Ask Adrienne

Since I began talking openly about my experiences losing over 80 pounds, getting the fittest I’ve been in my entire life, breaking up with alcohol while living in wine country, and purging my home of unwanted, unused stuff – all during the pandemic – I’ve received quite a number of questions.

So I started “Ask Adrienne” to answer your questions about my journeys. Each Ask Adrienne will focus on one broad topic. Today, the focus is diet.

Let’s get right to it!

Do you use exercise to knock off the calories you consumed?

I don’t work calories off after I eat because I only exercise in the morning and on an empty stomach. I also don’t add extra exercise the following day to try to balance out a heavy meal from the night before. It’s hard for me to plan the intensity of a workout anyway. Sometimes I am into it, sometimes I’m not. If I overdo it on food one day, I try to look for a lesson in it and move on. Every day is a new opportunity!

However, if I know I’m having a heavier, calorie-dense dinner – like homemade pizza, which we have often – then I might choose a workout that morning that burns more calories, like weight training or going for a long, brisk, hilly hike.

Mostly I see exercise as a way to relieve stress, tone muscles, get stronger, become more flexible and feel good! I focus more on food intake for losing or maintaining my weight rather than exercise. Exercise helps to burn calories but I find it’s easier to manage my food intake than depend on exercise for weight loss.

What are some of your daily eats and drinks?

Ah! I have so many and it really depends on my mood, the season and what’s in the fridge and pantry. Right now, I am enjoying my fruit bowls. I am loving the winter citrus and apples but I also can’t wait for stone fruits and watermelon this summer.

I am a big soup fan. I regularly make a veggie soup with or without chicken sausage. Sometimes I’ll add garbanzo or kidney beans. Making a batch of veggie soup is a great way to clean out the fridge when you have a surplus of veggies you know are about to go south. I always make a big batch of soup so I can freeze some for later.

I also like rice cakes. I finally found a brand that is both low calorie and not too airy – just 20 calories a cake. I have two with a slice of cheese, hummus or peanut butter after my fruit bowl. And I always finish lunch with an ounce of either dried apricots or prunes. Dried apricots are my favorite, especially if they’re on the tart side.

For a sweet treat, I like to have several squares of Lily’s chocolate. I am crazy about this new flavor!

For dinner, I almost always start things off with big salads. I make my own salad dressing so I can control the ingredients. Same old salads get boring after awhile, so lately I’ve been adding a little goat, feta or blue cheese crumbles or some chopped walnuts or pecans. A small amount goes a long way in the flavor and texture departments.

The main dish at dinner is always different but I try to always include a fresh green vegetable – steamed, roasted or sautéed – as a side dish.

For dessert, we often have popsicles but in wintertime they aren’t as appealing. These days we’ve been having non-fat Greek yogurt sweetened with some stevia, fresh or frozen fruit and topped with homemade granola. I use this granola recipe as my foundation but switch out the nuts with what I have on hand, skip the coconut and add chia seeds. I also use different dried fruits. Last time I used raisins and chopped dates. Dried chopped cherries are delicious too!

Drinks we enjoy include herbal teas and sparkling water. We have morning tea after our coffee and afternoon tea a few days a week. Last year we were going through so many cans and bottles of sparkling water after we gave up alcohol that we decided to buy a SodaStream machine. It’s much more convenient and we can flavor our water the way we want. Although I miss those colorful cans and fun flavors of Bubly.

I sometimes buy kombuchas as a treat but really, hot tea and bubbly water is all I need.

When we have warm weather, I love a tonic water over ice with a squeeze of lime once in a while. Fevertree makes a lemon tonic water that is so good! I also like Q Tonic Water.

How do you cope with desires for calorie heavy foods?

This has been a process for me over the last 12+ months. There was a time during my journey that I was afraid of eating heavier foods. My husband would suggest lasagne, and I would cringe and wonder how I would avoid blowing my diet that day. I used to think that enjoying foods like lasagne automatically meant I wasn’t adhering to my diet and would never lose weight, therefore I thought I could never eat things like lasagne.

Noom has completely changed my thinking on this. I can eat what I want and am not on a diet, but rather I am changing the way I eat. No foods are off limits. But if it’s a calorie dense food like lasagne, I will plan ahead a little.

For me, planning looks like:

Making that green salad a little bigger by adding extra vegetables. Make my side vegetable – maybe sautéed zucchini or steamed broccoli – to go with the lasagna. Then I start with a reasonable portion of the main course and a big helping of the side veggie.

Usually that satisfies me but if it doesn’t I will have more veggies and a little more lasagna. In the last 8 months or so, I have not gone crazy gorging on any food. I might eat more calories than Noom says I should for that day, but it has not resulted in any issues for me, physically or emotionally.

And what about sudden cravings?

Those darn cravings! They don’t happen to me very often anymore but it was a big problem initially. I ate all the cheese puffs, Red Vine licorice, ice cream sandwiches, Triscuits and so on. I caved in to every craving in the beginning. But I let myself indulge because not only was I trying to lose weight, I was breaking up with alcohol and needed to have substitutes and distractions.

After a while, I got sick of that – as in grossed out but also bored with it. When I started Noom, I began my food intake education (also known as calorie counting) and realized I was eating much more than I needed to. So I chose new and healthier treats, started weighing, measuring and logging my food and soon, I gave up the junk. Thankfully, the cravings soon diminished. Research shows that eating junk food increases your cravings for more junk food. It’s a vicious cycle.

The best advice I have for dealing with a craving is wait. Want that cookie sitting on the counter? Tell yourself to wait 10 minutes and then if you still want it, eat it and enjoy it. But it’s essential that you change your surroundings in that 10 minutes.

Leave the room, engage your brain in something else. But please don’t stand there staring at the cookie for 10 minutes (who could do that anyway?). Watch a video, text a friend, play with your dog or cat, paint your nails, clean out a drawer, drink a glass of water, sing a song or do a crossword. Just do something else in a different room. There’s a good chance you’ll forget about the cookie altogether. Also, do not leave cookies on the counter in the first place!

I love questions. Have one for me? Leave it in the comments or send me an email (info on my About page!)

Adrienne