"If you focus on results, you will never change.
If you focus on change, you will get results."

Jack Dixon

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10 Tiny Changes for Big Weight Loss

Turbo Jam^TM trainer Chalene Johnson recommends taking baby steps to eat more healthfully. If you "slip," get immediately back on track. Never let a vacation or a special holiday be an excuse to overdo it the entire time. Go ahead, enjoy the occasional indulgence, but keep it reasonable. Here are 10 tiny changes you can make for big weight loss.

1. Wait 2 minutes. Cravings will disappear after two minutes if you walk away and turn your attention elsewhere.
   
   
2. W.I.W.M. When you really crave something unhealthy, answer this question: "What do I Want More," that piece of chocolate cake, or a body I feel proud of? And on rare occasions, it's okay to pick the chocolate cake!
   
   
3. No one's perfect. Don't allow one bad choice to result in bingeing the rest of the day, or falling back into old habits.
   
   
4. Focus. Make eating purposeful, not something mindless to do while watching TV, driving, or sitting in front of the computer. Whenever you put food in your mouth, try to engage all of the senses in the pleasure of nourishing your body.
   
   
5. Don't skip breakfast. Start eating a filling breakfast, but one that's lower in fat. It will help you eat fewer total calories throughout the day.
   
   
6. Veggies. The majority of your plate should have veggies and/or fruit on it at both lunch and dinner.
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7. See what you eat. Eat your food off of a plate instead of straight out of a jar, bag, or box.
   
   
8. Don't buy it. Stop buying the food you snack on all day. Just eliminate the temptation.
   
   
9. Eat more fruit. A person who gets enough fruit in their diet doesn't have a raging sweet tooth.
   
   
10. Watch what you drink. Cut back on or cut out high-calorie drinks like soda, sweet tea, lemonade, and especially alcohol. People have lost weight by making just this one change.

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The Truth About Diabetes and Carbs

There's a lot of confusion out there about how people with diabetes should deal with carbohydrates. The flawed popular logic is that carbs need to be avoided. In fact, this couldn't be further from the truth. The American Diabetes Association suggests that 50–60 percent of a diabetic's diet consist of carbs! Furthermore, those uninformed, unfortunate souls who feel that going all Atkins is the answer are in a world of hurt. Given people with diabetes are twice as likely to develop heart disease, replacing fruits and veggies with bacon and eggs only ups their cholesterol and their risk of having a heart attack. As is also the case with a healthy body, it's best to keep your fat intake at no more than 30 percent of your calories.

What is diabetes and why might you get it?
Before we go any deeper into how to eat, let's have a quick look at what diabetes is. When you eat carbs, they're broken down into glucose, which enters your bloodstream. There, insulin helps bring this glucose into your cells which use it as energy. When you have diabetes, the insulin doesn't do its job, so while there's plenty of fuel there, it doesn't actually enter your cells, so they starve. This can be life threatening in a variety of ways, resulting in dehydration, nerve damage, and diabetic ketoacidosis, which causes the buildup of acids in the blood.

Think of the body as a car and glucose as the gasoline. The insulin is like the carburetor; it regulates the gas—but for a diabetic, it doesn't, so the engine floods easily.

There are two types of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes occurs when the body's own immune system destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas called beta cells. These people need to take insulin treatments. People with type 2 diabetes, however, actually do produce insulin, but just not enough. No one knows what exactly causes the disease, but it's safe to say that obesity and a lousy diet can go a long way towards the onset of type 2 diabetes.

The symptoms of diabetes vary, but they can include increased thirst or hunger, abdominal pain, fatigue, increased urination, vomiting, and blurred vision.

How to change your diet
Here's where the flawed logic comes in. If sugars/carbs cause the problem, then it would seem that cutting them out would solve the problem, as one would do with a food allergy. Unfortunately, our bodies need carbs, just like a car needs gas. They are our primary fuel, so the trick is to get a slow, constant flow into the system.

As it turns out, eating to get that constant flow is just plain healthy whether you have diabetes or not, so a lot of the tips you've picked up from Beachbody are the same ones that work for avoiding diabetes. First off, instead of packing all of your daily food into one or two meals, it's important to eat several small meals throughout the day. (See Beachbody's Step-by-Step Nutrition Guide for sample food plans and more information.)

Keeping your meals balanced will also help. Protein and fat both slow the flow of carbs into your system. But careful with that fat! Because of the previously mentioned heart issues, lean towards unsaturated fats, like you'll find in olive oil, avocados, raw nuts, and fish, not the saturated ones you find in meat, eggs, and dairy.

Fiber is also key, so fruit is okay, as long as it's full of fiber. Bananas are low in fiber, so you might want to avoid them. Berries, however, tend to be fiber rich, so they're generally all right in moderation. Other great sources of fiber include veggies and whole grains.

Finally, stay off hooch. One or two drinks might be fine for most diabetics, but heavy drinking can cause complications with many diabetes medicines. It can also raise fat levels in the blood and cause blood sugar dips.

You see? It's easier than you'd think. But still, if you think or know you have diabetes, go see a doctor, and follow the advice of a dietician. It's a serious medical condition and needs to be treated as such. But don't stress. With the proper diet and a steady regimen of exercise, people with diabetes can easily live full, healthy lives.

For questions and/or comments on this article, please email us at mailbag@beachbody.com. Responses to your questions may be seen at Steve Edwards' Mailbag.

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