Skinny Chicks Don't Eat Salads

CHAPTER 1

How Salads Got Us into Big Fat Trouble

4:00 on a Tuesday morning

I roll my puffy body off the edge of my warm, fluffy pillow-top bed. I'm suffering from a "food hangover." Why? Because last night, while discussing the ex-boyfriend with my beloved Aunt Sandra, I munched through an entire box of Ritz crackers, a jar of marshmallow cream, and a jar of Skippy peanut butter. Now I'm bloated from all that sodium and feel like a huge brick is sitting in my lower stomach.

So I do what I do every morning: gulp down two pots of coffee. Not two cups, two pots. That's why I need to wake up so very early; I need enough time to drink the coffee and visit the bathroom several times before heading to the gym to teach my hour-long Spinning class. Of course, I skip breakfast--I have to make up for all the calories consumed during last night's cracker-peanut butter-marshmallow sandwich binge.

I go to the gym and teach my Spin class, and work out as hard as I can.

8:30 a.m.

After class I'm famished and shaking because my blood sugar is so low. I'm so mad about bingeing last night, though, that I decide to skip breakfast, resist my hunger, and head home to take a shower. Afterward, I go down into the kitchen to prepare the lunch I'll take to the office: a BIG salad. It's gotta be BIG because I'm starving like an abandoned alley kitten and I still have hours to go before lunchtime, so I use a whole head of iceberg lettuce, a bell pepper, half of a cucumber, three stalks of celery, one large beefsteak tomato, one broccoli crown, one cauliflower crown, artichoke hearts (canned in water, not oil, of course), sprouts, and a half a bottle of low-cal ranch dressing.

1:00 p.m.

Nine hours after waking up, I'm finally ready to eat my first meal. At this point, I am really forgetful, agitated, and feeling so shaky I can barely remember my own name. I am so excited to take my first bite, because (a) it's healthier than what I ate last night and (b) I'm finally on the right track with my eating! Now I'm sure to lose weight.

3:00 p.m.

I'm still full from my lunch salad and I feel pretty good. And yet ... I feel like I need to have something sweet. I find myself fantasizing about a chocolate chip cookie; don't I deserve at least one? After all, I've been awake since 4:00 a.m., I worked out like a banshee, and the only thing I've eaten all day is a salad! How much damage can one cookie do? I'm going for that cookie and then--I promise--I will get back on track.

3:30 p.m.

At the deli, my special chocolate chip cookie is warm, soft, moist, and smells like fresh-baked heaven. I love it. I need it. Hey--it's gone already! That wasn't even close to enough. I buy a mini lemon cake (it's made with fruit, right? It must be healthy) and as I devour it, the battle inside my head begins:

Christine ... what the $%#@ are you doing? This is not on your diet. You're such a loser, you can't even resist sweets for less than 24 hours. Your diet is shot.

So what? Fine. I'm a loser. Who cares!

I buy two more mini lemon cakes and four more chocolate chip cookies and sneak them back to the office in my handbag. I eat them all within 2 hours, keeping the door to my office--where I work as the aerobics manager of a popular LA health club--closed.

10:00 p.m.

I decided not to eat dinner because I had so many calories during my afternoon diet meltdown. Around 10:00 p.m., I have a small serving of nonfat frozen yogurt, figuring that that must be okay since I haven't had dinner. I decide I can have a second serving because the first one was so small, and this time I add some caramel syrup. (The caramel syrup bottle reads "fat free," after all.) The rest of the evening continues with more sweets, and I honestly can't stop myself. More than I crave love, companionship, or any emotional need--I crave sugar. The more I eat, the more I crave. These are not subtle cravings; they rule my every thought as well as my actions. Sugar is my significant other--like a toxic boyfriend that I can't break up with.

As I down these treats, I carry on a running argument with myself: Am I a sugar addict? How can I be, when I'm so good that I exercise, skipmeals, and eat only salad? I want to sleep, but I'm so wired from all the sugar that I can't turn off the voices in my head.

I am completely out of control.

What I didn't realize was that I craved sugar because I basically fasted for the first 9 hours of my day. I had convinced myself that if I skipped breakfast, ate a BIG salad for lunch, skipped dinner, and ate "just a few" sweets during the day, I would finally lose weight. I kept this up for several years. It may have been a twisted way of thinking, but it was my reality.

And that is how salads got me into big fat trouble. I believe this is how salads get lots of girls into big fat trouble. Guys don't do this ... it's only girls who eat this way and convince ourselves that it's "low-calorie eating." When we see slim women eating "real" food, we think to ourselves, "Oh, she has a special blessing from God, and that's why she can eat normal meals and I'm stuck with eating rabbit food." Let me be the first to tell you that you can eat "normal" food and be thin, too. It all starts with stepping away from the salad mentality and learning the truth about what makes us crave what we shouldn't eat and why eating what we shouldn't is so bad for us.

Skinny Chick 10-Week Transformation

NAME: JULIA S.

AGE: 34

TOTAL POUNDS LOST: 27.25

TOTAL INCHES LOST: 31.5

I started gaining weight about 4 years ago, and each year it seemed like I gained more than the year before. This was a big change for me. As a child, I was very active. I played a lot of sports, and I never had a problem with food. My family is very health conscious. We all work out and eat well. So I could not figure out why I was gaining this weight.

Part of it was definitely my social lifestyle. I was drinking and partying and hanging out late at night, and I got a little carried away. I wasn't organizing my time properly. When partying and eating and drinking became a priority, I knew I had to back off.

Christine helped me change some bad habits. I now have breakfast every day, something I never did before. I learned to combine proteins with carbs. And, of course, I learned that skinny girls don't eat salads. I used to say, "I'm watching my weight, I'll just eat a salad." I realize that doesn't work. But if I have a nice healthy salad, with a little chicken or some egg white, I feel better and can stick to my goals. I've learned to enjoy foods that are healthy. Double bacon cheeseburgers are great, but they're not giving my body the nutrition it needs.

Life can be so overwhelming, and sometimes it feels you're just living day to day, trying to make it, not really achieving the things you set out to do. Now, with the Skinny Chicks program, I know that once I put my mind to doing something, I can do it. I feel inspired to let the real Julia come out and shine. I look back and see that all my fat was covering so much beauty. Can I just pat myself on the back?

Why Skinny Chicks Don't Eat Salads

Back in 1999, I was 30 £ds overweight, and it seemed like nothing could help me lose the extra £ds. Now, after learning about how food works in the body, I am in the best shape of my life. I've come to realize that weight loss is not accomplished through a fad diet or TV exercise gimmick; it is a matter first and foremost of the heart. Once your heart is onboard, it is a matter of educating yourself about sensible nutrition.

One day, two friends and I were dining at a popular LA eatery. Deep in conversation, I didn't take time to study the menu carefully, and when the waiter asked for my order, I just went with a salad. As is often the case, my two girlfriends echoed my order, assuming that I--a nutritionist--had made a healthy choice. When our meals arrived, all three of us looked at the salads and back at each other ... and burst out laughing. They looked like erupting volcanoes, massive piles of breaded chicken strips and chunks of three different kinds of cheese, all smothered in a creamy dressing.

We were embarrassed by the sheer quantity of food in front of us. The salads were not only unhealthy, they were definitely not conducive to losing weight. In fact, these "healthy" dishes probably contained more than 1,000 calories! I told my friends that anybody "dieting" on these salads would become obese within weeks, and then blurted out, "I'll tell you one thing ... skinny chicks don't eat salads!"

We think of salads as a very light meal (as opposed to a big steak or a plate of lasagna), and indeed, half a head of iceberg lettuce contains only about 39 calories, with trace amounts of vitamins and no fat. No wonder most people believe that eating salad is a healthy alternative to high- calorie foods and a basic building block of any weight loss plan.

But when it comes to nutrition and weight loss, all salads are not created equal. For our grandparents, a salad usually consisted of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, drizzled with a bit of vinegar and olive oil. Have you watched a cooking show lately? Or eaten in a restaurant? Everything comes super-sized with a list of ingredients that takes up half the menu page.

Nowadays, when you order a salad from any restaurant, be it a fast-food spot or an upscale eatery, you are going to get a huge amount of lettuce topped with two or three kinds of cheese, candied pecans or slivered almonds, breaded and fried chicken, bacon bits or dried cranberries, and fried tortilla strips or buttery fried croutons--all drenched with calorie- laden dressing.

After the volcano salad incident, I decided to do a little field research. I ordered salads from several popular restaurants and had them pack every ingredient separately. I weighed all the individual toppings, plugged them into my food database, and added up the calories in each salad. What I found out was that there were actually more calories in a Cobb salad than a frosting-smothered Cinnabon! The results were so unbelievable--shocking in fact--that E! News did a story on them.

SALADS CALORIES FAT (G) CARB (G) PROTEIN (G) Cheesecake Factory Caesar Salad 1,699 145 44 65 Applebee's Stacked Tostada Salad 1,409 119 38 50 Cheesecake Factory Cobb Salad 1,340 96 47 74 Applebee's Oriental Chicken Salad 1,237 74 91 58 Chili's Southwestern Cobb Salad 1,117 82 40 56 Macaroni Grill Chicken Caesar Salad 675 44 14 50

In contrast, here are some fast foods that we would never dare touch while dieting, yet actually contain fewer calories than the typical restaurant salad.

FAST FOODS CALORIES FAT (G) ARB (G) ROTEIN (G) Burger King Whopper 678 37 53 31 In-N-Out Double Double with Cheese 670 41 40 37 McDonald's Big Mac with Cheese 563 32 43 25 Dairy Queen Double Homestyle Cheeseburger 540 31 30 35 Taco Bell Seven Layer Burrito 530 22 67 18 Wendy's Double Cheeseburger 458 25 34 25 Taco Bell Double Decker Supreme 380 18 40 15

Of course, a small salad with a little bit of dressing before or after a meal is just fine. But substituting a salad for a more diverse variety of healthy and satisfying foods, and then chowing down on sugary treats as a reward for that "sacrifice," causes erratic blood sugar levels--just the opposite of what we need to lose weight.

The Key to Losing Weight

Before we go on, I'd like you to take a short quiz. Which of these symptoms have you experienced in the past 2 weeks?

* Headaches

* Sugar cravings

* Caffeine cravings

* Shakiness/dizziness

* Mood swings/irritability

* Lethargy/lack of energy

* Lack of concentration

* Extreme hunger

Skinny Chick 10-Week Transformation

NAME: JESSICA C.

AGE: 29

TOTAL POUNDS LOST: 27

TOTAL INCHES LOST: 27.5

I've been overweight since about first grade. I was a latchkey kid growing up, and I didn't have much adult supervision in the morning or afternoon. When I got home from school, I did what kids normally do: eat junk food and watch TV. I lived on instant noodles, peanut butter, and Doritos. When you're a kid, you don't know any better; you just go with what tastes good. Then I went to college and the problem got even worse because I had free rein with junk food.

When I was 20 years old, my mother's sister passed away from complications of obesity. She was only 50 years old. She was diabetic and had had a lot of health issues that come from being overweight. That was a wake-up call for me, and it made me take a look at my life. I began to eat better and make better choices, and I tried to exercise more. It helped a lot. I went from a size 24 to about a size 18. For somebody who weighed about 250 £ds, that was a big difference. But then I stopped losing weight.