Get out a pencil and notebook, and begin your diet by recording everything you eat; when; and how much. No, this is not a substitute for weight watchers or any other diet plan. There are no rules to follow; no special menus; just you and your daily caloric intake. This is a user friendly diet which enables you to determine why you eat certain foods and how you can tweak it into a more healthy, reasonable and realistic regimen.
For the first week, eat your normal meals, snacks and desserts. Write down every little morsel you have put into your mouth; note the day, time, and amount ingested. Add notes on what you were doing at the time you began eating late night snacks, or consuming slices of cake or morsels of chocolate in between meals. At the end of the week, read the journal. Identify the areas in which you can improve your eating habits, and write them down in red. Let’s continue on to week two; or what will be known as substitution week.
The first time you reach for a snack, stop! Grab a piece of fruit instead. If you absolutely must have it; take one bite and throw the rest away.
Eat it slowly; savoring every bit of it. Remember, there are no rules here; you are just readjusting your eating habits. Before going out to the supermarket, eat a healthy breakfast or lunch.
Instead of bacon and eggs, have a bowl of high fiber cereal with blueberries. If it’s lunch, have a turkey sandwich on rye. Drink water with every meal; in fact, drink two plus two before bedtime.
As you prepare dinner, check the journal. What did you substitute for the red meat, bread, potatoes and creamy salad dressing? Fish, leafy green vegetables, rice and low fat dressing; excellent!
After washing and drying the dishes, go out for a walk for about 20 minutes. Settling in for the night, you turn on the TV and begin to crave something sweet. Take out the box of crackers you bought earlier in the day; have a few. Perhaps another bowl of cereal with skim milk would suffice.
Cravings gone? Good.
Continue this monitoring process for the entire week; substituting all of the suggestions you wrote down in the journal in red. Week three; weigh yourself.
Did you lose pounds? If you did; then congratulations. If you did not; go back to the journal and begin again.
Did you understand the point of this exercise? There was no obsessing over what to eat; you made the choices; and you either stuck with them or did not.
Eventually, you will.
Why? Because you are not a quitter; you never have been. This is just one more challenge you invite openly and realistically. You will succeed because you won’t accept anything less.
Dieting shouldn’t be hard. For fast and easy diet and fitness tips visit Patricia’s site at http://The-Weightloss-Guide.com
