- The best diet of all is the one that you devise for yourself.
healthy. It means eating foods from each food group;
recognizing when you have had enough and drinking enough
water too.
Most diets and slimming plans ask you to either eat meals as
they prescribe them or ask you to count calories or points.
That's fine when you are well motivated and in control of
where and what you eat. But how do you manage when you go
out to a restaurant or to a friend's house or go on holiday? Do
you really want someone else telling you what to eat each day?
Or feeling guilty if you want another slice of bread?
Of course the diets work, but only while you follow them. At
some point in time you 'come off the diet' and your body
rejoices by making you eat lots of the previously 'forbidden
foods.' The result? You put back on all the weight you lost. I
know from bitter experience this to be true! So what do I
suggest you do to lose weight easily?
o Get into the right mindset
o Trust yourself to make the right choices
o Learn about food and what your body needs
o Be adventurous and try different foods
o Always eat breakfast.
o Eat something every 2-3 hours to maintain your blood sugar
level
o Have a variety of healthy foods
available
o Forget about diets and calories
o Have snacks of complex
carbohydrate and protein
o Fill up on fruit and vegetables
So what's the very first thing to do? Think of how you would
like to be when you are your ideal weight. Take a few minutes
each day to sit quietly and imagine how you would like to look.
The more you think about this image the more likely it will
happen.
You know you are overweight and plan to go on another diet or
eating plan to try to lose some of your excess weight once and
for all. But what to do? There are so many confusing plans all
persuading you that theirs is the only way to finally become
slim and healthy.
However there is no secret formula. There is a simple way to
become more healthy and lose your excess fat, though you
might find this difficult to accept. What you have to do is eat
less and exercise more. It's a simple matter of arithmetic. If you
are bigger than you want to be then this balance isn't correct.
Which applies to you?
Even if you believe that your diet is healthy then there will be
another factor coming into play.
It may be because although you eat healthy food, you eat too
much of it. To achieve this you could reduce the size of your
portions so that your intake is less or decide not to have a
second helping. It is said you eat with your eyes, so you can
fool yourself into believing you are eating more than you think
by using a smaller plate and or piling high the low calorie high
bulk foods such as vegetables and salad.
Eat more fruit and vegetables and less high calorie foods.
For example eating avocado pear is a very healthy choice. it
has good fat and plenty of vitamin E. But it has a lot of
calories. So you have to strike a balance weighting up how
healthy a food is against how many calories it has.
To contrast you might know that several spoonfuls of sweet
jam have less calories than half an avocado. Nutritionally it
contains a large quantity of sugar so is not so beneficial for
your health as an avocado even though it has less calories.
Similarly with nuts such as walnuts or almond which are good
for your health, contain healthy fat but are high in calories. So
have some, perhaps a handful each day for your health but no
more to reduce your calorie intake.
Another way to lose weight is simply to write down everything
you eat during the day. This enables you to discover ways to
eat less but strangely enough even the act of recording what
you eat seems to mean that you change your eating habits and
as a result lose your excess weight.
Getting into the right mindset is one of the most important
things you need to do in order to become the healthy weight
that you really want to be.
Following a strict diet is not the answer. However it is
important to be familiar with what foods are important to be
eating more off, and which you should limit to some extent.
You also need to trust your intuition, and become more aware
of your natural messages of physical hunger. If you find that
you eat too much in response to emotional upsets, then you will
need to address these, perhaps by working with the counsellor
or therapist. It's a common experience that when people
resolve their emotional issues then they lose weight very easily.
Visualise yourself as a slim healthy looking person, the way
that you would like to look. See, in your mind's eye, wearing
the clothes you really would like to wear, taking part in
activities that you love and feeling happy and contented.
Compose three or four positive affirmations to assist your
unconscious mind make healthy decisions about food. For
example, "I enjoy eating fruit every day," or "I eat when I'm
physically hungry and find other solutions when I'm upset,
angry or frustrated."
Write your affirmations on post-it notes and have these in
places where you can read them regularly. Also, repeat them to
yourself many times every day.
Take a moment or two every hour to close your eyes, relax
through your body and say to yourself "I am safe."
Do something every day which is fun and makes you laugh.
This could be reading a few jokes, listening to an audio, or
watching a few minutes of an amusing video on You Tube.
Practice yoga or tai chi regularly. Not only will your
physical health improve from the postures you practice, but the
concentration needed to do them, and to improve them will
increase your mental energy to achieve what you want in
relation to losing weight.
Set yourself realistic goals which are not necessarily related to
your actual weight, but rather to your improving lifestyle, and
you're increasing fitness and your awareness of healthy
nutrition.
Get rid of things in your life which irritate you, whether
these are physical such as something which needs repairing, or
throwing away, or emotional such as telling somebody what
you will or won't be doing any more.
Susan Kersley
