By Gillian E
Are you struggling to stick to your diet plan? Are you finding it a battle to keep your eating impulses under check?
Don't be surprised. The truth is losing weight is as much about our brains as it is our stomachs. Dieting is very psychological.
For instance, you may find there will be times when you feel compelled to eat something even when you are not hungry. You eat it because you want to eat not because you need to eat.
The problem is, as humans we often want to have something more when we know we can't have it. So the moment you start a diet plan you are setting yourself up for a bit of a psychological battle. But any weight loss plan includes discipline in diet, so this is a battle you must win to be successful.
I went through all of this when I embarked on a diet plan. I was successful in losing weight mainly because the plan was an excellent one.
However, I developed a few tricks that helped me to win the psychological war:
Plan to cheat: a diet of continuous deprivation is almost destined to fail. It's better to have a plan that allows you to eat the foods you love from time to time, including junk food. Pizza, burgers, sweets, desserts - they are not the best foods to eat, but they are pretty delicious! Find a diet plan that allows you to incorporate some of these foods. Otherwise you will always be struggling with the urge to eat these forbidden treats. And that may cause you to throw in the towel and give the whole diet plan up. It's much better to include them in your plan from the beginning.
Plan Ahead: try to decide what you are going to eat well in advance. If possible, plan out the meals for a whole week. This allows you to be in better control, and less susceptible to eating by chance or temptation.
Use Anticipation: if your diet incorporates "cheat" meals, you can use the anticipation of these meals to discipline yourself during the stricter periods of your diet. You can push the desire to eat into the future and make a deal with yourself. For example, if you are really craving a piece of cake, you can tell yourself "if you can just hold on today and not eat the cake, you can have it tomorrow during your cheat meal". This will help, believe me.
Don't buy the bad stuff: the easiest way to avoid eating something is to not have it around you. Exercise discipline when you go grocery shopping or when you are passing by stores selling pastries, cakes, and sweets. Don't buy stuff you shouldn't eat! And throw away whatever you currently have in the house that you shouldn't be eating too. Then when you are at home and you get a craving for something, it will require a real effort on your part to go out and buy it. This will make you less likely to do it (or at least give you time to talk yourself out of it).
Have healthy snacks on hand: in addition to avoiding buying certain foods, make sure you have healthy snacks around that you can reach for when you are hungry. Just knowing you have them there will be helpful psychologically.
Give in sometimes: I have found that there are times when no matter how much self-discipline I try to practice, I keep craving a certain food or snack. And sometimes I have found that it pays to just give in, eat whatever it is, get it over and done with, and then resume my diet from there. Sometimes it pays to lose a small battle in order to win the overall war. Obviously, if this becomes the rule rather than the exception, you are in trouble.
Don't give up: almost inevitably, there will be times when you break your diet and eat the wrong thing or eat too much. Perhaps you get invited unexpectedly to a dinner or a party or somewhere with lots of free food and drinks, and you find yourself unable to resist. Maybe you just have a bad day and need some comfort food. If this happens, don't give the whole thing up. We all make mistakes. Put it behind you and restart the program. And try your best from then on.
So these are my tips to winning the psychological battle of weight loss. I hope they help you.
The real key to following them is to start with a good diet plan, I believe. And the diet system I used allowed me the flexibility to do all of the things I outlined above. Its methodology involves planning "cheat" days when I could eat foods that I really liked. This allowed me to use anticipation and to "plan to cheat". Of course, this has to be done in a controlled fashion, otherwise you will eat too much and gain weight. Luckily this diet plan gives detailed guidance, instructions, and support.
If you'd like to find out more about it, please visit http://www.eoddworks.info/