Muskego Muscle: It's Not A Diet, It's Nutrition

As painful as my muscles felt from class one to class two, I don't know if I'm quite ready to launch into the second, and perhaps most important, part of a weight loss challenge.

However, when I first stepped on the scale at Accel Fitness, shoes on for the record, the 144 it recorded was a reminder that it was really now or never.  I'm 5'1, and losing pounds will translate into that much less stress on my joints, and with heart disease being the number one killer of women, a longer life.

Corey Paszkiewicz, owner and instructor at Accel, stressed that my affinity for dairy and pasta were the biggest obstacles. However, I can still have them, but in more sparing quantities and not at every meal.

In fact, in reviewing various meal 'plans' for the next month, I was surprised at two things: how much I could eat, and how easy it was to follow.  My earlier impression of 'dieting' involved a search for specialty stores and obscure foods, but my biggest challenge will be to incorporate tilapia, which has become a popular fish, and I've been told is also easy to prepare.

Less pasta, more brown rice; skip fried anything for baked. Crunch-deprived? Use carrots and celery if you need the noise. And eat more often. Paszkiwicz's plan includes three meals and three snacks, which help you to keep from eating too much for meals.

"They say about 70 percent of the people eat 70 percent of their calories at supper and later in the day," he explained. "You should eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen and supper like a prince."

A typical day plan for meals is simple and highly interchangeable:

• Meal 1 (Breakfast) Healthy higher fiber cold cereal with low fat or Skim milk
• Snack 1 (Mid-Morning) A Couple of Low Fat Cheese Sticks and a Mango
• Meal 2 (Lunch) Grilled Tilapia with a Small Serving of Whole Wheat Pasta
• Snack 2 (Late Afternoon) 1 Cup of Low Sugar Yogurt with Strawberries
• Meal 3 (Dinner) Grilled Turkey Breast with Cooked Spinach with Dash of Vinegar
• Snack 3 (Late Evening) Small serving of Canned Chicken with a Sliced Cucumber

Hate spinach? How about broccoli instead, or a green salad. Turkey too expensive? Chicken will do.  Personally, celery is something even my dogs hate, so I'll likely be on board with cucumbers, which are the taste of summer for me.

The key here is also to wade in slowly.  Target one meal or one food category (like grains) so you're not feeling like you're completely out of your comfort zone.  Like all things, nutritious eating is a habit, and truthfully, once your body is used to the new regime, it craves the junk less. Really!

I do not plan on hanging on everything the scale has to say, either. This is a game of inches, which we also recorded about a week ago.  There is no mistaking when your clothes fit better, and it's often a better measure (no pun intended) of how well you're doing.

With the upcoming holidays and the parties full of food to go with them, it will be easy to cheat.  However, there's always a veggie tray, and if you drink a lot of water before, during and after, the urge to overindulge won't be nearly as great. If you do, remember it's only one day, and it won't kill everything you've done.