Monday, January 08, 2007

Pasta... Walking... Weight Loss

I stumbled upon a wonderful way to eat during my vacation to Italy. I had great food, walked through ancient Rome and Florence and lost weight!
Certainly not what I expected.

It was the combination of how Italians eat, or how my family ate while in Italy, and the amount of exercise. On a typical day we started out with croissants, bread, coffee, fruit, yogurt and cereal. Certainly more than I eat at home. Lunch was pasta, bread. Mid-afternoon was a gelato, very small portion and dinner was pasta, bread and a vegetable.

It sounds like a lot of food but we didn't eat any sugar, except what was in the gelato and we didn't eat in-between meals. The portion sizes were also on the small side. When you eat rich pasta you can't eat two plates full.

And of course we walked on average 3-4 hours per day.

Although the exercise had a lot of do with the weight loss (I lost one size) I think it's the healthier approach to eating that did the trick. I ate great food, reasonable portions and had no "junk". The sugar intake was so low, that I think my body finally had a chance to relax and not work so hard to process all of the extra junk that is normally in our diet. I had much more energy than I normally do. What's more I don't feel deprived in the least. (This from someone who has chocolate daily.)

I think the Italians have it right. They walk everywhere, eat great food in small portions and laugh a lot.

I'm going to try and adapt that here. I can add time to my walking by taking the dogs out in the morning as well as the evening, park farther from my office, walk at least 40 minutes at lunch and try to stand and pace when I'm on the phone at work. I can certainly exercise in the evening and take a second evening walk. It's doable!

And I'm going to make it a point to eat better quality food in smaller portions, and skip the snacks. My meals were so satisfying that I didn't reach for any additional food between meals. But I'll keep that gelato every so often!