Many of our tastes, food cravings, and general attitudes to food are strongly influenced by what we eat and drink. I know countless mothers with families who have reported astonishing changes in their personal and family eating habits after less than three weeks of improved eating. Point is, the average modern diet is loaded with sugar, fat and sodium, all of which condition us to want more of these items. But if you can break out of this dependence on junk-ingredients for even 2-3 weeks, you'll notice a huge difference in your tastes. Which brings me to healthy eating.
Think Healthy Eating Not Weight Loss
In my experience, one of the most effective weight loss strategies is to focus on healthy eating. I'm not saying you shouldn't stand on your weighing scales, just don't measure progress exclusively by what the scales say. Be aware that it's just as important to enjoy your food and feel good about your change of eating habits. And any diet you hate is guaranteed to fail, no matter how much weight you lose, because as soon as you achieve your goal, you will revert to your old eating habits and regain every pound lost.
Exercise Provides Wonderful Indirect Benefits
Exercise does burn extra calories and therefore does help to widen your calorie deficit. But it's direct effect on weight loss is typically quite small. In fact, it's not uncommon to gain weight when you start exercising. The real weight reduction benefits of exercise are indirect ones. It raises our metabolic rate, helping us to burn calories at a slightly faster rate, and improves our mood, which typically reduces our need for comfort-eating. However, don't overdo your exercise workouts. I've lost count of the number of dieters who started exercising too vigorously and burnt out within 3 weeks. Ideally, start with 45 minutes/day of any physical activity you can easily manage, and very gradually increase the duration and intensity. Listen to your body at all times, and be sure to loosen up beforehand and wind down afterwards.
See Yourself As You Want To Be
If your goal is a waistline you can proudly display in the sun, then don't wait until it happens to "see" it. Visualize it from the moment you start dieting. Visualize yourself walking along a beach, or lying next to the pool with a perfectly flat stomach. Whatever your ambition for your weight or body, get used to visualizing it in the greatest possible detail. Because "seeing it" is the first step to making it come true. As they say, one picture is worth a thousand words.
Feeling Discouraged? Just Visualize The Benefits!
If you have a lot of weight to lose (100 pounds+), you may not think that losing 26 pounds in three months is particularly worthwhile. If so, ask yourself this question. What's the alternative? No matter what method you choose, you won't lose weight any faster, so it's only a question of when you start and how long it's going to take. I can answer the last question right now. Losing 100 pounds takes about a year - typically a little longer to allow for disasters along the way. Fifteen months would be a more realistic time span to reduce weight by this amount. This is nothing. Just visualize yourself walking down the street 100 pounds lighter, and tell me that eating healthily for 15 months is too high a price to pay for such a wonderful prospect.
Your First Priority - Get Support
If you really want to lose weight for the summer, your first priority is to find support. Join a diet-group at work, or a fitness class, or go to weight loss meetings. Or join an online forum. Losing weight on your own is perfectly possible, providing things go well and your scales keep saying nice things. But when difficulties arise, as they surely will, having the support of real people can make all the difference between success and failure. If you experience difficulty finding support, try my own weight loss forum. It's great fun and very inspirational.
The Top 10 Healthy Eating Habits
In a nutshell, a healthy diet involves:
(1) More home-cooked food, less eating out.
(2) More fresh fruit as snacks.
(3) More fresh vegetables as snacks and with meals.
(4) More beans as sides or in stews.
(5) More dense chewy bread, less refined white breads and bread snacks.
(6) More fish, skinless chicken/turkey, less red meat.
(7) Smaller servings of red meat, larger servings of vegetables.
(8) Eating low fat dairy foods.
(9) Adding less fat in the form of butter, mayo, sour cream, to the food on your plate. This is a huge source of excessive calories.
(10) Stocking up with healthy snack foods to keep hunger at bay. If you fill up with healthy nutritious calories, you won't want the junk foods that hunger makes you eat. As far as weight management goes, hunger remains Public Enemy Number One.
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