Here are some simple but very useful rules to follow then trying to lose weight. After that are 10 things you should not do and to look out for when on a diet. These are from my own experiences.
10 Things To Do
1.Eat 4 smaller meals a day
This spreads your calorie intake over more time and makes it manageable for your body. The 4 meals should add up to your usual amount of calories (for the diet you are on). Remember, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It kick starts your metabolism – try fibre loaded breakfasts to keep yourself full or eat a couple of pieces of fruit as a healthy alternative.
2.Drink water or eat fruit when you are feeling hungry
Swap all your sweets and chocolate for fruit, or even nuts (a good source of fibre – but don’t buy salted!). If you are still hungry down a half glass of water, or just half a glass. This will suppress your appetite till your next meal. And that brings us nicely onto..
3.Drink 8 glasses of water a day
Not only will this suppress your hunger but water helps rinse out your body of all the bad stuff, such as toxins that plague it. 8 glasses is recommended, but really it depends on your build.
4.Add a little exercise to your day
I’m not talking about going for massive runs or taking up American football. What I mean is park a bit further away from work, get off the bus a step early, don’t take the lift or escalators, walk around the room on your break. Anything you can, it will all make a huge difference even though it might not seem like it at the time – and once you get used to these things they will become second nature!
5.Eat your meals slowly
It is important to eat slowly for a good reason. It takes about 5 – 10 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it is full. That means you could be shovelling food down for that period of time even though your full, you just don’t know it yet. So eat slowly! It will also help with your digestion if you chew your food well.
6.Cook your own meals
Supermarket microwave meals or oven box meals are out. You must buy your own food and cook it from scratch. So much rubbish goes into most of those quick meals and you have no control over it. At least when you buy and cook it all you know what’s in it! That’s good news for your health. Avoid too much salt, its bad for your blood pressure amongst other things. In fact look for a salt alternative – there are some good ones about. Whole grain foods are in, as are fresh meat, herbs spices, fish, and of course fruit and veg.
7. Eat your last meal of the day at least 3 hours before you go to bed.
You burn off calories buy moving, thinking, watching and using, but not by sleeping. Eat a big meal then go to sleep and you are just asking for weight to pile on.
8.Weigh yourself everyday.
This is not to see a pound fly off every day (as that wont happen), it is for motivation. See what you weigh and then think of what you want to weigh and want to look like. Invest in digital scales if you like, then you can see just the slightest change. If you did put on weight analyse what you did wrong (if anything) and adjust your diet so this doesn’t happen again in the future.
9.Keep a journal of your food eaten and exercise taken
There are some great free food journals on-line, such as fitday, where you will put down everything you have eaten, drunk and all the exercise you have done during a day. Then it will work out the calories you have eaten and the calories you have burned and generate stats and graphs for you to gaze at. Again, adjust if you see something not going according to plan. It is easy to find and eliminate what you are doing wrong this way.
10 Stick with your diet
This is the most important thing to do. A diet is a lifestyle change. You are not trying to look good or be healthy for the next 10 months. You are trying to change how you live life, you are trying to look good for ever, to live for longer. Stick with it. It will work.
10 Things Not To Do
1.Don’t put off starting your diet for another day.
We all love to make excuses. This time its your health we are concerned with. Forget tonight’s gorge, tonight ice cream or chocolate. Start right now! Go on!
2.Don’t think binge eating just this once is OK, and that you will never do it again.
Iv been there, iv eaten a lot and said I will make up for it the next day. But seriously, you cant make up for it in one day. It will probably take a whole week of increased exercise or dieting to make up for a huge pizza or Chinese takeaway, and it really is not worth it. If you have to, really limit your self, or better yet, cook it yourself from fresh.
3.Don’t give in to peer pressure
It doest matter how old you are, when you are with friends its hard to resist acting like everyone else. When going out for a meal it probably means having a big main course instead of a light dish or salad. Don’t listen to your friends, do what you think is right.
4.Don’t go on yo-yo diets
On and off diets are awful for your body. The more times you do this, the less effective diets become as your body gets used to them and will eventually just shrug them off. Remember, a diet is a life style change, not 90 days on 90 days off.
5.Don’t believe the fad diet hype
Fad diets don’t tend to work in the long term, even if they make you drop 12 pounds in a week. Which they wont. They are impossible to keep up because invariably they mean ridiculous eating habits such as cabbage soup only.
6.Don’t Drink too much alcohol
All alcohol is calorie laden, even spirits that look like water (vodka). On top of that, our bodies treat alcohol as poison and need food, make you crave food, to get rid of it or help absorb it (well it doesn’t literally absorb it but it has the same effect).
7.Don’t hide the fact that you are on a diet
This is very important. Tell everyone you know you are on a diet. They will almost all be supportive. You cannot hide the fact that you are on a diet or your diet will be a failure from the get go. It is not something to be embarrassed about. Losing weight and getting healthy is something to be seriously proud about.
8.Don’t set your targets too high
Short term targets that is. Do not tell your self you are going to lose 3-4 pounds a week because you wont do that each week. You may at the start, depending on your weight and water retention, but you wont all the time. And once you don’t hit that target you might feel like giving up. Set a realistic goal, a small goal. 1 – 2 pounds a week should be your usual aim, and if you don’t hit it, that’s OK – figure out where you went wrong and get back on the bike.
9 Don’t give up!
You will lose the weight as long as you stick with it. Things will go wrong, you will break some of these rules, you will snack and gorge and feel bad. But don’t give up, get back on track, analyse your mistakes, become stronger. You will get there if you keep going. Its not easy.
10.Don’t give up!
There are two good reasons I have repeated this step. One – it is the most important rule. Two – I ran out of rules. OK, there was one good reason. But seriously don’t give up and you will get there!
When feeling down look for inspirational stories on the net, or before and after pictures. Talk to friends and family. Leave comments on my blog. If you want to take up exercise find a sport you enjoy, it is the only way you will stick with it. It doesn’t have to be the best fat burning activity, just something you take pleasure from.
OK that’s it. Good luck everyone!
