Step Three Mini Steps


I know that many of you are moving towards Step 3.I thought Martha's famous transition plan would be helpful.

Here's what we came up with, a 10-step transitional plan:

1. Thinking about starting step three -- your breakfast is strong and solid, enough protein and consistently within an hour of waking up. It's important to have a carb, too, but don't worry about whether it's brown or white at this point.

2. You have started journaling. You may not be perfect at it, but you are making a solid effort and starting to collect a good number of pages of information (and NO information is just as important as complete information, if you get the drift).

3. Start working on getting a really solid lunch. Come up with several lunch options that work well for you, and have enough protein in them (don't worry yet about snacking, grazing, or any other eating during the day).

4. After doing a good solid lunch for awhile, try a few days of not snacking between breakfast and lunch. The important part is that breakfast is now solid. And lunch is solid. You are simply moving the snacks to one of those two meals. At first, you may want to try a shorter time period in between, say 4 hours. Just to give your body the idea that it is going to be waiting. Then, after that gets easier, slide it to 5 hours. The ideal is 5-6 hours, but for now you are simply working on transitioning toward the ideal.

4a. This one could fit in just about anywhere. One way to shift from grazing to 3 distinct meals is to establish a planned snack at specific times between b'fast and lunch and then between lunch and dinner. A planned protein/carb snack helps move you away from grazing mode. Eventually, you can work on going without the snack, but this is an excellent interim step.

5. Keep doing b-fast - lunch, with no snack, and now start focusing on dinner. What's for dinner?! Don't worry about when it is or if you are eating sugar. Just make sure you have some kind of dinner meal, with good food... protein, some veggies, and whatever else you like to have... No worries about the "whites" or "sugars" you are eating. You are just getting steady, not working on detox yet!

6. Now start to think about having dinner at a regular time. If you have been erratic, eating at 7 one night, 9 the next night, 6 the next... it will be a little hard, but try for a certain window. Such as somewhere between 5-8. Make sure you stick to that window until it gets to feeling natural... and then narrow the window a little, for example, 5-7. I went for a pretty long period of time working at this, and basically ended up with a goal of eating dinner by no later than 7 pm every night. Sometimes it took juggling, almost always it took planning, but it has become a natural part of my lifestyle. Another way to do this is to start wherever you are and step it backwards. So, for example, if you are eating at 9, try shooting for 8:30, and then when that is comfortable, step it back to 8:00, etc., until you get to that spot where dinner is about 5-6 hours after your (wonderful & solid) lunch. A big part of this will be adjusting your life to your food plan. And sometimes that means telling people, "Hey, I need to stop working (or whatever) and eat my dinner." This is called TAKING GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF (or, as we like to say, putting the oxygen mask on yourself before assisting others around you... ) This is a huge part of the recovery process. :-)

7. Now that you are having a solid breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you are no longer snacking between b'fast and lunch, try to move to the next level -- working toward no afternoon snack. If you are an afternoon muncher, perhaps one step in this direction is to limit the snack to one time, rather than "ongoing." So, pick a time, say 3 pm, and tell yourself that this is your afternoon snacktime. Get into a rhythm with this for awhile (all the while, still doing that b'fast, lunch, and well-timed dinner!).

8. Okay, time to test the waters of getting from lunch to dinner with no snacking. Just like before, try to get your dinnertime set at the earlier end of the spectrum, especially during this transitional time. When I did this transition, I was eating dinner at 4:30 some days! But eventually, I was able to make it until 6 pm. I was just giving my body some time to adjust.

9. With all of these mini-steps, you are starting the process of moving your sugar to mealtimes (rather than eating sugar all by itself). If you must, absolutely, must have sugar in between (because you haven't detoxed yet and you will still crave sugar... this is perfectly natural), make sure you have some protein along with it. Yes, candy and cheese, or a hunk of meat leftover from a previous meal, nuts, or whatever you can find. It will at least help slow down the "hit" of sugar.

10. Keep working on these steps, one at a time, honing and honing, and then one day you will notice that you didn't even think about a snack! And that you just habitually eat meals on time. (And your family even starts saying, "hey, isn't it time for you to have lunch now?" You can train them as well. LOL) And that you can look at a plate of food and know by sight whether it's "enough" protein for you. At this point, you are solid on Step Three!

You will find that you create your own variation of these baby steps, but hopefully this guideline will help.

Martha