Weight Loss
Lots of the reasons people have excess fat on their bodies than they really want, have to do with the persistent behaviors they developed as they were being raised. Other reasons relate to the habitual choices they learned to create when they were young adults, maybe at school or in the armed service.
Frequently, those habits, even though might have been ideal for the time we learned them, are not helping us a lot now. And if you’re overweight to the extent that you are on the internet to learn about ways to reduce your weight, then it is probably due, in part at least, to the routines you already have.
It’s time for a change.
First rule of thumb is to stop listening to people who say that habits are tough to break. Unnecessary eating to the point of gaining extra weight is not in the same category as being addicted to cocaine. It is possible that for a very few people, food is actually an addiction in their lives. But in truth, that is not very many people.
Most times, it is a matter of understanding how to make some new habits.
Habit Change #1
Stop eating while watching TV. And no, don’t even eat there if the television is not turned on. Go someplace else in your house where the TV set is not. If you have a television in every room in your house, that might be a different issue, and if that is the situation, just keep it turned off.
Second part to habit change number 1. Don’t go browsing while you are eating your meal. Not the laptop, not the desktop, not your phone, tablet or anything. If anything, the internet is more addictive than the TV set. As a matter of fact if you are looking over this while you are eating, start with that. Go away until you are finished eating and then come back to read the rest of this article.
The goal is to pay attention to what and how you are eating. And it is very hard to pay attention to your meal while your mind is far away in the television or in a funny cat video. The television will be there when you are done and so will the world wide web. They are not going anywhere. And if you pay attention to what you’re eating, you will eat less of it.
Part of the reason is that you are going to be listening when your stomach says it is full. And that’s a great time to quit eating. It is quite amazing how much less you will eat when you eat meals this way. Just eat, don’t do anything else.
You’re important and your overall health is important and your weight is important. And being attentive counts a lot.
Habit Change #2
Stop drinking your calories.
Choose water as your beverage with your meals. Do not choose diet drinks or energy drinks or even milk. Simply drink water or maybe a cup of tea with nothing in it. There are numerous delicious teas in the world. And choosing one of those to drink with your meal is a calorie free way to add some extra enjoyment to your life at mealtime.
Artificially sweetened drinks are never thirst satisfying and are often seen as a punishment. The idea is something like you really want a soda, but since I am on this dreadful diet at least I can have a diet soda. Don’t do it. Just drink water.
These types of habit changes can make a large difference in the amount of calories you consume throughout the course of a day. And by just making these small modifications in your habits, you will feel better and look better and your body will thank you.
Often times when you’re trying to find weight loss information online, you come across a bunch of dietary fads. These are the diets which tell you how much bodyweight you can lose by eating only cabbage soup, or maple syrup and lemonade or some other noxious kind of food that nobody who really likes themselves would ever try to eat.
As a matter of fact these diets are probably the most highly looked for topics on the entire internet. They are extremely popular for one particular reason – they bring you almost instant results in dropping a couple of pounds. They do work to get a few pounds off right away, within a week for many of them.
But then, guess what happens? The weight all returns with a vengeance and often those pounds you lost bring their friends back to stay with you and you wind up weighing even more than you did before you began the crash diet.
This kind of weight reducing program does not keep you healthy and doesn’t result in keeping the weight off permanently. You wind up bouncing up and down in weight and your whole metabolism suffers. And when your metabolism suffers it always does so in the same way – it slows down and puts a stop to burning calories.
That is why you gain the weight back.
Listed here are a couple of things that you can do to help obtain a more long term weight reduction.
Stop eating so much – but do not stop all at once
People love to penalize themselves for dietary transgressions. But punishing does not help much. If you simply stop feeding your body, it will not know what to do and simply slows your metabolism to a crawl. Much better if you reduce your calorie intake gradually. Start eating less a little at a time, so your body gets used to running on the calories it already has stored away.
Steady weight loss with a diet change that is not a crash kind of diet is much more successful for many more people than those fad diets. Do you really want to be eating cabbage soup three times a day for the rest of your life?
Another important tip is very simple, and works very effectively.
Give yourself a reward for losing weight.
Now this doesn’t mean that when you lose one pound that you hop in the car and run right over to Cheesecake Factory and gorge yourself. A reward should really be a nice thing you do for yourself, not something that is virtually certain to make you feel bad all over again. That’s not what you need.
Instead you can give yourself a pleasant treat like a spa day, or a visit to the mall with no kids or anything else you enjoy. And if you prefer, you can give yourself a food treat. In a normal sized portion. A square of chocolate – not a 5 pound box. Split a piece of cheesecake with your friend – don’t order two for yourself.
Rewards are excellent things to do for yourself. Just don’t overdo the reward system or you will end up penalizing yourself all over again.
Losing weight does not have to be hard or painful. But you do have to make a couple of changes in how you think and behave. No more punishing yourself, that didn’t work before and it won’t work now. Instead reduce your calories slowly and give yourself a little reward when you have great results and you will be on the right track to lasting weight-loss.
