You’ve probably heard that old admonition to think before you speak. Well, Sue McGovern thinks before she eats—and it has helped her maintain a 30-pound weight loss for 20 years.
Sue, a 42-year-old resident of Shillington, Pennsylvania, never paid much attention to her food choices while she was growing up. “It was nothing for me and two or three of my friends to devour a half-gallon of chocolate-almond ice cream and a 12-pack of doughnuts in a sitting,” she says. “We didn’t think of these episodes as binges. They were simply a way of life.”
For Sue, that way of life eventually started showing on the scale. By the time she was ready to enter college, she weighed 175 pounds.
“But because I was tall and in reasonably good shape, I never looked fat—just big,” she recalls. ‘
In college, Sue didn’t have a car, so she traveled everywhere via *i foot, bike, or skateboard. To her pleasant surprise, she began losing © weight without changing her eating habits. She was down to 155 pounds when she graduated.
But once Sue started working full-time, her active lifestyle ground to a halt. “That’s when I realized that I had to make better food choices if I didn’t want to regain the weight that I had lost,” she says. “I read all that I could about good nutrition and healthy eating, and I changed my eating habits accordingly.”
For the first time in her life, Sue began thinking about what she was putting in her mouth. She stopped eating for the sake of eating and instead chose foods with the greatest nutritional value. Red meat, chips, chocolate, and other high-fat, high-calorie foods disappeared from her diet. Grains, vegetables, and tofu became her staples of choice. “I discovered all kinds of healthful foods that I’d never had before,” she said. “I was intrigued by tofu, sprouts, and herbs. And I spent hours picking berries and wild nuts.”
Through a combination of healthier eating habits and daily exercise—jogging was her activity of choice—Sue managed to take off another 10 pounds. Her weight has remained in the range of 140 to 145 pounds for about 20 years.
WINNING ACTION
Ask yourself, “Is this good for me?” Sometimes, our food choices become so ritualized that we never consider what’s in them or how they’re affecting our bodies. The next time you reach for a snack or sit down to your “usual” meal, ask yourself whether the food has any nutritional value. If you’re looking at a plateful of nothing but calories and fat, choose something else. You and your body deserve better.
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