32. Cocktail Diet in Practice: Solving Four Major Problems with a Food Diary

Chapter Twelve

Cocktail Diet in Practice

20 years of experience in weight loss clinics, now you can bring it home and DIY it yourself. No pills, no clinic visits, no calorie counting-a fast and amazing new weight loss method.

Food diaries solve four major weight loss problems

Four major weight loss problems

1. I know I need to control my calorie intake, but I don't know where to start!

2. I really want to lose weight, but I don't want to lose my beauty and health-it's so difficult!!

3. I gain weight even from drinking water!!

4. I want to lose weight, but I don't want to restrict my diet, I don't want to follow the prescribed weight loss plan, and I don't want to exercise...

Weight loss methods provided by food diaries

1. Record your "satisfaction level" for each meal and exclude excess calories.

2. By using the four categories of nutrients-large circle, large heart, small circle, and small heart-you can clearly see at a glance which category you've eaten too little of and which category you've eaten too much of. It also allows you to self-test from three aspects: the causes of weight gain, your body type, and your diet, so that the factors contributing to weight gain have nowhere to hide.

3. Eat and drink normally. There are no "forbidden" or "must" rules. As long as you keep necessary records and establish simple dietary concepts, you can have a high grasp of your weight loss priorities and thus succeed in losing weight.

Characteristics of food diaries

1. Personalized approach: Do not compare yourself to others, but adjust according to your own habits and weight loss goals.

2. Use graphs to classify nutrition. Calculate the graph to know your nutritional status for the day. You can also summarize it for 3 days or a week. You can understand your dietary status in just 3 seconds.

3. Keep detailed records, understand yourself, focus on improvement, stop being aimless, and lose weight truly easily.

4. Without deliberately changing your lifestyle, simply filling out the sections in your diary and regularly reviewing your life will help you achieve your weight loss goals. The diary entries already outline the things to pay attention to at each stage, which most people can easily follow.

Self-assessment methods

1. Try to eat until you are 80% full at each meal, so that your satisfaction level for each meal is "△".

2. During your weight loss journey, be sure to eat plenty of small round dumplings (rich in fiber from fruits and vegetables) so that you can lose weight without losing your health and beauty.

3. Have you been eating too many foods that are not good for your weight or nutrition? Be careful when the left side of the big and small heart shapes is heavily blacked out. The next day, remember to remind yourself to eat more of the weight loss products that are blacked out on the right side of the big and small heart shapes.

●Fat Source: Use the food records from the previous 3 days, and answer 6 questions.

●Physical condition: Curve recording.

●Diet: Check the heart-shaped pattern to see if the left side is often blacked out.

4. There is no standardized weight loss formula. Instead, use record keeping to cultivate weight loss intuition and apply it practically and effortlessly in daily life.

5. Once you develop the habit of keeping a diary, you won't unconsciously overeat or drink excessively, and it won't cause inconvenience to your life. You'll naturally eat the right things and it will be easier to lose weight successfully.

Using the methods in this chapter

This chapter mainly consists of four parts:

1. Food Flow Chart

2. Weight Record Sheet

3. Table of Local Volume Changes

4. Exercise prescription

For most people, DIY weight loss is quite easy if they can thoroughly understand and apply these four parts. You can use each part individually, or you can combine all four parts with your body shaping plan to create a personalized experience.

The methods and applications of table recording for each part will be explained in detail in this chapter. Below, we will first give a general explanation of the methods and applications for comprehensive interpretation of the four main parts.

1. Which foods are most likely to cause you to gain weight? Is it fried chicken and meat, or rice and noodles?

Examination method: Food intake record + Post-dinner weight record sheet

In theory, the time after dinner is when a person weighs the most. You might try using dinner as a base and changing the dishes every day while eating the same amount, and see which food makes you weigh more.

For example, Ms. Zhang and her roommate Ms. Lin have the same weight. They ate the same dinner for six consecutive days, but their post-dinner weight records differed each day. The table roughly suggests that Ms. Zhang's weight increased significantly after eating fried chicken, while Ms. Lin was unaffected by fried chicken. Instead, her weight increased noticeably after eating two bowls of white rice while eating Sichuan cuisine. From this example, we can conclude that Ms. Zhang should be particularly careful with fried chicken in the future because her body absorbs this type of food very well, while Ms. Lin should focus on being mindful of her intake of starchy foods.

What foods tend to make you gain weight? Try keeping a record for a week, and you'll easily find the answer.

2. Is the weight gain due to eating too much or consuming too many calories?

Examination method: Food intake record + bedtime weight record sheet

If you don't eat late-night snacks and go to bed 3 hours after dinner, tracking your bedtime weight over a period of time will tell you whether you should be wary of high-calorie foods or overeating. The method is simple: collect your bedtime weight for a week, identify the days with the highest weight, and then analyze your food intake on those two days. The foods and eating habits on those two days will be the most likely reasons for your weight gain.

3. My gourd-shaped lower body-is it water retention or fat?

Examination method: Local volume change table + food flow table

Many people are dissatisfied with their waist, hips, and legs, but don't assume that everything accumulated there is fat; it could also be water retention. If your daily measurements of localized fat deposits are stable or fluctuate slowly, it's likely fat or muscle deposits. If your measurements fluctuate significantly each day, it probably indicates excessive water and protein buildup in your lower body. To address this, you need to regulate your metabolism and avoid processed foods like instant noodles. By using a dietary flow chart and analyzing your diet on the days with the most significant changes in localized fat volume, you should be able to identify food types that negatively impact your metabolism.

4. If I'm only fat in one area, should I diet or do targeted exercises?

Examination method: Local volume change table + exercise prescription

From your localized volume change chart, you might find that some areas just won't lose weight no matter what you do. If that's the case, then you don't need to put much effort into your diet, because that area is probably your stubborn weight loss zone. Localized exercise will be more effective than controlling your diet.

5. Can I pair a diet meal with a cocktail diary?

Regardless of your current weight loss method or whether you don't have any weight loss (body shaping) concerns, the cocktail DIY practical diary introduced in this chapter will be equally useful, especially the food flow chart. No matter what kind of diet you follow, just remember to consume a balanced diet of large round, large heart-shaped, small round, and small heart-shaped foods daily. If you miss a certain food group, remember to prioritize eating more of it the next day. This will prevent nutritional imbalances during your weight loss process. Remember, preventing weight regain and maintaining weight loss cannot be achieved through a single food or drastic dieting. Even if you temporarily lose weight, the high probability of weight regain will cause you to fluctuate between weight and thinness, and you may even develop weight loss "resistance."