakfast!!!"

The moment that she hears her first kibble hit the dish, she is back out there, doing her sit on command before she gobbles up her 1/2 cup with great enthusiasm... This is exactly half of the food she will get today, and it is gone in 30 seconds or less.... And she is happy, energized and her weight doesn't fluctuate more than half a pound one way or the other, unless Dad has given her too many table scraps!! At least in the dog world, eating half your daily calories for breakfast works, and studies show it works in humans, too.... Hmmmm can I manage to make myself at least eat SOMETHING HEALTHY for breakfast every morning instead of living on coffee with sugar-free creamer until noon while "stockpiling" my calorie allowance for late-night snacks?? Stay tuned!!